Prayer over the Offerings

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord
    When people talk about preparing for Mass, they often speak of getting dressed with better clothes than usual, brushing teeth, combing or brushing hair, maybe the ladies putting on make-up, maybe guys using that button-up shirt and maybe even a tie.  Or sometimes they mean looking at the readings ahead of time, which can be found at the Daily Readings tab of the usccb.org website.  Rarely do people look over the prayers that are said at Mass before they attend the Mass, but this is also a good way to prepare, as the prayers are usually based on saying from the Church Fathers, and often are poetic and filled with rich imagery.
    I want to focus today on the Prayer over the Offerings for the Solemnity of the Epiphany, which we celebrate tonight/today.  For this ancient feast, there are different prayers for the day before than for the day itself, and I want to focus on the Prayer over the Offerings for the actual day of Epiphany.  The prayer reads: “Look with favor, Lord, we pray, / on these gifts of your Church, / in which are offered now not gold or frankincense or myrrh, / but he who by them is proclaimed, / sacrificed and received, Jesus Christ. / Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.”  You will hear me chant that prayer after the altar is prepared for the celebration of the Eucharist.  It is the same prayer from the pre-Conciliar Mass, and I would guess the prayer likely is quite old, much older than even the 1570 Missal that Pope St. Pius V promulgated as a result of the Council of Trent.
    But what does the prayer say?  It is poetic, but what about the meaning?  It starts by talking about the gifts of God’s church, and asks God to receive them favorably.  Those gifts are the same gifts the Church has used since the Lord instituted the Eucharist on Holy Thursday at the Last Supper: bread and wine.  And it compares those gifts to the gifts we heard about in the Gospel: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  But it talks about how these gifts are not the same gifts of the Magi, but rather, Jesus Christ Himself, who “is proclaimed, sacrificed and received.”  It looks forward to the purpose of the presentation of these gifts of bread and wine, their transformation or transubstantiation into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.  It reminds us that what we offer here is not only our gifts, like the gifts of the Magi, but the gift of Christ Himself to the Father, the very offering of His life on the Cross, which is made present for us in an unbloody manner through the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.  It’s as if we being catapulted through different scenes from the Gospel: first the adoration of the Magi when Jesus was little, to the Last Supper, to the Crucifixion. 
    But it goes even deeper than that.  Because our gifts of bread and wine are meant to represent something much more precious: the gift of our very selves.  Christ is our model, and He offered His entire self to the Father, even to the shedding of His Precious Blood.  He did not hold anything back.  So we, who claim to follow Him, are meant to offer all of who we are, not so much right now in the shedding of our blood, but if the pouring out of all that has happened in our life since the last time we went to Mass like a libation, a liquid offering.  We put on that bread the credit card bill that’s due with all the charges for a Christmas dinner with the family and Christmas presents; we place the joy of conceiving a new child; the concern for an infirm family member; the sorrow of a death at what is usually such a joyous time of year; the excitement of a new job or new opportunities; the extended time spent while on vacation with the kids; the relief of sending the kids back to school.  All of that and more, really our very selves, are supposed to be united to the bread and the wine spiritually.

    And this is the gift that Jesus wants.  Sure, the gold represents Christ’s kingly identity; the frankincense His divinity; the myrrh His Death.  But Christ still wants to receive gifts from us even if we don’t have those items to offer up.  He wants us to offer ourselves, united with Him, to the Father, and to receive, like Him, new life back from the Father who never lets us remain empty-handed.  The Father transforms whatever we give Him, and returns it back to us as a vehicle of grace, a chance to grow closer to Him, which is our ultimate happiness.
    All of that, and more, from a prayer that is six lines and forty-three words long.  How often do we miss those words, not just on the Epiphany, but each Sunday, because we haven’t truly prepared ourselves for Mass?  We miss the poetry, the connections, the deeper meaning of these very deep prayers that the Church has perfected over two millennia of encounters with God. 
    Perhaps this week you can give God a little more of your time and attention.  Perhaps this week, maybe on Saturday morning or even before that, you can look ahead and try to see what the prayers for the Mass are.  Or even if you can’t do it ahead of time, to accustom yourself to paying close attention to the prayers that are said during the Mass.  Offer to God that aspect of yourself, that time of preparation, and be prepared for God to enrich your life even more than you thought, because God will not be outdone in generosity.

What We Offer to God

 Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    While the news has moved on to what it considers to be “juicier” stories, there was quite a bit of digital and literal ink spilled about the US bishops recently, who decided to write a document on our belief in the Eucharist.  Of course, the press focused on the political issues, especially with a baptized Catholic as president of the United States.  But the document that the bishops are drafting goes beyond Catholic politicians, and is meant to help teach us about the Eucharist.  Given that our next few weeks of readings will be focusing on the Eucharist anyway, I thought I would get a head start, and preach about the Eucharist.
    If you look at stats about how many Catholics actually believe what the Church teaches on the Eucharist, it’s pretty depressing (at least if you work for the Church).  From a survey taken in 2019 or so, I think it’s something like 33%.  That’s horribly low!  So the need is there.  I’ll try not to make this too academic, though.
    Before we get to the Eucharist in itself, we can look at what we’re giving God.  In today’s Gospel, the people are hungry, and Jesus wants to feed them.  But there’s only five loaves and two fish.  Still, God takes what the people has, miraculously multiplies it (this whole junk about sharing is trying to force a different message into this Gospel, rather than reading what the Gospel truly says), and then returns it to them.  And in our first reading, bread is brought to Elisha, who multiplies it for the people to eat.  So the people bring what they have and offer it to the Lord, who makes it enough for all who desire to eat.  
    At face value, what we offer for the Eucharist is bread and wine (aren’t you glad it’s not bread and fish??).  When we think of why we use bread and wine for the Eucharist, there is, of course, the reality that bread and wine were common items in Judea at the time of Jesus (and well before that, and well after that, as well).  Bread and wine were also already part of the sacrificial system of the Jews.  There was showbread, which was in the presence of the Lord in the inner temple.  And there were also libations, drink offerings, poured out to God.  So bread and wine were common, not only for food, but for sacrificing.
    But when we look at what we use for the Eucharist, there’s also the reality of how bread and wine are made, which also helps us understand something of why they are used for the celebration of the Mass.  Think of how bread is made.  For our Eucharistic bread, the hosts, it can only be made from flour and water.  Flour comes from wheat which is finely ground.  After baking the mixture of flour and water, we have unleavened bread.  
    Wine is made from grapes.  But you can’t just leave grapes on your counter and magically get wine (you’ll get raisins, I suppose).  You have to crush the grapes in a wine press, and let the juices ferment.  Then you get wine.
    In his 2006 homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Pope Benedict spoke about the cooperation between God and humanity that is required to get bread and wine that we use in the Eucharist.  God has to provide the fertile fields, and even the water itself in order for wheat to grow.  But then we need to grind the wheat to make the flour.  God has to provide rain and sun for the grapes to grow on the vine, but then we have to press the grapes.  So what we need for the Eucharist is a cooperation between us and God, which is the original intent of God in the Garden of Eden: God and humanity working together to sanctify the world.
    Another text called The Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, which was written around the year 100, also says, “Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom.”  The gathering of the different heads of grain is itself an image of the diversity of the human race coming together, and then being offered to God for Him to bless and transform it into something new.  
    But beyond the bread and wine that we offer, Jesus invites us to give all of who we are to Him, to allow Him to transform us into something new.  From the beginning, in the sacrificial system, humanity was invited to give God their all, represented by some earthly thing.  So we, as Catholics, are invited to give all of who we are, and unite it to the bread and wine offered by me on your behalf to God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  We are invited to give God the good and the bad.  Did you have a horrible week, where nothing went right, where you lost friends or family, where the car broke down, where it rained every day on your vacation?  Offer it to God!  Did you have a great week, where you hit every green light when you were late, when your kids and grandkids visited, where you received an unexpected compliment or word of praise?  Offer it to God.  
    God wants all of it, the good and the bad.  He wants to transform it from something simply earthly, to something heavenly, like the Eucharist.  But He will not transform what we do not give Him.  If we do not give Him our life, the daily ups and downs, then they remain simply ours; they remain earthly and limited.  But if we give him what has happened since the last time we came to Mass, He will bless it, transform it, and return it to us as something that helps us draw closer to Him and experience the heavenly life.  
    The invitation has been extended.  Today, and at every Mass you attend, offer to God whatever you have, no matter how little you think it may be.  Let God transform your daily life, as He will shortly, through my ministry, transform the bread and the wine we offer Him, into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Bread: Not As Ordinary as You Might Think

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

One of my favorite foods from my pilgrimages to the Holy Land is the bread.  The way it is made, we would likely call it pita bread, but it’s an unleavened bread that has a pocket in it, though it’s totally enclosed until you rip into it.  It puts Wonderbread to shame in my opinion.  Of course, it’s not made just for sandwiches.  It’s also for dipping into hummus, sopping up some of the sauce or gravy with the food, and other ways of eating.  It’s the same type of bread that you can get at Middle Eastern restaurants like the Beirut in Toledo.  And while Adrian has more restaurants than you can shake a stick at, there’s no place that really sells good, Middle Eastern bread that I have found.

It may seem odd to focus so much on bread.  Bread is so ordinary.  No matter what kind it is, most people expect it with their meal, even if sometimes as a roll.  As much as I go on about bread, there is nothing too special about it.  And yet, Jesus used bread as one of the elements, or what theologians call the matter, of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.

Our readings today on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ all revolve around bread (and also wine).  In our first reading, Melchizedek, a prefigurement of Jesus, offers bread and wine, and then blesses Abram.  A good chunk of the Letter to the Hebrews focuses on this small passage we heard from Genesis, and what it prefigured.  And we, as Catholics, should have our sacramental sense tingle every time we hear bread and wine in the Old Testament.

St. Paul in our second reading recalls Jesus instituting the Eucharist, that Jesus offered bread and wine, but no longer referred to it as bread and wine, but as His Body and Blood.  And the Gospel we heard is the multiplication of the loaves and fish.  Now, to be clear, Jesus did not use fish as a part of the Eucharist, though maybe it does explain why Catholics love having fish fries.  But Jesus multiplies the bread, bread which satisfied everyone who was there, around five thousand men, not counting the women and children.  

Why bread?  Why did Jesus choose bread as part of the matter of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood?  We can only speculate, but many have thought over the years that it has to do with the different aspects of bread.  In the first place, bread is ordinary.  It was a staple of the Middle Eastern diet.  God takes the ordinary, and makes it extraordinary.  He does that with bread, but He also does that with us.  God takes our bread, our ordinary lives, whatever they entail, and He accepts them from me, your priest, and then returns it to you, no longer bread, but the Body of Christ; no longer your common life, but transformed.  Bread is a metaphor for us: nothing special, but common.

In the second place, we can look at how bread is made.  In a document of disputed origins called The Didache, some parts probably dating from the 5th century, others dating from the 12th or 13th century, there is a prayer that purports to be said at the Eucharist.  Part of the prayer reads, “As this broken bread was scattered over the hills and then, when gathered, became one mass, so may Thy Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom.”  This prayer examines how bread is made.  First, the grain is scattered across the field.  Then it is gathered together.  After it is gathered, it has to be crushed to make flour.  Then flour is added to water, is baked, and then you get bread.  Humanity, too, is scattered across the field of the world.  But Jesus unites what was scattered; He gathers all of humanity in Himself, and gives them the opportunity to be one with Him through faith.  Humanity, too, is broken, often crushed.  We each have our own crosses in life, the ways in which we suffer.  When we unite our suffering with the waters of Baptism, our participation in the suffering and death of Christ, and are warmed by the love of Jesus, we become one loaf of bread, bound together in the Kingdom of God.

Wine, too, has a rich symbolism, as it is taken from grapes on the vine (we recall Jesus saying that He is the Vine, we are the branches), crushed and pressed into wine which, as the psalms say, gives joy to the heart.  But maybe I can talk about wine in a different homily.

So maybe bread isn’t so common.  It certainly has a vast symbolism which is perhaps why God chose to use it so often in the Old and New Testaments.  Whenever we hear bread, hopefully our minds will immediately think about the Eucharist and about Jesus’ abiding presence with us.  As we walk through the streets of Adrian today in our Walk with Jesus, we will follow what looks like a small piece of unleavened bread.  But we know by faith, that it is no longer bread, but is truly Jesus’ Body.  May our joy for what Jesus did with bread, changing it into His Body, be manifest when we come to Mass, when we walk with Jesus today, and even in our daily lives, that we might truly be a Eucharistic people, a people who are always grateful and on the lookout for the presence of the Lord.