“AT THE TABLE: PREPARATION OF THE GIFTS”
Deacon Dennis Brown offers an answer to this week’s At the Table series question:
What is significant about bringing up the gifts for the mass?
As we learned last week from Fr. Terry, the Prayers of the Faithful mark the end of the Liturgy of the Word. This week I will focus on the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the Preparation of the Gifts. During this time we are preparing the altar, the gifts, and ourselves to give thanks and praise to God in the eucharistic sacrificial meal. The monetary gifts of the assembly are collected and brought forward along with the bread and wine. The bread and wine are placed on the altar, our table of thanksgiving. They will become the body and blood of the Lord. Our monetary gifts are presented as a symbol that our whole lives belong to God and that we will use whatever wealth we have in the service of God’s Kingdom. This is a time for all to join ourselves with Christ so that we can offer eternal sacrificial thanks and praise to God through him, with him, and in him.
The procession with the gifts of bread and wine is a significant expression of the assembly’s commitment to love and serve as Jesus did. It is our tradition here at Holy Family to stand when the gifts of bread and wine are brought forward to the altar. In this manner we are powerfully affirming that those who present the gifts symbolize the entire assembly’s commitment and faith. We are offering all that we have and all that we are, our successes and failures, our joys and sufferings, our daily prayer and work, to be joined with Jesus’ one eternal sacrifice of love. We are expressing our commitment to die to self and live a life of sacrificial love as he did. And, in so doing, we will all be transformed in Christ.