THE OFFERTORY

Bread and wine were the ordinary food and drink of man,
which Our Lord took and put to the most sacred use in his institution of the Sacrament of the Altar. In the ancient record of the Book of Genesis (14:18-19), Abram was blessed by Melchizedek, King of Salem, who "brought forth bread and wine; and he was Priest of the most high God." In Psalm 110, a Psalm which Our Lord himself  quoted for its prophecy of the Messiah, his eternal Priesthood is foreshadowed as being "after the order of Melchizedek," an idea which is later developed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The action of Our Lord at the Last Supper is therefore one which was bound to recall to the Church the connection of the offering of bread and wine with the Priesthood and sacrifice of her Lord.

The Church takes what Christ took, and offers it to God. In doing so, it not only associates us with the sacrifice of our Redeemer, but brings within the sphere of his oblation all the life of man. For bread and wine are the gifts of God, the fruits of the earth that God has blessed; but they are also the fruits of man's labor, the product of the toil of the husband-man and the reaper, of the miller and the baker, the laborers in the vineyard and at the wine-press. Thus to God we bring, in union with the offering of his Son, the whole life of man. Our worship is the token and the safeguard of its being offered to him for whose glory it exists.

Most of the prayers of the Offertory are said quietly by the Priest at the altar. It is the acts, not the words, that matter most, for the words have come in to interpret the significant acts. Yet the very acts speak to us in an universal language; what is explicit in the words is implicit in them.