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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: water in an offertory procession
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
I was told, yesterday, that water should never be carried on the offertory procession because it isn't manufactured - it's a free gift from God. So we don't offer it to God.
I like the political implications of that (though I am dubious about offertory processions generally).
I have never heard of this idea before. I have been serving for 50 years - for 42 years in churches which do an offertory procession at the main mass.
The speaker was a very knowledgeable liturgist, speaking to a branch of the Company of Servers.
So what do others do? And what do they think about the idea of the water being left out of the procession?
[ 08. September 2013, 14:51: Message edited by: leo ]
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
I've never seen the water carried in the Offertory procession: I have on one occasion made sure that that was the case, on over-zealous sidesperson having got the wrong idea (easy to do: both liquids in identical cruets, after all).
The water isn't and shouldn't be in the offertory procession because it isn't offered: i.e. there are no offertory prayers for it ("Blessed art thou... &c"); there is, if you will, no Ritual Reason Why you should. Why this is is another matter, and I do wonder if the 'free gift' bit is a case of backwards justification, but it's as good a reason as any.
[mild tangent] I too am very dubious about offertory processions, especially those enforced by the 'include the laity' logic ("it's good to get people involved in the Mass"): if that were true, we'd make them buy the bread and the wine themselves, choose the best to offer to God, and distribute the rest to the poor/The WI/After-Mass drinkies... [/mild tangent]
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
We offer bread and wine. The Offering comes along for the ride, but is discretely deposited for collection after the Mass is over.
Water is available on the side table. I have never seen water in the procession. Ever.
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Olaf
Shipmate
# 11804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I was told, yesterday, that water should never be carried on the offertory procession because it isn't manufactured - it's a free gift from God. So we don't offer it to God.
![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif) Das Plot
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
I've always been led to believe that the offertory is bread and wine only because that is what was consumed at the Last Supper.
Water is added to wine at the communion to symbolise the water that flowed from Our Lord's side after it was pierced with the spear.
There should be TWO offertory processions: the bread and wine as soon as Peace has been shared and the collection discreetly at the end of the hymn or once it is ready.
As mentioned above, the monetary gift is not placed on the altar but placed to one side (or, if there is a vestry by the side of the chancel, taken out there and then).
How many theories are we up to?
Anyway, NEVER water in an offertory procession.
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Yet another classic example of someone being dogmatic about the sort of thing that should not be the subject of dogma and most sane people don't think matters very much.
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Yet another classic example of someone being dogmatic about the sort of thing that should not be the subject of dogma and most sane people don't think matters very much.
Well yes ..... but the mass is the most supreme thing humans do so it matters that we get it right.
I am very surprised at the answers so far. So i did a little search:
quote:
Justin Martyr says: "Then bread and a cup of water and wine are brought to the president of the brethren"
from an impeccable source
quote:
When the people carrying the gifts are ready, lead the offertory procession to Father. Walk slowly and stay together.
When you reach Father, stand on either side of him and face him. Father will give the water and wine cruets to the servers and will probably give the ciborium to the acolyte. Take the water and wine cruets and place them on the credence table.
from this altar servers' guide (RC)
also from this - i think Anglican
The GIRM implies that the water may be processed quote:
The following are to be prepared . . . on the side table [before Mass]: chalice, corporal, purificator, and, according to suitability, a pall; a paten and pyxes, if they are necessary; bread for the Communion of the priest who presides and the Communion of the deacon, ministers, and people; cruets with wine and water, unless all these things are presented in the offertory procession; the vessel of the water to be blessed, if there be sprinkling; the communion plate for the Communion of the faithful; and those things that are necessary for washing hands
(2000 ed., no. 118).[6]
quote:
Place the Communion Plate with hosts on it and the two Cruets of Water and Wine on the Gift Table in the back of the Church
not sure if Anglica or RC
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Yet another classic example of someone being dogmatic about the sort of thing that should not be the subject of dogma and most sane people don't think matters very much.
Liturgy matters, because it is the means by which we express what we believe: in this case the offertory of bread and wine only preserves the unity (or duality) of the Sacrament of the Last Supper, as L'Organist hints.
Rather than snidely call a very simple liturgical ruling unnecessarily dogmatic, we might call making-it-up-as-we-go-along unnecessarily sloppy and bespeaking a lack of care for something which takes a moment's thought to do right.
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
[QB]
I am very surprised at the answers so far. So i did a little search:
[QUOTE]Justin Martyr says: "Then bread and a cup of water and wine are brought to the president of the brethren"
[Apologies for the double post, but] Surely he's talking there about the pre-mixed cup, i.e. at the Great Entrance, which is like but not quite a Western Offertory procession.
Perhaps (though I may be wrong) the modern manuals (and GIRM...) may be either a) confused, or b) thinking of expedience (i.e. it makes sense to have the cruets which will be needed together kept together, rather than having to go to the credence &c. to collect the water.
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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
I'm surprised by the question.
In my experience the bread, wine and water are carried by members of the congregation preceded by thurifer and acolytes bearing torches from the west of the church up to the altar rail. I've seen this uniformly in the big Anglocatholic places as well as at my little AC shack.
My copy of GIRM (USCCB, 2002) says this at §72: quote:
At the Preparation of the Gifts, the bread and wine with water are brought to the altar, the same elements that Christ took into his hands.
I went digging into my Orthodox service books, too. The chalice is prepared by the deacon before the prothesis, which is mainly about divvying up the bread. If the chalice is mixed, the three books I have are silent about it.
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Oblatus
Shipmate
# 6278
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Posted
"Never water in the offertory procession" is news to me. Both wine and water cruets are brought forward and given to our subdeacon as the ciborium full of hosts is given to the deacon. So water is always, not never, brought forward in our offertory procession.
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aig
Shipmate
# 429
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Posted
Leo wrote re a link
Also from this, I think Anglican
I think it is a RCC parish in Ohio, USA.
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Stephen
Shipmate
# 40
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Posted
We always carry water in the procession - I'm a little surprised by the question.Everything that we have is a gift from God surely? And do we not offer 'ourselves, our souls and bodies'
Now this
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I was told, yesterday, that water should never be carried on the offertory procession because it isn't manufactured - it's a free gift from God. So we don't offer it to God.
I believe this is mistaken. Water is not free. Water rates, anyone? ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Water is collected, stored in reservoirs and then purified in a water treatment plant.So there is little difference then between water and bread and wine - do we not say 'Of your goodness we have this bread/wine to offer'?
Potable water, just like bread and wine is also 'work of human hands' as well as 'fruit of the earth/vine' I would suggest
I think it's a pity that the Offertory all too often doesn't end with the versicle and response in the 1984 Welsh BCP
'All things come of Thee
And of Thine own do we give Thee'
Just some thoughts.......
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Sergius-Melli
Shipmate
# 17462
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stephen:
I think it's a pity that the Offertory all too often doesn't end with the versicle and response in the 1984 Welsh BCP
'All things come of Thee
And of Thine own do we give Thee'
Just some thoughts.......
Happy to say, that every use of the 1984 contains versicles and the response, since we don't do procession (except the monies) at 1984 (in fact ever, I'm sure if they could they would do away with coming in and out at my place) it's a good way of involving the entire congregation in the offertory which could become very much a Father-Sacristan affair otherwise...
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Yet another classic example of someone being dogmatic about the sort of thing that should not be the subject of dogma and most sane people don't think matters very much.
Well yes ..... but the mass is the most supreme thing humans do so it matters that we get it right.
I am very surprised at the answers so far. So i did a little search: ....
Yebbut, two things.
First, is the most important thing about the Mass/Eucharist/Holy Communion/Holy Liturgy/Lord's Supper/Breaking of Bread Service 'getting it right'? Is there really God's way and everybody else's? That would be getting close to the thinking of the wizard whose spells won't work unless he gets the words exactly right. Or even that the bread and wine somehow become even more the body and blood of the Lord if we add a few extra arcane details.
Second, Leo, my regard for your knowledge of these sorts of things is such that I'd be strongly inclined to think that something you've not encountered as an 'issue' in 50 years of regular experience, conversation, reading etc., interesting though it may be as a curiosity, doesn't in any objective sense matter.
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stephen:
We always carry water in the procession - I'm a little surprised by the question.Everything that we have is a gift from God surely? And do we not offer 'ourselves, our souls and bodies'
Now this
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I was told, yesterday, that water should never be carried on the offertory procession because it isn't manufactured - it's a free gift from God. So we don't offer it to God.
I believe this is mistaken. Water is not free. Water rates, anyone?
Water is collected, stored in reservoirs and then purified in a water treatment plant.So there is little difference then between water and bread and wine - do we not say 'Of your goodness we have this bread/wine to offer'?
Potable water, just like bread and wine is also 'work of human hands' as well as 'fruit of the earth/vine' I would suggest
I was also thinking that to be the case.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
I seem to remember the blessed Dom Gregory Dix in The Shape of the Liturgy saying that in the papal mass, the water was provided by the orphans cared for in the papal household as they couldn't afford to get any thing else. That would imply they brought it up to the altar with the bread and wine.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
God may not be bovvered, but there are two good reasons for our benefit for taking care and thought and trouble.
The first one is just that: something so important requires care and thought and trouble in deciding what to do. This is surely even more important if you think of the eucharist as primarily symbolic - the symbolism needs to be clear.
The second reason is that the eucharist is not just the personal action of the present group, but a participation in the action of the wider church. Therefore it is appropriate that we use common texts and rituals. Of course what are the appropriate common texts and rituals is the subject of endless debate here and I'm sorry to say bad feeling.
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
God may not be bovvered, but there are two good reasons for our benefit for taking care and thought and trouble.
The first one is just that: something so important requires care and thought and trouble in deciding what to do. This is surely even more important if you think of the eucharist as primarily symbolic - the symbolism needs to be clear.
The second reason is that the eucharist is not just the personal action of the present group, but a participation in the action of the wider church. Therefore it is appropriate that we use common texts and rituals. Of course what are the appropriate common texts and rituals is the subject of endless debate here and I'm sorry to say bad feeling.
That's curious, since these days (it has not always been so), it is usually those who say they think the eucharist is not primarily symbolic who seem to get most steamed up about the procedural details.
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Spiffy
Ship's WonderSheep
# 5267
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Posted
I've never seen water carried up (to my knowledge, one can only presume what's in the silverware). I don't think it's going to become the norm at my shack anytime soon, though, because one person takes the b&w from the presenters and having to juggle two carafes plus the bread bowl is just asking for spills.
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
Where I work, when I first started here, the procession included bread, one flagon of wine, and a cruet of water, which were brought forward at the beginning of the offertory. The money was brought up at the end of the offertory. Extra flagons of wine were already on the credence table.
Happily (IMO), we changed it: the water's on the credence table, and ALL the wine is processed forward, and it's done along with the offering (which is all consolidated into one basket and left on the altar until just before the invitation to Communion - we don't want "The gifts of God for the people of God" to lead anyone to think we're going to be handing out cash along with the bread and wine).
I think it's one of those things that should be done as it seems right to the congregation that's doing it.
We should have a separate thread to discuss the somewhat tangential point about how much such things really matter. I'm a firm believer that it's important to do your best to get things right, but there's a balance: you don't want to get too caught up in perfectionism about rubrics, either. Or as Thomas Scirghi (in the book, Living Beauty: The Art of Liturgy, which he co-authored with Alex García-Rivera) puts it, instead of the extremes of "pristine rubrics" or "sloppiness," liturgy is normally "messy" - as all human activities are. A "blessed mess."
But I doubt a congregation's choice to process the water or not process the water isn't a big enough matter to potentially remove their offering from that of the wider Church.
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Thurible
Shipmate
# 3206
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Posted
I've never, ever seen water in the offertory procession.
Thurible
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S. Bacchus
Shipmate
# 17778
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Posted
We have water in our offertory procession, but then we're the sort of rural highish church that is usually liturgically correct but occasionally way out of step with normal practice.
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Spiffy:
I've never seen water carried up (to my knowledge, one can only presume what's in the silverware). I don't think it's going to become the norm at my shack anytime soon, though, because one person takes the b&w from the presenters and having to juggle two carafes plus the bread bowl is just asking for spills.
I have received two carafes and a ciborium but it's not recommended. I think I held the ciborium in the crook between ring and little finger while hokdingthe jugs by their necks.
Carys
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Stephen
Shipmate
# 40
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Posted
That is definitely not to be recommended! ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
You like living dangerously? ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
The best thing to do in that situation is to take the ciborium first, offer it to the celebrant and then take the water and wine - it's not too difficult to transfer one to the other.
In other words - make 'em wait!
And, yes, I have been in that situation at times......
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Best Wishes
Stephen
'Be still,then, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations and I will be exalted in the earth' Ps46 v10
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oblatus:
"Never water in the offertory procession" is news to me. Both wine and water cruets are brought forward and given to our subdeacon as the ciborium full of hosts is given to the deacon. So water is always, not never, brought forward in our offertory procession.
Some churches I know seem to do this, some don't. I've never thought it was really that important, depending on the practical circumstances. What is important is that everything one needs for communion - whatever that involves - is conveniently at hand, and managed decorously. It's natural - and rather sweet - that we can invent theologies about why this should be carried or why that should be in a glass bottle, or this embroidered with a cross or that turned upside down and hanging from the ceiling. And occasionally some of these little liturgicalisms can even be useful. But it can also get a little bit 'precious', too.
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Spiffy
Ship's WonderSheep
# 5267
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Carys:
quote:
Originally posted by Spiffy:
I've never seen water carried up (to my knowledge, one can only presume what's in the silverware). I don't think it's going to become the norm at my shack anytime soon, though, because one person takes the b&w from the presenters and having to juggle two carafes plus the bread bowl is just asking for spills.
I have received two carafes and a ciborium but it's not recommended. I think I held the ciborium in the crook between ring and little finger while hokdingthe jugs by their necks.
Carys
You like living dangerously!
We don't have a ciborium, we have a huge, heavy, silver bowl. Because we use real bread. You may now all start arguing about that.
What happens at my place is EM1 goes down and takes the b&w from the ushers, and as EM1 heads to the altar to hand off to the deacon (five stair steps and about 10 yards away), EM2 processes down to hand over the offering plates. EM1 goes to the side of the altar to move the veil out of the way and hand over the water, then waits for the water to be handed back. EM1 puts the water on the credence, and steps back. Meanwhile EM2 watches the ushers, and when they're done collecting steps forward again to stack the plates and then processes them to the altar, where the presider blesses them and places them on the altar (as per the request of the bishop to highlight the sanctity of our financial gifts or something I may have zoned out during that part of Diocesan Convention). EM3 then steps forward and assists the presider with the lavabo.
Then EM1 points the mass book, EM2 rings the bells, and EM3 stands off to the side and looks pretty. I'm particularly good at being EM3.
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