Picking up where we left off last week in our walk through of the Mass, we move into the preparation of the Altar & the gifts. As the Altar is prepared & as the bread & wine that will be transformed into the Body & Blood of our Lord there are a number of different prayers & actions that happen & over the next few weeks we’ll look at a few of them.

  Let’s start, in today’s column, with the mixing of the water & wine as the chalice is prepared. As the chalice is prepared upon the Altar, a small bit of water is added to the chalice of wine, but why? Have you ever wondered what the purpose of that action is? The ritual action dates back to a time when adding water to the wine was very much needed as the wine was stored in a concentrated form & a bit of water was needed in order to make the wine drinkable. As that became less & less of the case, that action took on more of a religious meaning.

  A meaning that is perhaps best summed up in the prayer that the Priest prays silently as he does the action itself. As the drops of water are poured into the chalice the Priest says to himself, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbles himself to share in our humanity.” What began as a practical need, now is a deep symbolic action of the mingling of Jesus’ humanity & divinity. Jesus, who didn’t just appear to be human & who didn’t leave his divinity up in heaven when he came to earth, but our Lord & Savior who is both fully divine & fully human (in all things but sin). Our Lord & Savior who took on our humanity in order to open up to us the gates of heaven & who calls us to a share in his divinity. The meaning of this action is summed up too by St. Cyprian of Alexandria as he writes, “Because Christ bore us all, in that he bore our sins, we see that by the water, people are signified, while in the wine, indeed, the blood of Christ is shown. And when the water is mixed with the wine in the cup, the people are made one with Christ, and the multitude of believers is coupled and joined to him in whom it believes.”