One reader recently wrote in asking about best practices for choosing and recruiting gift bearers.
The G.I.R.M. specifically calls for “the faithful [to] bring up the gifts” (44). In many communities where I have attended a standard Sunday Mass, the gifts are brought up by a family. However, if a Mass is celebrated for a particular group of people, such as a youth Mass, then a few youth from the community bring up the gifts. While there is nothing wrong with the practice of targeting specific groups to bring up the gifts, sometimes this practice reminds me of the way in which people are chosen to ring the NASDAQ bell. This in turn leads me to wonder what symbolism we are conveying when we choose gift bearers.
How does your community choose gift bearers? What symbolism do you think is expressed by the way in which the gift bearers for your community are chosen?
Please comment below.
Nathan ChaseNathan P. Chase is Assistant Professor of Liturgical and Sacramental Theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, MO. He has contributed a number of articles to the field of liturgical studies, including pieces on liturgy in the early Church, initiation, the Eucharist, inculturation, and the Western Non-Roman Rites, in particular the Hispano-Mozarabic tradition. His first book The Homiliae Toletanae and the Theology of Lent and Easter was published in 2020. His second monograph, published in 2023, is titled The Anaphoral Tradition in the ‘Barcelona Papyrus.’
My experience, on a typical Sunday, is that ushers look for the first willing warm bodies or people that they know personally. My sense is that it may be an unwanted “chore” for the ushers to find people to bring up the gifts. Either way, if the people are coming from the assembly, they are meeting the need.
Paul RadkowskiI’ve seen a few different practices at the parishes where I’ve belonged. 1) When people call to schedule a Mass intention, the parish staff member asks if they want to be the gift bearers for that Mass. In my experience, they almost always do–or they ask other family members or friends to do it.
2) The ushers find people immediately before the Mass (or, in rare cases, during the collection). If they can’t find anybody who is willing, they just do it themselves.
3) Being a gift bearer is a scheduled ministry, just as servers, lectors, and ushers are. Option 1 works well symbolically when the Mass intention is included as the final intercession, especially in smaller parishes where everybody seems to know everybody. (“Oh, the Mass is being offered for John, and there are his grandkids carrying the gifts.”) In my experience, people connected with the Mass intention appreciate being asked to be gift bearers and take the role seriously.
We do all three of those! We’re one team serving two parishes and a school. One parish does (1), the other does (2), and at school Masses, we do (3). I really like (1), but (3) works well in the school as it’s an opportunity for non-Catholic students to be assigned to something.
Paul Inwood@Adam Booth, CSC – comment #3: it’s an opportunity for non-Catholic students to be assigned to something Forgive me if I have a problem with this on two grounds: (1) It’s tokenism, similar to celebrations in schools where every kid must be given a “job” to do. Not only does that annihilate the role of the assembly because everyone is now a minister of some kind, it also risks assigning people to roles for which they are unsuited. More importantly, (2) Non-Catholic gift-bearers will be bringing up gifts which they will not be receiving back. That seems quite bizarre to me. The bread and wine symbolize us, all that we have and all that we are; and we receive back ourselves in Communion, transformed by Christ in the Eucharistic Prayer when we are joined to his salvific action. To have gifts that are symbolic of “the body” of the faithful brought up by people who, for whatever reason, are “outside the body” feels just as inappropriate as asking non-Catholics to announce intentions in the Universal Prayer on behalf of a community that they do not, or do not yet, belong to.
@Paul Inwood – comment #5:
To be honest, I didn’t set it up that way, and I’m not hugely wedded to it. But, I think both teachers and students would be disappointed if we tried to restrict that ministry to Catholic students and I don’t think that’s a result of liturgical “malformation.” The non-Catholic students (about 20% of the school) are fully part of our school community. They don’t receive communion, but then neither do our Catholic students prior to Easter of their 2nd grade year. Each week, one homeroom ‘hosts’ Mass, which includes working together to write the intentions in the Universal Prayer. Almost all of our non-Catholic students are baptized Christians, so they can exercise their baptismal priesthood during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. They don’t physically receive back the very elements they handed over, but they do participate in their being offered. The “oblation of the Church” includes their prayers and intentions. Why shouldn’t they embody that by presenting the bread and wine?
@Adam Booth, CSC – comment #7: I’ve reflected on this, and have had interesting and useful debates with colleagues in the teaching profession about it. Part of the difficulty is about defining terms. Adam, you say “The non-Catholic students (about 20% of the school) are fully part of our school community.” But that’s a different community from the one I was talking about, which is the communion of those who are initiated, faithful members of the Christian family. I’ve also been searching for a workable analogy to explain what I mean, and have so far failed. The closest I have come so far is being a member of an association. As a member, you have the right to vote at elections. If we can stretch a point and say that voting = taking part in the life of the association = receiving Communion, then how would we characterize presenting the gifts? One way would be to say that not only do you not have voting rights if you are not a member, you do not even get to receive a ballot paper. That does not mean that you can’t attend the meeting at which elections take place as a guest (although some societies forbid even that), it just means that you’re not a member and can’t do the things that members do. If anyone can come up with a better analogy, I’d be grateful. In the meantime, it seems to me to be quite clear that if you’re not in communion with the body, then you shouldn’t be presenting gifts on behalf of, and which symbolize that you are a part of, a body that you’re not in fact in communion with. Apart from anything else, that presentation of the gifts is a ministerial act. Can you be a minister of a body that you don’t in fact belong to? Common sense says No. ————————————— A related issue is that of non-Catholics reading at Mass. The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (DAPNE), issued in 1993 by the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, is on the whole an extremely positive document. It does, though, stress the link between Eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion and its visible expression (para 129). Accordingly, paragraph 133 says this:
The reading of Scripture during a Eucharistic celebration in the Catholic Church is to be done by members of that Church. On exceptional occasions and for a just cause, the Bishop of the diocese may permit a member of another Church or ecclesial Community to take on the task of reader.
My teaching colleagues tell me that this stipulation is routinely ignored in Catholic schools, with non-Catholics being asked to be readers at Mass “because if we don’t, they’ll feel left out”. Well, the fact is that they are left out inasmuch as they are outside the communion of the faith. A more challenging question in both the areas we are discussing would be: Does it make any difference if the non-Catholic is a baptized/confirmed/initiated member of a Christian communion whose baptism is recognized by the Catholic Church, compared with a non-Catholic who is simply a non-believer? Further questions: How seriously do we take the expression “full communion with” ? Is “full” an important qualifier?