22. Gifts for Transformation

In preparation for the Eucharist, God speaks to us from the Living Word, "not from a distance," (as a popular Bette Midler song suggests) or from back in history. We speak to God. He speaks to us. We give something to God. We receive something from God. He both speaks to us privately and as a community in the sacrifice of the Mass. There is a pattern and interchange between God and ourselves in the liturgy.

By giving the gifts of bread and wine, we are expressing ourselves. The production of the gifts contain all the aspects of our lives: our emotions, work, disappointments, joy, and so forth. The purpose of this giving, as was the purpose of listening to the Word of God, is that we be transformed or changed, living out our baptism which was the initial conversion in us.