†
Take, bless, break, give.
We rehearse these words and actions every time we celebrate Mass together, because, at the Last Supper, Jesus told us to. Listen and watch when we do this today.
Earlier, on a grassy plain and with meager rations, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to a crowd of thousands, who ate their fill – and still there were leftovers.
Earlier still, in the temple in Jerusalem, Simeon, the righteous and devout, took the child Jesus in his arms, blessed him and his parents, said that the child would break open the thoughts of many while breaking the heart of his mother, and gave the child back to his parents to raise and to give to us.
The Feast of the Presentation of our Lord, and the Purification of Mary his mother, recalls a liturgical rite of their own time and tradition. The Holy Family went and did, as the Law of Moses required.
I wonder if what Joseph, Mary, and the 40-day-old infant Jesus did on that day – with the help of Simeon and Anna and the Holy Spirit – I wonder if it prefigured what was to come, a type of a Eucharistic sharing that Jesus would later repeat with five loaves and two fish, and later still with some bread and wine at a Passover meal.
Perhaps his parents told him the story often enough that taking, blessing, breaking, and giving became second-nature for the fully-human Jesus, even as it was first-nature for Jesus, fully-divine.
Soon, after this liturgical eucharistic celebration is over, we’ll continue in the parish hall with another liturgy: the celebration of our Annual Meeting.
We will recall how, led by the same Holy Spirit that led Simeon and Anna, we took, blessed, broke, and gave the resources presented to us last year.
And we’ll look ahead to how we’ll take, bless, break, and give from this year’s resources.
We, this All Saints’ congregation, we take your abundant gifts: your gifts of time, talent, and treasure. We ask God to bless them to our use and to God’s service. We break them to support our various ministries. And then these ministries give – they give back to us and to the parish neighborhood and to the wider church.
You’ll read about these ministries in the annual report and you’ll hear how some of the members of this congregation have lived into the Gospel and their Baptismal Covenant.
Take, bless, break, give.
This is the Way of Jesus. This is the way of the Gospel. This is the way of the Church-universal. And this is the way of All Saints’ Parish Church. May it be so, until second nature becomes first, and we are on earth what is already in heaven. Amen.
†
Fr. Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP
Feast of the Presentation – February 2, 2025
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco
“Take, bless, break, give”
Comments