Connecting Mass to actions

Every time I stand at the Lord's Table to celebrate Eucharist and pray the words "we have this bread to offer" and "work of human hands," I am struck by their power and simplicity.

This prayer comes after the gifts of bread and wine are brought forward and placed on the altar. This is our sacrifice, our offering to God: the fruit of our labor and the "stuff" of our lives.

What strikes me most about this prayer is how it captures the cooperative effort between God and humankind. The gifts of bread and wine, symbolic of ourselves, are not naturally occurring entities. What we offer is the combination of gifts of the earth, which come from God, and the work of human hands.

This beautifully highlights what the life of the Christian is supposed to be: a cooperative endeavor that requires taking what God has given and combining it with our own ingenuity and labor, in order to make us an acceptable offering to God.

This gives us reason to pause and ask ourselves: "How acceptable is my offering?" The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly exhort the people of God to make sure that their outward gestures of prayer and faith are consistent with their behavior. What the Lord requires is that we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:6-8, cf. Amos 5:21-24).

As I welcome the bread and wine, I am reminded of the injustice in our world:

* We place bread, the most primal symbol of subsistence, on the altar, and yet so many in our world are starving to death due to government sanctions and corporate greed.

* We place wine on the altar, and I am reminded of the 47,000 migrant farmworkers in New York (including grape pickers) who are legally excluded from the most basic protections and rights of labor, including in some cases the right to a toilet, to an optional weekly day of rest, to a guaranteed minimum wage and to collective bargaining.

This year's annual Crop Walk, on May 3, raises community awareness about hunger-related issues and raises funds to alleviate hunger locally and globally. On April 28, farmworkers from across the state will come to Albany and press for changes to the state's unfair labor and agricultural practices.

Working for justice is not ancillary to our Sunday worship; it is what makes our offering acceptable to God.

(Father Allman is associate pastor of Christ the King Church in Westmere. For more information on getting involved in Crop Walk, call Kitt at 462-5450. For information on getting involved in Farmworker Advocacy Day, call Barbara DiTommaso at 453-6695.)

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