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The gifts we offer to God at the Eucharist are already gifts that he gave us in the first place. But it's not a matter of returning or 'dressing up' a gift that we didn't want, like a pair of socks! That would be quite heartless and effortless. No, we have taken the gifts that God has given us: the wheat, the weather, the harvest, the grape, the work and skills of human hands (and feet!), the creativity and human endeavour, and baked bread and fermented wine, to offer the gifts of bread and wine.
And so, we offer the gifts of bread and wine from the things that God has already given us. And this exchange continues. We offer gifts to God and he in turn transforms them into something else. The best kinds of gifts are those that are filled with meaning and love (rather than gifts that have been begrudgingly bought or carelessly picked from the shelf in a moment of desperation and frustration at not knowing what to buy!).
So, yes, God uses the gifts that we have given and returns them to us, transformed. He has changed them. He has filled them with more meaning than we could imagine.
On the steps of a basilica in Rome, when the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey was making a an official visit to Pope Paul VI, the Pope slipped off his Episcopal ring, a gift given to him by the people of Milan when he became bishop there, and placed it in Ramsey's hands. Ramsey was visibly moved and afterwards said, 'I felt as if he was giving me a piece of himself.'
When we offer the gifts of bread and wine to God in the Eucharist we are giving a bit of ourselves. Or perhaps it is more than that. We give the gifts to represent the whole of ourselves. They are only a small part of all that we have been given, they are only a small part of all that we have, but they are filled with meaning, representing us, all that we are, all that we struggle with, all that we hope to be, all that we have been.
And Christ too gives us himself, in an even more profound and direct way. 'This is my body,' he says. 'This is my blood.'
In the Eucharist there's a holy exchange of gifts. An intimate moment, as we fill our gifts with meaning, give and receive, give and receive, until we are transformed completely, until our whole lives become a gift to God, an offering that is total,
As we give the gifts, we thank God: not just for all that he has given us in terms of food and drink but in terms of everything that he has given us, everything he has done for us, and this reaches a high point in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus: in the self giving love of God, who has offered himself once and for all on the cross. It is the benefits of this sacrifice that overflow and are experienced in the Eucharist. It is this love that transforms our gifts and makes it possible for us to give ourselves to God.
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