Non Solum: Choosing and Recruiting Gift Bearers

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 Chase

Nathan 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.’

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Comments

23 responses to “Non Solum: Choosing and Recruiting Gift Bearers”

  1. Therese D Butler

    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.

    Reply
  2. Paul Radkowski

    I’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.

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  3. Adam Booth, CSC

    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.

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    1. 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.

      Reply
      1. Adam Booth, CSC

        @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?

      2. Paul Inwood

        @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?

  4. Carlo Argoti

    There’s a parish in Thousand Oaks, CA that purposely seeks out an unfamiliar face to process with the cross at the beginning of Mass. I don’t see why you couldn’t extend that invitation during the offertory.

    Reply
  5. Jack Wayne

    I remember as a teenager the ushers treated it as a last minute chore. My family was asked to bring up the gifts so often that my parents started turning them down and telling them to pick someone new.

    Reply
  6. Terri Miyamoto

    I always feel sorry for the ushers, trying to conscript gift bearers. They turn to the same people over and over because it’s so hard to hear “No” over and over. They get to know who will say “Yes.”

    Reply
  7. Jordan Zarembo

    My parish, and another church I frequent, do not use lay gift bearers. The servers merely carry the gifts from a sideboard to the altar during the offertory.

    I agree with Paul Inwood at #5 that, in his words, “It’s tokenism, similar to celebrations in schools where every kid must be given a “job” to do.” Paul’s comment is astute. Perhaps it would be best to eliminate lay presentation of the gifts, or limit this practice to requiems and weddings.

    I realize that one of the goals of the ever-changing Roman Catholic liturgical revolution is to intimately involve the laity in the rituals of the Church. Certain revolutionary changes are actually evolutionary, such as the reintroduction of the medieval concept of the lay lector. Servers are not strictly necessary for Mass, but are again evolutionary aspects of a previous ritual. Lay presentation of the gifts is not an evolutionary aspect. One must wonder: is this innovation beneficial to a layperson’s understanding of Mass? What graces are derived from laypeople presenting gifts? I don’t see any immediate benefits to the practice of lay presentation of the gifts other than the selection of men and women who look like they have been startled like wayward deer by the headlights of a car on a midnight drive down a rural road.

    Except for the traditional Dominican practice of the preparation of the chalice before Mass, the Western liturgical traditions do not have an equivalent of the Greek proskomide or preparation of the oblations before Divine Liturgy. Even in the Byzantine liturgy, the gifts prepared before Divine Liturgy remain in the sanctuary. So then, why must we have this innovation of lay presentation of the gifts? There is no parallel ritual action in East or West.

    Reply
    1. Fritz Bauerschmidt

      @Jordan Zarembo – comment #9:
      There was certainly a lay presentation of gifts at the offertory in Ordo Romanus Primus, so it’s not entirely without precedent in the Roman Rite (albeit a 7-8th century precedent).

      Reply
      1. Jordan Zarembo

        @Fritz Bauerschmidt – comment #10:

        Thank you Deacon Fritz for your correction. If the practice of the lay presentation of the gifts is evolutionary, then perhaps it does have a place in some Masses. I am still not sure if it is desirable to have this aspect of the liturgy at every Sunday Mass. I will leave the question to others who are better educated.

  8. Chuck Middendorf

    I’m a little shocked at how challenging other people find it. Our head ushers just ask different families each week that represent the diversity of our parish (different races, same-sex couples, young adults, elderly, etc.) Vast overstatement here, but besides a few elderly Vietnamese and Filipino parishioners, most people say yes.

    However, we also employ the Korean Catholic tradition whereby of everyone in the assembly brings up their financial offering in procession (or an empty envelope for those who give online), so everyone is processing anyway. Thus getting 2 people to carry up the bread and wine at the end is nothing. (As always on this blog, I often wonder how many people must come from a majority Anglo parish! My previous African American parish had elaborate processions with gifts as well!)

    The only exception to the “head usher system” is on Sundays when their are baptisms, weddings, first communions, etc., and then we typically invite grandparents in the case of baptisms, and baptismal godparents for most other sacraments. And the newly baptized at the Easter Vigil.

    Reply
    1. John Mann

      @Chuck Middendorf – comment #11: The Korean presentation is not without problems. It elevates the presentation, at least externally, to the same level as the reception of Communion and it actually does confuse people. People bow profoundly to the collection basket!

      Reply
  9. Tony Phillips

    In these days when so many parishes are struggling financially, both because of the recession and because of people ‘voting with their wallets’, I can’t help thinking the best way to select gift-bearers would be to enlist the largest financial contributors to the parish. That would serve 2 ends: it would give some well-deserved recognition to those who contribute generously, and it would provide a role model for others to aspire to.

    It’s interesting to hear the ministry of gift-bearers dismissed as ‘tokenism’, though. That’s not the word I’d use, but there has been a deliberate effort to enlist members of the community in the celebration of the liturgy, apparently because some people were feeling annoyed they had to sit there and didn’t get to do anything. Lay readers, ‘extraordinary’ ministers, altar servers (as the job is now constituted)–these are all other examples of ‘make-work’ jobs whose sole purpose is to make people feel like they’re part of the action. I think we can all be honest about that. But is that such a bad thing?

    Reply
  10. Fr. Jack Feehily

    To whom do the gifts of bread and wine belong? Are they just liturgical ingredients purchased by someone on the parish staff? Are they not clearly the gifts of the people fittingly carried to the altar so that they may be consecrated and sanctified as The Gift above all gifts offered for the honor and glory of the Triune God? Sure the priest or sacristan could place them on a table near the altar so that altar boys can fetch them for the priest.

    Having said that, we find it challenging to conscript people for this task. The Mass coordinators keep asking the same people they know will say yes. I’ve even told some of them after Mass that they should feel free to decline the invitation so someone else might have a turn. I need to give catechesis on gifts and gift bearers a higher priority. I’ll do that this Lent.

    Reply
  11. Norman Borelli

    Not being an usher at my parish I don’t know exactly what process they use to ask to being up the gifts. However, observation has led me to conclude that they simply look for (at least) two people.

    The result is that it is always a married couple with or without kids. Thus, the single members are never invited to take part in the process. This is also what I tend to observe in any parish where I have attended mass.

    To be fair I realize that it is a lot easier for an usher to ask a couple seated together to bring up the gifts than it might be to try to coordinate it all with people who are not seated together, but I often wonder if the thought of trying to extend this invitation to those other than married couples occurs to individual ushers or parishes as a whole. It would certainly be a way to demonstrate that as a church we come in all sorts of different ways and that we should be making an effort to include the single in a parish life that is usually dominated by married people, especially with children.

    Reply
  12. Jim Pauwels

    Many people seem to look upon bringing up the gifts as being akin to public speaking – something they will go to great lengths to avoid. It’s interesting, because liturgy by its nature is public worship, but many folks seem to prefer a certain anonymity. For those of us who have grown comfortable doing liturgical ministry that makes us highly visible, it’s not easy to recall how stressful a lot of people find it to do something that they’re not comfortable with, when hundreds of people are watching them.

    On two recent occasions, I went down to receive the gifts, and nobody brought them up; apparently, the ushers had struck out. I whispered to the altar servers that we would process down the aisle, fetch them ourselves, and bring them back. The kids did great with our little improvisation.

    Reply
  13. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

    In our parish, we have a sign-up book for those who wish to present the offerings. However, we are finding that it is usually the same ones who are signing up and there are many, many slots not filled. The ushers have a very difficult time when they ask as many people are now saying “no!”

    To be honest, the symbolism of presenting the bread and wine as well as the financial offering seems weak at best and superflous at worse with an exaggerated emphasis on who brings the offerings to the priest and what is brought. We have to place the money in a secure, tamper proof bag and into a safe in the ushers’ closet. So no actual money if brought, just a symbolic basket. It is silly.

    In the pursuit of refining the “noble simplicity” of the Mass as well as the Latin Rite’s sobriety, I would not mind seeing the presentation of the offerings ended. I was glad to see that Pope Francis initially ended it at his first few Masses and when it returned it was more sober than previous papal Masses.

    Reply
  14. Fritz Bauerschmidt Avatar
    Fritz Bauerschmidt

    I wonder if the logistical difficulty of finding people to bring up the gifts could be eliminated simply by having two of the ushers who have gathered the monetary gifts also bring up the bread and wine.

    Reply
  15. Scott Knitter

    One thing I’ve seen done is to have two small wooden crosses laid out on the table where the gifts are, near the main entrance of the church. The tradition there is that if one wants to serve by bearing the gifts at the Offertory, one takes a cross and hands it to an usher, who gives further instructions as to when to be back at the table, what to do once the gifts have been handed over, etc. The fact that the crosses are no longer on the table is also a quick signal that this role is filled for the particular Mass. If there’s been a special advance request to be allowed to carry up the gifts (perhaps a couple on their anniversary), the crosses are simply not laid out. I think this parish was large enough that there was almost always a couple of people who wanted to do this at each Sunday Mass. The crosses eliminated confusion as to whom to ask, whether the right ushers were aware, and whether anyone had volunteered yet or not. I think there was a small sign on the table as well that said something brief like, “If you would like to carry the gifts to the priest at the Offertory, please give one of these crosses to any usher.”

    Reply
  16. John Kohanski

    We often have trouble finding people to “bring up the gifts.” Many people don’t want all that attention placed on them. This action spotlights a certain chosen few: “they” are special because they are bringing up the gifts, or it’s “their” Mass so “they” get to bring up the gifts. In the quest to make Mass participatory by giving everyone something to do, it’s been made into a spectacle where the majority watch a very small minority actually “do” something.

    Reply
  17. Rita Ferrone Avatar
    Rita Ferrone

    Michael McGuikian, sj, argues in favor of expanding the action of the offering of gifts in his book The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: A Search for an Acceptable Notion of Sacrifice (Hillenbrand Books, 2005). He proposes that the “one act” model of sacrifice is inadequate, and a “three act” model (offering, priestly mediation, meal) is structurally more sound and well supported by scripture and tradition, making sense of our theology; that its absence actually undercuts the possibility of an adequate understanding of sacrifice. An interesting argument.

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