There are some prayers at Mass that we rarely hear spoken
aloud, and one of them occurs as the celebrant adds a few drops of water to the
wine in the chalice during the Preparation of the Gifts. So what’s he saying? And what does it have to do with humility?
By the mystery of this
water and wine,
may we come to share in the divinity of Christ,
who humbled
himself to share in our humanity.
Why this prayer? Well, first,
it’s likely that Jesus did just this at the Last Supper: he added a bit of water to the wine. At that time, wine was thicker and needed a
bit of thinning; many writings from the early Church confirm that this practice
was included in the first liturgies.
But the mixing of wine with water also has huge symbolic
significance. First, the ritual evokes
the piercing of Jesus’ side with a spear after his death: and at once there came out blood and water (John 19:34). The wine (then blood) is symbolic of Jesus’
divinity, while the water reminds us of his humanity, the two inextricably
mixed in one Divine Being. Likewise, we
too are inextricably bound to Christ through baptism: the water is our humanity, not abstract humanity, but each and every person’s
individual humanity, represented by those tiny droplets of water. In the mixing of the water and wine, we are reminded, too, that we are a new
creation in Christ, filled with the hope of ultimate redemption because Jesus humbled himself for us, to share in our humanity. There can be no more profound Christian
argument for humility than that.
For a more detailed account of the profound symbolism of the
mixing of water with wine, click here.
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