Liturgical ministers must anticipate how gestures, symbols, and the environment will play in the imaginations of persons at worship. We prepare the assembly by planning how we will gather, how persons will sit, stand, or process, what sounds, sights, and smells will unite us. We prepare the Word by anticipating the experience of hearing and proclaiming the Word. Every element, from carrying the lectionary, to the design of the ambo, to the speaking skills of the lector, is part of the image that will work in the religious imagination of those at prayer. Let's follow one symbol through the liturgy.
Bread begins with bakers, kitchen chatter, hands kneading dough, smells wafting through the house.
It moves to the foyer of the worship space, welcoming, anticipating action, evoking hunger. A loaf of bread, its shape and colour accented by a plate or basket, bread juxtaposed with wine. Set beside cup and carafe, bread is one half of a couple, the doctrine of concomitance notwithstanding. Bread carried in procession, placed on the community's table of sacrifice and meal sharing, held up in prayers of thanksgiving, broken, given, received with open hands, eaten, savoured. Bread in the liturgy, a virtual symphony of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures.