Catholic Dictionary

Find accurate definitions of over 5,000 Catholic terms and phrases (including abbreviations). Based on Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

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OFFERTORY

That part of the Mass in which the unconsecrated bread and wine are offered to God. The prayers said by a priest in the new ritual are taken almost verbatim from the first-century liturgical document the Didache, discovered at Constantinople in 1873. The celebrant says, while separately offering the bread (on a paten) and the wine (in the chalice): "Blessed are you, Lord God of all things, because we have received bread [wine] from your bounty. We offer this fruit of the earth and of men's labor, that it may become for us the Bread of Life [Spiritual Drink]."