And that is uniquely true of our worship, for it is at the Eucharist that Our Lord, as the Door to God, gives us free and unhindered access to the throne of God.

We acknowledge at the beginning of the Eucharist, however, how totally unworthy we are in God’s sight, and that if it were not for Our Lord and for his Crucifixion we should not be in this church at all. So we do not come breezily in, thinking what splendid people we are. No, we humbly plead, “Lord have mercy”.

At the Offertory, when we are still standing, as it were at a distance from the throne of God, we offer the bread and wine and with them we offer what they represent: ourselves and our lives, what we are and what we do – poor offerings indeed, but soon to be taken possession of by Our Lord and made one with his offering of himself and transformed by his Divine power.

Then at the Sanctus we come nearer to God’s throne, near enough to join in the angels’ song of “Holy, holy, holy”, until at the Consecration we offer to our Heavenly Father his Son, Our Saviour Jesus Christ himself, and the outward forms of bread and wine enshrine his own risen and glorified Body and Blood, and he is in our midst in the Blessed Sacrament. And still showing those victorious scars in his feet and hands and side he presents us to his Father as his own people, his own flock, whom he died to save. And God welcomes and receives us with his Son.