Q. What is the purpose and meaning of mixing water with the wine at the offertory?

A. There are many purposes, but the introduction of a few drops of water into the wine by the priest is recognition that Jesus Christ was truly man as He was, and is, true God. This action symbolizes the comingling of the divinity of Jesus with our humanity.

When doing so, the priest says to himself: “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.” It is this mixture of water and wine that by transsubstantiation becomes the Precious Blood.

Our tradition notes that Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper when he tempered the wine with water, which was the common practice among Jews and in the Mediterranean cultures at the time. So it is a custom which derives from that.

It has been addressed throughout church history by the likes of Pope Alexander I, Pope Julius and St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Cyprian wrote on this theme in an epistle against a splinter group that used only water in their celebrations, and this has become the accepted interpretation: “For because Christ bore us all, in that He also bore our sins, we see that in the water is understood the people, but in the wine is showed the blood of Christ. But when the water is mingled in the cup with wine, the people (are) made one with Christ, and the assembly of believers is associated and conjoined with Him on whom it believes; which association and conjunction of water and wine is so mingled in the Lord’s cup, that that mixture cannot any more be separated. (Excerpt from “On the Sacrament of the Cup of the Lord,” No 13).

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