As the parishes of Annunciation in Mayhew Lake and Sacred Heart in Sauk Rapids prepared to celebrate their first Holy Thursday Mass together, parishioners at Annunciation were excited to share a special tradition with the Sacred Heart community.
For more than 25 years, volunteers at Annunciation have baked mini loaves of bread to wrap and hand out after Holy Thursday Mass. This year, a group of volunteers from both parishes are carrying on the practice.
As Katie Lentner lifted a pan of bread from the oven in the kitchen at Sacred Heart, she remembered how much she loved the tradition growing up at Annunciation.
“It’s just such a cool tradition,” she said. “I remember that being our favorite part of going to church on Holy Thursday. The whole church always smelled like [baking] bread.”
Lentner was nervous the bread-baking would end when she heard that Annunciation and Sacred Heart would share a single Holy Thursday Mass. She said she is happy the tradition will go on as the parishes continue to combine programs and events, and that she is able to help keep it going.
“One of the common concerns expressed early on in the ACC process was that the individual identities of our communities would be lost,” said Father Tom Knoblach, pastor of Sacred Heart and Annunciation, which are part of the One in Christ Area Catholic Community. “This bread-baking tradition is a concrete sign that our individual parish traditions can not only be preserved but enrich one another.”
And, he added, it “reminds us of our unity in Jesus Christ, the living Bread whose presence is the same in every parish community that celebrates the Eucharist.”
Jill Kiffmeyer, director of music and liturgy at Sacred Heart, was glad to see so many people wanting to help.
“It was really encouraging to see that we can work together, and such willingness right away to do it,” she said. “I feel like people are getting to know each other more and a real community has formed.”
The practice of baking bread to share started back when Father Francis Britz was pastor of Annunciation in the early 2000s. Parishioners used to gather to socialize and share bread after Holy Thursday Mass and giving them bread to take home and share with their families seemed a little more reverent, Kiffmeyer said. It was more respectful, too, of people that chose to stay for adoration after Mass.
“Because we will share this Mass with Sacred Heart, we thought we should share the bread with them too,” said Jean Bemboom, who has been involved in this project for many years. “It’s bringing us together, sharing our ideas and sharing what’s important to us in our small churches.”
The thought of Jesus at the Last Supper breaking bread with the apostles, resonates with her. “And then we get to take our little loaf of bread home to break bread with our family,” she said. “It’s just the symbolism of it and how it’s brought us all together.”
“St. Paul uses the image of many grains of wheat coming together to make one loaf,” Father Knoblach said. “While we are very careful not to confuse this ordinary bread baked and given out on Holy Thursday with the Eucharist in any way, it does symbolize the broader meaning of many being united into one, which is one of the effects of the Eucharist.”
After the bread was baked it was set out on tables in the social hall to cool. More volunteers arrived to help wrap the small loaves in plastic wrap and prepare them to be handed out after Mass later that evening.
“Sharing this tradition in our first joint Holy Thursday Mass quietly indicates the unity we have been working toward with good success over the past five-plus years and reflected in our ACC name, One in Christ,” Father Knoblach said. “This title is both a current reality in the one Body of Christ, but also a continuous goal in our life together.”