265/365 Water and Wine

"Did you notice the new deacon getting things prepared at the altar?" I ask Mike as we set the table for dinner. He looks at me, not sure what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is mixing water and wine. Why I'm thinking about it is because we're almost out of chocolate milk, so I'm mixing it with white.

"Yeah, he poured wine in all the cups, but only dripped water into the one." Our last deacon used to drip water into each cup; Fr. Miguel puts it in the pitcher before he pours out into different cups.

I never noticed this until Sr. Hildegard pointed it out. She would sigh and talk about good practice and bad practice and liturgy and say, "It's a ritual, not a recipe."

It stuck in my head. Now I watch every time. What is this or that priest going to do? And what is the correlation between good preaching and ritual vs. recipe.

I bet you can guess.