Q: Are you familiar with the presider process where the priest co-mingles water in the chalice, but carefully and only to the side. He then immediately wipes it out. The presider suggested, “It’s a visual reminder that everyone who doesn’t join with Christ are like seed that fall on the path, it gets taken away like the droplets of water on the side and not joined with the wine are wiped out of the cup. So we should pray for them and lovingly help them to be in union with Christ.”
There’s nothing in the Roman Missal about wiping the chalice, much less an such an understanding of the action. I have seen priests, from time to time, wipe the inside of the chalice with a purificator after adding the water but never gave it any thought as to why.
What might you know about this liturgical action or its historicity? Thank you, as always, for sharing your wisdom and insights.
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A: The Ordo Missæ of the 1962 Missal gives no instructions for wiping the inside of the chalice, much less does it offer an interpretation of it. The actions of the preconciliar Missal attracted an allegorical spirituality, so someone may have given a much-practiced action some interpretation.
Certainly the Order of Mass today does not call for wiping the inside of the chalice after adding water, and it would eschew a casual inference that non-Christians are doomed.
As I’ve posted before, https://paulturner.org/retention-of-rubrics/, rubrics that are absent from the missal are not to be restored. They have been set aside so that a truer meaning of the celebration of the Mass may come to light.