In 1945 the Anglican Benedictine monk, Dom Gregory Dix, wrote and published The Shape of the Liturgy, which quickly became one of the most influential explorations into the liturgy of the Early Church; and which, in the course of time, significantly shaped our liturgies as found in the 1979 edition of The Book of Common Prayer. The following quote is the heart of his thesis: “It (the Eucharist) has four momenta only - Offertory, Thanksgiving Prayer (Canon, Anaphora), Fraction, Communion - and nothing else. It thus reproduces exactly the ‘took bread - gave thanks - brake - gave’ of the Gospels.” And Dix’s research essentially supports that these four actions are found quite consistently in the historical record of the Early Church liturgies. Needless to say, scholarly debate ensued, and Dix’s work was criticized for lacking some historical accuracy. But those who defended him also saw, like Dix, the offertory as representing the bringing the world into the eucharistic action, a view significant shared by the traditional Eastern Orthodox perspective of the offertory. In other words, in a very real sense the bringing of the bread, wine, and our “gifts” to the Altar as a liturgical eucharistic action can be