We Come to Your Feast

Michael Joncas

We place upon your table, a gleaming cloth of white;
The weaving of our stories, the fabric of our lives;
The dreams of those before us, the ancient hopeful cries,
The promise of our future; our needing and our nurture
lie here before our eyes.

Ref:
We come to your feast,we come to your feast;
The young and the old, the frightened, the bold,
the greatest and the least.
We come to your feast, we come to your feast
With the fruit of our lands and the work of our hands,
we come to your feast.

We place upon your table, a humble loaf of bread:
The gift of field and hillside, the grain by which we're fed;
we come to taste the presence of him on whom we feed,
To strengthen and connect us, to challenge and correct us,
To love in word and deed.

We place upon your table, a simple cup of wine;
The fruit of human labor, the gift of sun and vine;
We come taste the presence of him we claim as Lord,
His dying and his living, his leading and his giving,
His love in cup outpoured.

We gather 'round your table, we pause within our quest,
we stand beside our neighbors, we name the stranger "guest."
The feast is spread before us; you bid us come and dine;
in blessing we'll uncover, in sharing we'll discover
Your substance and your sign.