By Paula Day

Yvonne Villamarzo stopped pouring flour into the measuring cup and looked up.

“I suppose I should pray beforehand,” she said. But believing even ordinary activities can be a prayer, she decided to continue measuring the ingredients for three batches of bread, enough to provide eucharistic bread for one weekend of Masses at St. Lawrence Church in Lawrenceville.

“It’s easier to measure everything at one time,” she pointed out, putting aside two batches to mix after the first was in the oven. She and four other parishioners, both men and women, alternate weeks of bread baking. They use a recipe specifically formulated for liturgical bread.

Taking an afternoon every five weeks to bake altar bread flows out of her spirituality which she shared while going about the tasks at hand.

“I’ve had a spiritual awakening,” said the mother of three, who also works for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta as a molecular biologist researching the measles virus.

“I’ve always wanted to give more to God. Even though having a husband and children is a calling, I always have that nagging feeling in the back of my mind, ‘Did I really do what God wanted me to do?’ Baking bread is a service.”

“Besides,” she added with a grin, “it appeals to the hippie in me.”

A year and a half ago the liturgy committee at St. Lawrence approached the pastor, Father Marty Kopchik, MSFS, asking if someone in the church community, using their gifts and talents, could prepare the altar breads, the priest said.

With Second Vatican Council documents, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the U.S. bishops’ 1978 pastoral, Environment and Art in Catholic Worship as sources, members of the committee educated themselves.

They took a suggestion from their study. The elements used at Mass should look like real bread, they had discovered. To help the parish focus on the central eucharistic symbols of bread and wine, they decided to introduce the practice of parishioners baking bread that looked and tasted more like the familiar food found on the family dinner table.

The practice has received mixed reaction, Mrs. Villamarzo noted. Those who have read the documents are comfortable with it. Those who are not comfortable can receive the traditional flat wafers.

“I’m proud to bake bread that will become the body of the Lord,” Mrs. Villamarzo said. “I see my bread baking as a special gift to God.”

Watching her, one realizes the care she puts into her gift. Kneading, molding, patting, carefully scoring the dough so the small pieces are uniform in size, she finally readies the first batch for the oven.

“It’s not easy to do,” she said. “Air pockets can form. The oven can be too hot. The bread can bake too long. The edges can be too crispy or it can be rolled too thin.”

After 20 minutes she removes the baked bread and lets it cool before cutting the larger pieces into small bite-size squares.

She then counts out the needed number for a certain Mass and puts the squares into labeled plastic bags. Four larger hosts are put aside. At each of the four Masses, the celebrant will elevate one for the congregation to reverence.

Her teenage son, Mario, wandering in from the family room during the baking, commented on the home-baked bread. “This bread you can chew. It tastes good, like real bread,” he said.

Father Kopchik sees the bread baking as a way parishioners can more personally participate in the eucharistic celebration.

“I guess it is like anything else,” the priest said. “Those who really get involved with their families, their children, see it as a ministry of care and concern. They go along with the whole liturgical reforms of Vatican II whose major thrust was to get people involved in using their talents to make something aesthetically beautiful – a nourishing and appropriate symbol.”

“A lot of people have come up to me to say how beautiful the practice is.”