The present renewal of the eucharistic liturgy can be seen as an attempt to remove some of the long-term effects of the imposition of extrinsic rites and ceremonies on the once-and-for-all given sign which is the means by which believers have access to the mystery of God in Christ. But what is that given sign? Bread and wine, certainly, but bread and wine precisely as bread and wine, in their full reality, bread demanding to be eaten to be bread and wine requiring to be drunk to become what it is. Not two substances which could be any other two substances, which could be say wood and iron, but bread and wine to be eaten and drunk. The sign is not therefore simply the two substances of bread and wine but all that these substances involve in the very understanding of them as bread and wine: people, and people to eat and drink them. The sign is the meal. The sign is the gathering of people eating and drinking the bread and wine, and the present liturgical reforms aim at making that sign as transparent as possible.

Questions can of course be raised as to just how little of such a sign there has to be in order for it still to constitute the authentic sign. What is meant by ‘people’? Does there have to be anybody there at all for the sign to be the sign? And if obviously there has to be (since a sign of this sort is a sign only for people), then how many people?