Oblation
Latinism with several religious and ecclesiastical meanings
An oblation is a solemn offering, sacrifice or presentation to God, to the Church for use in God's service, or to the faithful, such as giving alms to the poor.
The word comes from the Late Latin oblatio (from offerre, oblatum 'to offer'), 'an instance of offering' and by extension 'the thing offered'.
Bible use
The Latin Vulgate, and following this many English versions such as the KJV, 1611, uses the word to stand for the meal offering under the Law of Moses.
Ecclesiastical use
It is thus applied to certain parts of the Eucharistic service in Christian liturgies. The rites of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, and Anglicanism employ an oblation: gifts of bread and wine are offered to God.
Liturgically speaking, there are two oblations: the lesser oblation, sometimes known as the offertory, in which the bread and wine, as yet unconsecrated, are presented and offered to God, and the greater oblation, the oblation proper, in which the Body and Blood of Christ are offered to God, the Father.
The word oblate is also an ecclesiastical term for persons who have devoted themselves or have been devoted as children by their parents to a monastic life. Oblate is more familiar in the Roman Catholic Church as the name of a Religious Congregation of secular or diocesan priests, the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles. They are placed under the absolute authority of the bishop of the diocese in which they are established and can be employed by him on any duties he may think fit.
The public source identifies “Oblation” as latinism with several religious and ecclesiastical meanings. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Oblation, Latinism and several.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3236795. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1611.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oblation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.