postures and gestures in worship (part 1: Introduction)
This begins a series on postures and gestures in worship, focusing on the spirituality behind these physical expressions during prayer.
Beginning in Advent 2005, dioceses here in the bay area have begun to implement the liturgical norms outlined in the Vatican document Redemptionis Sacramentum released in March 2004, and much of the changes seen by parishes around here include the proper postures at Mass.
At my parish for instance, the assembly never knelt during the Eucharistic Prayer, which is the case in many other parishes here in the bay area. I know, shocking. So, it is with some relief for me that Fr. Pastor has instructed parishioners to kneel. He has also asked that the parish obey the other norms in the document.
Anyway, "inspired" by our local adaptation of these liturgical norms, I have decided to research and blog about this issue, examining in particular the spirituality expressed in these physical postures and gestures.
The three postures I will look at are standing, kneeling, and sitting; and the three gestures this series will focus on are the sign of the cross, striking one's chest, and dance.
Introduction
While reading up on this I found the words by Betsy Beckman, a freelance liturgical dancer, therapist, and author interesting. She recounted an incident that occurred when she was six years of age in an article for Prayer Magazine five years ago.
Hearing the sound of church bells from her front yard one day, she “had a distinct feeling that God was everywhere, that even [her] yard is sacred.”
And as the sounds “wafted into [her] body and soul,” she began to dance. She writes: “I swayed and twirled, lifted my arms and leaned and leaped.”
Her intuitive and innocent physical response exemplifies the connection between the spiritual and the physical: that our bodies give us the means with which to display our spiritual intentions. Her words nicely capture the connection between the physical and the spiritual.
So, what are we saying through these movements, these postures and gestures? What is the spirituality behind kneeling or standing while at Mass? Answering these questions will take us on a journey through Scripture, through Christian spirituality, the writings of the fathers of the Church, the various sacramentaries of the Church, and even anthropology and culture.
But just before answering those questions, I will first lay out three important foundational concepts: 1) prayer as involving body and spirit, 2) gestures and postures as means of identification, and 3) as means to express an one’s interior attitude and spirituality.
Prayer involves body and spirit
In their book Christian Spirituality, Lawrence Cunningham and Keith Egan define spirituality as “the lived encounter with Jesus Christ in the Spirit.” And so to foster, cultivate, and nourish one’s living encounter with Christ, a believer prays.
What is noteworthy in Cunningham’s and Egan’s definition of prayer is their use of the word “gesture”----“prayers are those acts which symbolize, by words and/or gestures, a person’s relationship with God” and that “prayer is the fundamental gesture of belief, faith, dependence."
The authors place our physicality at the center of what prayer means: that prayer is not merely an activity of the mind and the soul—-but of the body as well.
To say that the body and soul are both involved while one is praying complements the Christian understanding of the nature of human beings.
And what is that understanding? Well, Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “The human person created in the image of God, is a being at once corporal and spiritual” (article 362). Then the article referred to Genesis 2:7 as affirming the bodily and spiritual nature of humans: “God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.”
That human nature comprises both the spiritual and the physical explains why prayer---which is at the heart of spirituality---naturally involves the body.
In many other books concerning postures and gestures, the authors’ message reiterates this same point and also identifies important elements concerning physical expressions while praying.
For instance, John K. Leonard and Nathan Mitchell in their book “The Positions of the Assembly during the Eucharistic Prayer” write that just as the body is the real “symbol of the soul, so physical gestures are the real symbols of those attitudes that flow from a human being’s soul.”
They also say that physical movements enact one’s relationship with God. For instance, the posture of kneeling has always been associated with the spiritual attitude of petition and supplication. And so a person kneeling while at prayer enacts a supplicant-provider relationship: we as the supplicant and God the provider.
Postures and gestures as means of identification
Postures and gestures also function as a means of identification. Elochukwu Uzukwu who lectures on liturgy and African theology in Catholic universities in Nigeria, the Congo, Zaire, and France mentions in his book “Worship as Body Language” how “each human community or ethnic group designs its own gestures to express its experience of life in the universe.”
Also, along the same lines, Mary Collins, a lay Benedictine at Mt. Scholastica in Kansas and professor of liturgical studies at the Catholic University of America focused on “mediating realities in the construction of authentic Christian spiritual identity” in her article for the publication “Spirituality and Sacramentality.”
For instance, a Protestant evangelical might recognize someone who has made the sign of the Cross as a Catholic; and an Orthodox Christian would know a person is a Catholic by the way that person traces the sign of the Cross on one’s body.
One can also see this notion of gestures and postures as a means of identification from “etiquette” books which guide visitors at worship services.
An example is Kay Lynn Isca’s “Catholic Etiquette.” Isca, a Lutheran married to a Catholic, not only describes her curiosity on Catholics’ praying habits but also gives the impression in her book that somehow physical movements and gestures while praying are somehow unique to Catholicism.
She writes: “Physical movements---the standing up, sitting down, kneeling, making the sign of the cross, etc---constitute much of what could be labeled ‘etiquette’ or ‘protocol’ for participating in a Catholic Mass.”
This is related to what Burkhard Neunheuser once said: that Orthodox Christians represent the “church standing,” Roman Catholics as the “church kneeling,” and Protestants as “the church sitting.”
These words exemplify this notion that gestures and postures are a means of identification.
Postures and gestures as expressions of the interior attitude/spirituality
Apart from enacting a relationship and as a means of identification, our physical gestures also express outwardly inner spiritual attitudes and intentions---and they also impress within us these attitudes and feelings.
For instance, to use kneeling again as an example, the act of getting down on one’s knees helps to create an attitude of reverence and supplication.
Our postures therefore are useful tools in praying. As Paul Turner in his article “How Prayer Looks” writes: “Our gestures and postures can also help when prayer becomes difficult.”
He adds that “They may create the interior disposition we seek.”
And so, that our physical movements not only express interior dispositions abut also impress within us these attitudes complements the Christian belief of the union of the physical and the spiritual in human nature---and of the appropriateness of expressing in non-verbal ways our spirituality.
[Coming up in part 2: all about the posture of standing in worship]
Beginning in Advent 2005, dioceses here in the bay area have begun to implement the liturgical norms outlined in the Vatican document Redemptionis Sacramentum released in March 2004, and much of the changes seen by parishes around here include the proper postures at Mass.
At my parish for instance, the assembly never knelt during the Eucharistic Prayer, which is the case in many other parishes here in the bay area. I know, shocking. So, it is with some relief for me that Fr. Pastor has instructed parishioners to kneel. He has also asked that the parish obey the other norms in the document.
Anyway, "inspired" by our local adaptation of these liturgical norms, I have decided to research and blog about this issue, examining in particular the spirituality expressed in these physical postures and gestures.
The three postures I will look at are standing, kneeling, and sitting; and the three gestures this series will focus on are the sign of the cross, striking one's chest, and dance.
Introduction
While reading up on this I found the words by Betsy Beckman, a freelance liturgical dancer, therapist, and author interesting. She recounted an incident that occurred when she was six years of age in an article for Prayer Magazine five years ago.
Hearing the sound of church bells from her front yard one day, she “had a distinct feeling that God was everywhere, that even [her] yard is sacred.”
And as the sounds “wafted into [her] body and soul,” she began to dance. She writes: “I swayed and twirled, lifted my arms and leaned and leaped.”
Her intuitive and innocent physical response exemplifies the connection between the spiritual and the physical: that our bodies give us the means with which to display our spiritual intentions. Her words nicely capture the connection between the physical and the spiritual.
So, what are we saying through these movements, these postures and gestures? What is the spirituality behind kneeling or standing while at Mass? Answering these questions will take us on a journey through Scripture, through Christian spirituality, the writings of the fathers of the Church, the various sacramentaries of the Church, and even anthropology and culture.
But just before answering those questions, I will first lay out three important foundational concepts: 1) prayer as involving body and spirit, 2) gestures and postures as means of identification, and 3) as means to express an one’s interior attitude and spirituality.
Prayer involves body and spirit
In their book Christian Spirituality, Lawrence Cunningham and Keith Egan define spirituality as “the lived encounter with Jesus Christ in the Spirit.” And so to foster, cultivate, and nourish one’s living encounter with Christ, a believer prays.
What is noteworthy in Cunningham’s and Egan’s definition of prayer is their use of the word “gesture”----“prayers are those acts which symbolize, by words and/or gestures, a person’s relationship with God” and that “prayer is the fundamental gesture of belief, faith, dependence."
The authors place our physicality at the center of what prayer means: that prayer is not merely an activity of the mind and the soul—-but of the body as well.
To say that the body and soul are both involved while one is praying complements the Christian understanding of the nature of human beings.
And what is that understanding? Well, Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “The human person created in the image of God, is a being at once corporal and spiritual” (article 362). Then the article referred to Genesis 2:7 as affirming the bodily and spiritual nature of humans: “God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.”
That human nature comprises both the spiritual and the physical explains why prayer---which is at the heart of spirituality---naturally involves the body.
In many other books concerning postures and gestures, the authors’ message reiterates this same point and also identifies important elements concerning physical expressions while praying.
For instance, John K. Leonard and Nathan Mitchell in their book “The Positions of the Assembly during the Eucharistic Prayer” write that just as the body is the real “symbol of the soul, so physical gestures are the real symbols of those attitudes that flow from a human being’s soul.”
They also say that physical movements enact one’s relationship with God. For instance, the posture of kneeling has always been associated with the spiritual attitude of petition and supplication. And so a person kneeling while at prayer enacts a supplicant-provider relationship: we as the supplicant and God the provider.
Postures and gestures as means of identification
Postures and gestures also function as a means of identification. Elochukwu Uzukwu who lectures on liturgy and African theology in Catholic universities in Nigeria, the Congo, Zaire, and France mentions in his book “Worship as Body Language” how “each human community or ethnic group designs its own gestures to express its experience of life in the universe.”
Also, along the same lines, Mary Collins, a lay Benedictine at Mt. Scholastica in Kansas and professor of liturgical studies at the Catholic University of America focused on “mediating realities in the construction of authentic Christian spiritual identity” in her article for the publication “Spirituality and Sacramentality.”
For instance, a Protestant evangelical might recognize someone who has made the sign of the Cross as a Catholic; and an Orthodox Christian would know a person is a Catholic by the way that person traces the sign of the Cross on one’s body.
One can also see this notion of gestures and postures as a means of identification from “etiquette” books which guide visitors at worship services.
An example is Kay Lynn Isca’s “Catholic Etiquette.” Isca, a Lutheran married to a Catholic, not only describes her curiosity on Catholics’ praying habits but also gives the impression in her book that somehow physical movements and gestures while praying are somehow unique to Catholicism.
She writes: “Physical movements---the standing up, sitting down, kneeling, making the sign of the cross, etc---constitute much of what could be labeled ‘etiquette’ or ‘protocol’ for participating in a Catholic Mass.”
This is related to what Burkhard Neunheuser once said: that Orthodox Christians represent the “church standing,” Roman Catholics as the “church kneeling,” and Protestants as “the church sitting.”
These words exemplify this notion that gestures and postures are a means of identification.
Postures and gestures as expressions of the interior attitude/spirituality
Apart from enacting a relationship and as a means of identification, our physical gestures also express outwardly inner spiritual attitudes and intentions---and they also impress within us these attitudes and feelings.
For instance, to use kneeling again as an example, the act of getting down on one’s knees helps to create an attitude of reverence and supplication.
Our postures therefore are useful tools in praying. As Paul Turner in his article “How Prayer Looks” writes: “Our gestures and postures can also help when prayer becomes difficult.”
He adds that “They may create the interior disposition we seek.”
And so, that our physical movements not only express interior dispositions abut also impress within us these attitudes complements the Christian belief of the union of the physical and the spiritual in human nature---and of the appropriateness of expressing in non-verbal ways our spirituality.
[Coming up in part 2: all about the posture of standing in worship]
posted by dixerit at 10:40 AM
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