When I Say that Something, I Want to Hold Your Hand

After the Embolism, the people respond with the Doxology, which goes, “For the Kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever.”  Simple enough to take at face value, right?  “The Kingdom” is the “Kingdom of Heaven,” but not just what we think of as heaven after death.  We’re referring to all of creation as the Kingdom, because the King (God) totally has dominion over all his creation on both heaven and earth.  Obviously all power and all glory also belong to him.  But what I REALLY want to talk about in this post is what we’ve been doing with our hands all this time we’ve been praying the Lord’s Prayer at Mass.

If you’re like me, you’ve been to plenty of different churches in plenty of different cities, in plenty of different states, in plenty of different countries.  To me, one of the best things about the Catholic Mass is that no matter where you are in the WORLD, the Mass is the same.  It might be in a different language, but the order and the content is the same.  There’s really no time in the Mass when you have no clue what to do….no time, that is, except for when it comes time to say the “Our Father.”

Do we hold hands?  Do we open our hands?  Do we hold hands across the aisles? Do we keep our hands to ourselves?  Pretty wide range of options, here!  Thoughts on what the congregation should do here are so different that even neighboring parishes less than a 10-minute drive from one another can do completely different things.  So what’s the official answer?  What SHOULD we do during the “Our Father?”

The most common practice I find these days here in southern Louisiana is to hold hands.  This practice apparently grew in wide-spread popularity by the early 1990s.  However, there is no official guidance from the Church that says that hand-holding should be the norm during the praying of the “Our Father.”  A revision of the Sacramentary (book which denotes what to do and pray during the Mass) in the ‘90s by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) was discussed by the United States Bishop’s Committee on the Liturgy (BCL) who recommended specifying that the “orans” position (Latin for “prayer”—position of holding hands out as if pleading) be made the official norm for the “Our Father.”  For the sake of history, it’s important to note that when the Holy See came out with the new Roman Missal in 2000 (making its appearance in 2002), not only did they replace this Sacramentary revision, they officially rejected it.

Confused yet?

Ok, let’s make it worse…

See, there’s an intellectual feud that’s been going on for quite a while in the church as to the use of the orans position by the congregation.  Those who are in favor of the orans position make the argument that it was used by the earliest Christians, and so our use of it now keeps us in union with our earliest roots.  Those who oppose its use claim that it is a depiction of Christ crucified, and that, during the liturgy, it should be performed only by the Priest, who is acting In Personae Christi (in the person of Christ).  Judging by the responses of the Church through its wording of the 2000 edition of the Roman Missal and the accompanying General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), both and neither side is correct.  As for the holding of hands, some schools of thought say that the most intimate moment of the Mass is the Rite of Peace, which immediately precedes the Eucharist.  The Rite of Peace is explained in the GIRM as follows:

The Rite of Peace

82. The Rite of Peace follows, by which the Church asks for peace and unity for herself and for the whole human family, and the faithful express to each other their ecclesial communion and mutual charity before communicating in the Sacrament.

As for the sign of peace to be given, the manner is to be established by Conferences of Bishops in accordance with the culture and customs of the peoples. It is, however, appropriate that each person offer the sign of peace only to those who are nearest and in a sober manner.

 

So the Rite of Peace (not the “Our Father”) is supposed to be when the congregation shows their communion & mutual charity.  Think back to the last Mass you went to.  Other than your family members who either got a hug or kiss (or both), what did you do with the people around you during this time?  Most likely, you just shook their hand.   Now give this a little thought:  what’s more “intimate”?  A quick handshake, or holding someone’s hand for about a minute?  Most people would say that the “hand hold” rather than the “hand shake” is the more “intimate” action.  So the argument could be made, then, that holding hands during the “Our Father” can detract from the communal nature of the Rite of Peace.  (Please note: “sober manner” doesn’t mean that the people shouldn’t be drunk when they give a Sign of Peace…of course, they SHOULDN’T be drunk at church, but that’s another matter…it means that you should exercise reasonable judgement and not let yourself go overboard with your Sign of Peace.)

So what SHOULD we do during the “Our Father”?  There’s actually NO mention in the GIRM of what the congregation is supposed to do during this time.  There’s no mention in the Sacramentary, either, by the way, nor in the newly revised Roman Missal that will be coming into mandatory use in Advent of 2011.  It is important to note, that the GIRM does leave certain things up to variation to be ordered by either the local Conference of Bishops (in our case in the USA, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—USCCB), or to each individual bishop; however, the mandate of what the congregation should do with their hands during the “Our Father” is not on that list of items, so a congregation should NEVER feel pressured or obligated to situate themselves in any particular way (other than standing).  The simple answer is this: whether you hold hands, stand in the orans position, or (like me) just keep your hands reverently to yourself (which seems to lend itself to the LEAST theological friction), be sure you remember WHY you do what you do and try to make sure you don’t making others around you uncomfortable, which can distract them from prayer.