Another kneeling question

[farmfresh]

im sure this has been asked 1000 times here before, but Im going to ask anyway. what is the kneeling all about during the mass? Ive been told that it is out of respect to the eucherist. is that correct?

 

[Deacon_Ed]

In the Latin (Roman Catholic) Church kneeling is seen as a sign of adoration. Kneeling during the Mass is a posture that represents an interior adoration of God and is especially significant during the Eucharistic Prayer then the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus. Some retain the practice of kneeling to receive communion and this, too, is a sign of adoration of Christ present.

At other times kneeling is a sign of penitence (kneeling to pray after confession, for example). It can also be a sign of submission to God’s will.

Deacon Ed

 

[Seatuck]

Phillipians 2:10

Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name 7 that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, 8 of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 9 to the glory of God the Father.
It is a sign of worship and reverence .

 

[benedictgal]

Perhaps the best explanation comes from the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. In his book, “Spirit of the Liturgy”, the Holy Father writes:

Kneeling does not come from any culture – it comes from the Bible and its knowledge of God. The central importance of kneeling in the Bible can be seen in a very concrete way. The word proskynein alone occurs fifty-nine times in the New Testament, twenty-four of which are in the Apocalypse, the book of the heavenly Liturgy, which is presented to the Church as the standard for her own Liturgy.

…(W)e must mention the gesture of falling to one’s knees before another, which is described four times in the Gospels (cf. Mk 1:40; 10:17; Mt 17:14; 27:29) by means of the word gonypetein. Let us single out Mark 1:40. A leper comes to Jesus and begs Him for help. He falls to his knees before Him and says: “If you will, you can make me clean”. It is hard to assess the significance of the gesture. What we have here is surely not a proper act of adoration, but rather a supplication expressed fervently in bodily form, while showing a trust in a power beyond the merely human.

The situation is different, though, with the classical word for adoration on one’s knees – proskynein. I shall give two examples in order to clarify the question that faces the translator.

First there is the account of how, after the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus stays with the Father on the mountain, while the disciples struggle in vain on the lake with the wind and the waves. Jesus comes to them across the water. Peter hurries toward Him and is saved from sinking by the Lord. Then Jesus climbs into the boat, and the wind lets up. The text continues: “And the ship’s crew came and said, falling at His feet, ‘Thou art indeed the Son of God’” (Mt 14:33, Knox version). Other translations say: “[The disciples] in the boat worshiped [Jesus], saying …” (RSV). Both translations are correct. Each emphasizes one aspect of what is going on. The Knox version brings out the bodily expression, while the RSV shows what is happening interiorly. It is perfectly clear from the structure of the narrative that the gesture of acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God is an act of worship.

I hope this helps shed some light on the subject.

 

[benedictgal]

In “The Spirit of the Liturgy” Pope Benedict adds a further explanation behind kneeling. He writes:

I have lingered over these texts, because they bring to light something important. In the two passages that we looked at most closely, the spiritual and bodily meanings of proskynein are really inseparable. The bodily gesture itself is the bearer of the spiritual meaning, which is precisely that of worship. Without the worship, the bodily gesture would be meaningless, while the spiritual act must of its very nature, because of the psychosomatic unity of man, express itself in the bodily gesture.

The two aspects are united in the one word, because in a very profound way they belong together. When kneeling becomes merely external, a merely physical act, it becomes meaningless. One the other hand, when someone tries to take worship back into the purely spiritual realm and refuses to give it embodied form, the act of worship evaporates, for what is purely spiritual is inappropriate to the nature of man. Worship is one of those fundamental acts that affect the whole man. That is why bending the knee before the presence of the living God is something we cannot abandon.

In saying this, we come to the typical gesture of kneeling on one or both knees. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the verb barak, “to kneel”, is cognate with the word berek, “knee”. The Hebrews regarded the knees as a symbol of strength, to bend the knee is, therefore, to bend our strength before the living God, an acknowledgment of the fact that all that we are we receive from Him. In important passages of the Old Testament, this gesture appears as an expression of worship.

At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon kneels “in the presence of all the assembly of Israel” (II Chron 6:13). After the Exile, in the afflictions of the returned Israel, which is still without a Temple, Ezra repeats this gesture at the time of the evening sacrifice: “I … fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God” (Ezra 9:5). The great psalm of the Passion, Psalm 22 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), ends with the promise: “Yes, to Him shall all the proud of the earth fall down; before Him all who go down to the dust shall throw themselves down” (v. 29, RSV adapted).

The related passage Isaiah 45:23 we shall have to consider in the context of the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles tells us how Saint Peter (9:40), Saint Paul (20:36), and the whole Christian community (21:5) pray on their knees.

Particularly important for our question is the account of the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. The first man to witness to Christ with his blood is described in his suffering as a perfect image of Christ, whose Passion is repeated in the martyrdom of the witness, even in small details. One of these is that Stephen, on his knees, takes up the petition of the crucified Christ: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (7:60). We should remember that Luke, unlike Matthew and Mark, speaks of the Lord kneeling in Gethsemane, which shows that Luke wants the kneeling of the first martyr to be seen as his entry into the prayer of Jesus. Kneeling is not only a Christian gesture, but a christological one.

This last statement is very telling for me. It is also causes the most consternation, especially when I go into some parishes and there are no kneelers. I strongly believe that we have forgotten what it means to kneel before the Lord.