Go ahead and raise your hands during the Our Father

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Stephentlig

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For those of you who have a problem/wonder if it is ok raising your hands during the Our Father at the mass then weep no more and open you Bible 😃

1 Timothy 2:8 (New International Version)
8 Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing.

:amen: <<< raise those hands.
 
Stephentlig said:
For those of you who have a problem/wonder if it is ok raising your hands during the Our Father at the mass then weep no more and open you Bible 😃

1 Timothy 2:8 (New International Version)
8 Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing.

:amen: <<< raise those hands./quote

So what do we women do?😃

Seriously why limit this to the Our Father? Shouldn’t we be ‘lifting up our holy hands’ everytime we pray? Why don’t we hold our hands up for the entire Mass? It’s all prayer, right?

Actually I don’t mind people in the orans position. I really don’t. . . provided they use common sense. Most people do. It’s the few who don’t who are the problem, which is of course the case with just about any problem.

It’s the big beefy men (bless them) who SUDDENLY decide to ‘lift hands high’ and smack into the little old ladies (like me). . .or just barely miss us but rather pointedly invade our personal space.

I think I recall reading that most people see or sense an area of about 18 inches ‘all around’ as being a reasonable personal space. Now even in a well filled congregational pew, you usually don’t have much trouble getting that. . .UNLESS you have a very ‘spirit-filled’ person. . .(especially if you have one on EACH SIDE OF YOU). . .who manages to bring his hands, forearms, and elbows right smack dab into your personal space. Suddenly instead of 18 inches round you have two big old arms waving around maybe 12 inches, 6 inches, or even less, around your head. Very, very distracting.

But I guess that’s the idea behind urging everybody to do this, because if you’re doing it yourself, you’re in a position to ‘smack down’ arms in YOUR personal space or take YOUR personal space in somebody ELSE’S personal space etc.

And then comes the Our Father and it’s not just ‘raise the hands’ but ‘raise hands AND grab the hands of others’. . .

Almost invariably when I see this I have the urge to start singing, “We are the Champions” and flick my lighter. . .

(JK on that last. . .)

As I said, I personally do not mind whether a person utilizes the orans position (a perfectly noble prayer position). . .but since common sense and courtesy can be in rather short supply nowadays, even in a church, please remember while you’re caught up in the spirit of using your whole BODY to ‘worship’ that you watch out for other bodies and don’t make them uncomfortable, or even in pain from a direct hit. . .
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Still much prefer to stand on my own with my hands folded, no contact with others and no hands up in the air like Pentecostals…

I like the weekday Masses for this reason and many more. Most people are more orthodox/traditional and don’t reach out and grab for my hands. There are only a few people who join hands and raise at the end, mostly husbands/wives or families.

🙂
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Still much prefer to stand on my own with my hands folded, no contact with others and*** no hands up in the air like Pentecostals…***

I like the weekday Masses for this reason and many more. Most people are more orthodox/traditional and don’t reach out and grab for my hands. There are only a few people who join hands and raise at the end, mostly husbands/wives or families.

🙂
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You know the Pentecostals got it from us Traditional Catholics…right? 😃
 
I don’t think that St. Paul was referring to the posture for liturgical prayer.

Bear in mind what Ecclesia de Mysterio notes:
  1. To promote the proper identity (of various roles) in this area, those abuses which are contrary to the provisions of canon 907 are to be eradicated. In eucharistic celebrations deacons and non-ordained members of the faithful may not pronounce prayers – e.g. especially the eucharistic prayer, with its concluding doxology – or any other parts of the liturgy reserved to the celebrant priest. Neither may deacons or non-ordained members of the faithful use gestures or actions which are proper to the same priest celebrant. It is a grave abuse for any member of the non-ordained faithful to “quasi preside” at the Mass while leaving only that minimal participation to the priest which is necessary to secure validity.
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Just saying…
 
There is nowhere in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal that tells people to either hold hands or to raise their hands while praying. If it isn’t written there as an instruction, then it should not be done. The traditional prayer position in the Catholic Church is to either fold your hands together or to press your hands together with fingers pointed to heaven. The hand holding and orans position have crept in from protestant influences in recent years.

In particular, during the Lord’s Prayer, the GIRM instructs that only priests are to have their hands extended, while the deacons are to join their hands together (traditional prayer position). The laity are not to imitate the priest’s gestures; they are not priests (if the deacon isn’t allowed to extend his hands, then the laity certainly shouldn’t be doing it). The laity are specifically instructed “to shun any appearance of individualism or division”.
 
I, for one, am very sick of this subject. I wish the mods would put a moratorium on it.
 
When it appears in the GIRM I’ll participate in it. Until then, I will simply bow my head and close my eyes (so as not to find myself distracted by those around me participating in this activity). God bless.
 
Tantum_ergo said:
Stephentlig;8124893:
For those of you who have a problem/wonder if it is ok raising your hands during the Our Father at the mass then weep no more and open you Bible 😃

1 Timothy 2:8 (New International Version)
8 Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing.

:amen: <<< raise those hands.
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So what do we women do?😃
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Paul addresses this a few verses later.

She must be quiet. (1 Timothy 2:12)

I didn’t make it up. 😛

-Tim-
 
There is nothing wrong with this. It could go wrong if the priest tells people at mass to do this as if it were a part of the mass or if it becomes such a common practice that people feel forced into it. But such problems would have to do with the situations described in other threads here, not with someone asking if simply if he can do it himself.
I’m not sure though what the words in the opening post “weep no more and open your Bible” mean.
I would think it better to use a Catholic Bible though. The Protestants took some books out of the Bible, which are missing in the New International version which you cite.
 
I don’t see why people love this so much. It simply is a protestant thing that has leaked in. There’s nothing more to it.

Granted, married folks, go ahead and hold hands. The two have become one, right? Then again, that’s not just during the Our Father. It’s kind of beside the point.

But for everyone in the congregation to hold hands and raise them up? Not only is it usurping the priestly gesture, it simply isn’t called for, and has no tradition to back it up (at least in the catholic church…).
 
TheMc said:
I don’t see why people love this so much. It simply is a protestant thing that has leaked in. There’s nothing more to it.

Granted, married folks, go ahead and hold hands. The two have become one, right? Then again, that’s not just during the Our Father. It’s kind of beside the point.

But for everyone in the congregation to hold hands and raise them up? Not only is it usurping the priestly gesture, it simply isn’t called for, and has no tradition to back it up (at least in the catholic church…).
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Its a new tradition moving forward. Don’t tell me everything we do today is how the Apostles did it during their time. At certain points in history, something traditional we’re doing today was new.
 
TheMc said:
But for everyone in the congregation to hold hands and raise them up? Not only is it usurping the priestly gesture, it simply isn’t called for, and has no tradition to back it up (at least in the catholic church…).
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These days people like to forget about roles and do how they feel. I don’t raise my hands because I want to pray like a Catholic when I’m at mass.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Its a new tradition moving forward. Don’t tell me everything we do today is how the Apostles did it during their time. At certain points in history, something traditional we’re doing today was new.
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The few times I have seen this done at OF masses, the folks look so awkward. It’s not the same as when I see it done at Protestant churches where the people do it very freely.

It’s as if a lion is wearing alligator skin.
 
This whole “raising hands is a Protestant thing” sounds a bit like ecclesial snobbery. I understand when it is brought up in an attempt to explain the origin of the practice, but when some posters put it down as “a Protestant thing”, it sounds a bit judgmental, similar to many posts in “that’s a Protestant hymn” threads.

Hey, folks, God hears everybody’s prayers, regardless of the positon of one’s arms.

Just sayin’…I hope such posts aren’t meant as such.

Catholics, yeah, we have a code to follow; different rules to the ball game. 😉
 
amgp said:
There is nowhere in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal that tells people to either hold hands or to raise their hands while praying. If it isn’t written there as an instruction, then it should not be done. The traditional prayer position in the Catholic Church is to either fold your hands together or to press your hands together with fingers pointed to heaven. The hand holding and orans position have crept in from protestant influences in recent years.

In particular, during the Lord’s Prayer, the GIRM instructs that only priests are to have their hands extended, while the deacons are to join their hands together (traditional prayer position). The laity are not to imitate the priest’s gestures; they are not priests (if the deacon isn’t allowed to extend his hands, then the laity certainly shouldn’t be doing it). The laity are specifically instructed “to shun any appearance of individualism or division”.
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Our permanent Deacon does the orans, but our transitional deacon doesn’t. Blegh! I can’t stand the sea of orans hands during the Our Father. I used to see maybe one or two people do it growing up, and I was instructed not to do it. Church has really changed while I was gone for 5 years.
 
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