One priest told me that the ancient roots of the practice were based on ensuring that everyone received Eucharist in a state of grace. Especially in smaller villages where you knew everyone around you, it was essential to make your peace with them and overcome differences before entering the receiving line.
Even in times without illness going around, I have seen people decline either by bowing their heads in prayer or keeping their hands close to themselves. I have no problem with that.
What gets me, (and this isn’t directed at you), is that there’s a thread nitpicking a liturgical practice when a countless many of us would be just be grateful to start attending liturgies again.
While it might make you feel connected for many (generally introverts) it can be uncomfortable at best. For my kids that are autistic? It’s excruciating to have random people grab their hands.
The point is that for every person that loves it, there is a person that hates it. It’s not anti-social to avoid an experience that makes your skin crawl.
The sign of peace used to bother me. Then the peace of the Lord came into my heart. It doesn’t bother me at all anymore, and now it’s one part of the Mass that I enjoy. I look into someone’s eye and share the peace that Jesus has shared with me.
In all charity, Mass is not a time to be social. It is true we are worshiping Christ in a community, though the sacrifice happening should be our focus. I am not anti-social in disliking the sign of peace but I am focused on prayer and the fact that we just saw a priest consecrate bread and wine into the body of blood of Christ and He is now on the altar in front of me and I am about to receive Him internally. I can and would love to socialize later.
It depends on your definition of social. The Catholic Church does not teach “me and Jesus got our own thing going.” Mass is corporate ( as a body, the definition of social), not private and individual. Mass is not a goal, but a means to a goal. The sign of peace, whether it is omitted or not, still exists because Mass is the source of our grace to be part of the body, the whole, which is our society. Going to Mass and not seeing how that impacts those around us swaps the ends and the means.
When Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, the first two who passed where holy people who failed to connect the relationship with God to that of neighbor.
Right, I completely agree. I acknowledged in my post that we are worshipping in a community, a social community. We are absolutely not me and Jesus got our own thing going, totally dislike that thought completely, can’t say it enough,… but it is not a “social time” either.
We also are to be offering each other the “peace of Christ”, not a hello, how are you, or offering peace as this world describes peace but the peace that passes all understanding and the peace that we need in this world, as we struggle through the trials of this world. That is what has been lost.
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