What Is the Correct Posture During the Our Father?

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Thank you @Phemie for the CCCB posting. It led me to look at the USCCB counterpart. In it, I see no statement addressing this. Am I missing that?

The Lord’s Prayer
  1. In the Lord’s Prayer a petition is made for daily bread, which for Christians means principally the Eucharistic Bread, and entreating also purification from sin, so that what is holy may in truth be given to the holy. The Priest pronounces the invitation to the prayer, and all the faithful say the prayer with him; then the Priest alone adds the embolism, which the people conclude by means of the doxology. The embolism, developing the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer itself, asks for deliverance from the power of evil for the whole community of the faithful.
The invitation, the Prayer itself, the embolism, and the doxology by which the people conclude these things are sung or are said aloud.
 
Note that the document from the CCCB was to the priests not to the faithful. Unless they went looking and knew exactly where and what to look for, it’s unlikely that the faithful would ever see this.

Maybe it was the CCCB’s way of addressing two practices that had arisen in certain parishes. It’s interesting that now our priest calls the children forward for the Lord’s Prayer and they all hold hands so that he can’t have his hands in the orans position, since they’re down by his waist to accommodate the little ones’ stature.
 
It’s not in ours, though, apparently (US).

That is so weird.

(Oh I don’t do it anyway. I don’t pray that way so why would I during Mass?)
 
Mtatum1958 said:
Thank you @Phemie for the CCCB posting. It led me to look at the USCCB counterpart. In it, I see no statement addressing this. Am I missing that?
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This isn’t really a parallel document to the one that @Phemie posted. The document that she quoted from was apparently pastoral notes that accompanied the Canadian GIRM, not part of the actual GIRM.
 
Yes, I see. Could the lack of such in the US be one of the reasons for the confusion / disagreement, leaving it to the dioceses to implement?
 
BartholomewB said:
Father, for the people in the pews, the difficulty arises when the pastor or celebrant has told his parishioners that he wants them to pray the Our Father adopting the orans position
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I too have experienced that and it does put you in an awkward position. I refuse to do it and end up as part of a small minority. The issue then is you end up feeling uncomfortable that you may in some way defying the authority of the priest. You also end up looking like a stubborn person wanting to go against the grain of the community.

Thankfully in my parish church, my parish priest does not make such requests of us, I could not envisage him ever doing so.
 
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Latin Mass, Latin Mass, Latin Mass. The only way to avoid these problems…
 
What is the problem? It is obvious there is no problem. Even when a celebrant asks to do the oran position, which is rare, one does not have to do it if one does not want to.
 
When Jesus preached to the crowds, he told them how to pray. He gave them the words of the Our Father, that’s it. No instruction on how to hold your hands, whether to stand, sit or kneel. Is there somewhere else in the bible that teaches us how to pray this prayer that contradicts Jesus’s own words?
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
Latin Mass. The only way to avoid these problems…
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You may have a point there. I can’t really imagine a priest at a TLM telling the congregation to adopt postures.

But thankfully I can’t really imagine my current NO parish priest telling the congregation to adopt postures at Mass either. We are blessed with the priest we have.
 
Phemie said:
I was just looking at a document put out by the CCCB at the time the new Missal was promulgated. Here is what the document (GiRM Pastoral Notes) says at #259 “The Lord’s Prayer”:
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I wonder: what actual authority does that document have?

Adaptations made to the GIRM are usually printed in the GIRM itself. The old way was to do it as an appendix, while the new way is to edit the individual paragraphs.

Who exactly approved that document? Does it have the recognition of the Holy See?

In the U.S., in the 70s and 80s, we had the problem of bishop committees issuing documents that suggested derogations from the GIRM. Since those adaptations were never formally submitted by the conference to Rome for approval, they lacked any force of law—although they were printed in such a way as to imply that they had that force.

So, again, my question is: exactly who approved that text?
 
pianistclare said:
That’s not exactly correct not exactly nice to say.
Much of our liturgy comes from the Jewish faith.
But hand holding is not one of them, nor extending hands.
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Kind of a protestant or evangelical or pentecostal sort of mannerism.
 
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I think I do, I will look for it. It was awesome, I will look for it!
 
This is awesome! I’m not a hand-holder except with my husband. Never felt right - even in my pre-convert days.
 
The answer only came to me today.

The correct position is immediately behind an oransetic. When he raises his hands, quickly slap the cuffs on his wrists to position his hands together in front of him!

🤣😱😜😇:roll_eyes:

hawk
 
Might fall under the category “things Christ is not really worried about”.
 
I am curious how these two practices developed. I do not remember seeing either one when I was younger. Somebody started popularizing and teaching these two practices. They obviously did not coordinate their efforts, or they would have picked one or the other. It is an interesting historical question.
 
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