What will happen to the sign of peace once Public Mass resumes?

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Polak said:
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1Lord1Faith:
How about just making eye contact and say “Peace be with you”. Why do we need to bow or nod or elbow bump or anything like that?
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Buks said:
I’ll nod and say peace.
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Interestingly my priest said before a mass that we are not actually supposed to say ‘peace be with you’ when offering the sign of peace, just make the sign/gesture.

Has anyone heard anything similar?
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This is what the GIRM says in Article 154
According to what is decided by the Conference of Bishops, all express to one another peace, communion, and charity. While the Sign of Peace is being given, it is permissible to say, The peace of the Lord be with you always, to which the reply is Amen.
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Interesting. So it seems he had no real justification for saying it.

He also stated that when going to communion, unless you are physically unable to, you should take it on your knees or kneel before taking it.
 
I thought it was: Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.

There is a bit more symbolism to those words than, “Hey guys let’s gather round for pizza”.

Blessed is more than ‘happy’, and ‘the supper of the Lamb’ specifically connotes the SACRIFICE of the Lamb offered as a spotless offering as well as hints of Passover and the blood shed for all.

Yes, I know, when Mass resumes I will be happy to do whatever (thankfully we nod heads and say peace be with you and that’s what we’ll keep on doing, especially as it’s what the bishop seems to be going to pains to express in ‘moving forward’, and I don’t see signs of it being changed to a different point in the liturgy right now), but I am open to change and honestly, with the COVID-19 the way it is, I think that the liturgists are going to rethink it. It won’t bother me if they don’t change it, but it won’t bother me if they DO. And there I think is the main difference.

And I still think it’s funny that so many people who clamor about wanting to be open to the Spirit, and who glory in the diversity of all the options in the OF, and who sneer at the EF because it’s so ‘rigid’ and ‘unchanging’, seem to get stuck on certain points in the OF —whether it’s wanting to have the SOP EXACTLY where it is, or deeming that only shaking HANDS is the proper gesture and not doing so is hateful and mean, or who have a hymn list from the St. Louis Jesuits and Weston Priory, or an all Haagan-Haas playlist, or who insist on emptying out the water fonts and replacing with sand because Desert, etc. etc. It’s like, “I’m so glad I am not a stupid Trad with their 1 year reading cycle and their few responses and everything done the same way all the time —wait, what do you MEAN changing X in the OF? We can’t do that —it’s TRADITION!
 
I do not know what will happen, but suspect that what eventual becomes the norm will be regional, more influenced by how society in general returns to greeting. So I look for the handshake to return here. It is what we do, and I doubt we will ever adopt nodding. I do reserve fist bump for my son and his friends.

True story. We had a contractor come and make a bid on some work at home. My wife met him at the door with a handshake and welcomed him in. I offered sanitizer, and a laugh.
 
FWIW, today, I watched the Mass coming from my church. On the alter was our priest and our deacon. The deacon said to, “Offer each other a SOP”. Usually the priest and the deacon would shake hands, but at today’s Mass they did not.

I’ve seen comments about the SOP starting in the 50s or 60s. At my church, I clearly remember it being introduced after John Paul II was elected pope. He was elected in August 1978.

I noted a lot of people stating that sharing the SOP is distracting. I may be remembering this wrong, but I remember the instruction being to offer the SOP to the person to your left, and the person to your right. There was no instruction to offer it to everyone within arms reach. I think that people offering the SOP to anyone within arms reach is an ritual started by the parishioners.

If the SOP was offered only to the person to your left, and to your right, it would no longer be a distraction as it would be over with in less than 10 seconds.
 
The Last Supper was a Passovef Meal of the most formal kind. So was the earliest Mass. The solemnity of these occasions wasn’t an add-on.
 
Maximian said:
The Last Supper was a Passovef Meal of the most formal kind. So was the earliest Mass. The solemnity of these occasions wasn’t an add-on.
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The Eucharist literally means ‘thanksgiving’. The Sacrifice is finished and we partake of Christs Body in a joyful feast. Not solemnly. The Saints talk about receiving Communion as a ‘taste of Heaven’. The Little Flower spoke of her first Communion “Wasn’t Heaven itself in my soul?” And because Communion is also a communion with all the saints she said of it “In receiving Jesus’ visit, I received also Mamma’s. She blessed me and rejoiced at my happiness.”

St John Damascene also teaches that Communion is not just a communion with Christ but a new communion with each other.

“Participation is spoken of; for through it we partake of the divinity of Jesus. Communion, too, is spoken of, and it is an actual communion, because through it we have communion with Christ and share in His flesh and His divinity: yea, we have communion and are united with one another through it. For since we partake of one bread, we all become one body of Christ and one blood, and members one of another, being of one body with Christ.”

How perfectly placed is a sign of peace between the solemn remembrance of Christs Sacrifice and the joyful feast we’ve been called to as a consequence. Greeting each other in peace is an appropriate way to shift us from the solemn to the joyful communion we now have.
 
The Lamb of God follows the Sign of Peace as a continuation of The joyful celebration. The Lamb of God is a symbol of the victory of Christ on the Cross, of the final victory over sin and death. It is about the glory of the Cross, not about the humiliation of it. This is one of the key differences between the Gospel of John and the synoptic Gospels. The Crucifixion raises Jesus to glory.

St John’s Gospel is the source of the Lamb of God imagery. In the first chapter, John the Baptist points out Jesus to two of his disciples saying “ Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” This initiates a chain of conversion, as Andrew bring his brother Peter, and then a friend from Bethsaida, etc. There is an eagerness displayed in this passion as the Lord’s disciples discover him.

That eagerness and camaraderie is expressed at the climax of the book of Revelation, when the wedding feast of the Lamb is celebrated. Yes, there is war, pain, sadness in the Apocalypse, but there is joy that overcomes death in the appearance of the Lamb. Our Communion with Christ is a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb.

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
Let the hearer say, “Come.”
Let the one who thirsts come forward, and the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water.
Rev 22:17
 
Maximian said:
You mean, like in a pub?
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Different than a pub, though I’ve never been in one. I just am glad for the celebration instead of folks staying inside their shells and not really joining with others around them. Plus, in the southern US tradition, it is a more responsive and involved liturgy.

Do they clap hands at the end of Mass in your parish? That’s something I have seen in Baptist churches but they do it in my parish.
 
Was it still Lent? A lot of churches do not put holy water in the fonts, during lent.
 
They aren’t supposed to drain the fonts in Lent. It was one of those ‘great meditation-inducing innovations’ that was beamed into the minds of most parish priests in the 1990s and went through all kinds of even more ‘enriching’ scenarios. First it was just ‘empty fonts’. Then we put SAND in the fonts to symbolize deserts. Then we put ROCKS in the fonts to symbolize desert and ‘the rock’ and ‘faith’. Then we put sand AND rocks in.

Then people started saying, “Ok this is old”. And they started putting cigarettes in the sand fonts. And little beach umbrellas from mixed drinks. And putting GIANT rocks on top of the little ones. And painting happy smiles on the rocks. And putting little figures in saying, “Let my water fonts go”. . .etc.

And the priests gradually started to smile a bit. And most of them cleaned out the fonts and put the water back year round.

But a few priests who really, really really looked forward to making Lent all relevant and misty and SIGNIFICANT would make a fuss every year or so in the bulletin or the Catholic papers about “This year we’re putting sand in the holy water fonts to remind us of the desert” and some poor soul would chime in with “How perfectly novel and spiritual and true”. And so somebody finally wrote to the CDF and a letter went out (EWTN printed a copy of it) to explain that while holy water was a sacramental with proven utility and spiritual significance, ‘sand in the fonts’ was not. And told people not to do it.

Even though it’s been about 15 years or so, you will still find in the pockets where the 1960s are still one brief shining Camelot The annual lent letter or bulletin which breathlessly announces that THIS YEAR we are going to be in the desert with Jesus and the fonts will be full of symbolic sand.

Sigh.
 
Churches are leaving Holy water fonts dry this year because of the covid 19 pandemic. Do not expect any water in the fonts next time you go to Church. Do not bless yourself with the holy water if there is water there, it could carry the virus very easily.
 
Dovekin said:
Churches are leaving Holy water fonts dry this year because of the covid 19 pandemic. Do not expect any water in the fonts next time you go to Church. Do not bless yourself with the holy water if there is water there, it could carry the virus very easily.
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This is not allowed. My church has a small container of holy water that’s changed daily, and they did recommend that we bring our own instead, but they cannot simply remove holy water. I’ve asked about this before on here because some Churches around here remove holy water during the flu season, and a priest confirmed this is simply not allowed.
 
It is not permitted for a priest to drain the Holy Water fonts at Lent (that practice has been reprobated).

This current COVID-19 crisis which happened to start around the season of Lent is a different story.

The fonts were drained by some (not all) bishops due to concerns of health, not to ‘be in the desert’.

Some bishops permit holy water in the fonts still.

Some have removed the holy water from the fonts but maintain a supply which they will use to fill a person’s individual bottle for individual needs.

But don’t let’s confuse a 30 or 40 year old experiment by priests with the current practices by many bishops which INCLUDE, in their care for the health of their people, a temporary removal of holy water, along with other things such as shuttering the Church, or having people do social distancing and limiting numbers.
 
Dovekin, I know we do not see eye to eye on some issues, but I do appreciate your concise explanation of your viewpoint. I do like to consider other points of view.
 
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