In the celebration of Mass, we lift up our hearts, our minds and our voices to God, because we are creatures composed of body and soul and that is why our prayer is not confined to our minds, our hearts and our voices, but is also expressed in our body. When our bodies participate in our prayer, we pray with our whole person, as incarnate spirits just as God created us.
Every bodily posture we assume at Mass emphasizes and reinforces the meaning of the action in which we are engaged. Standing is a sign of respect and honor and so we stand when the celebrant, who represents Christ, enters and leaves the assembly. When we stand for prayer, we assume the fullness of our stature before God, not with pride, but with humble gratitude for the wonderful things God has done in creating and redeeming us. We stand to listen to the gospel, the summit of revelation, the words and deeds of the Lord.
The kneeling posture has come to mean worship. It is for this reason that we kneel throughout the Eucharistic Prayer after the singing or praying of the Saint.
Sitting is the body posture for listening and meditation; therefore, the assembly sits during the pre-Gospel readings.
However, there are other bodily gestures that intensify our prayer at Mass. During the penitential act, the action of beating our chest at the moment of formulating the words “through my fault” can strengthen our awareness that our sin is our fault. In the Creed, we are invited to bow to the words that commemorate the Incarnation: “He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.” This gesture signifies our deep respect and gratitude to Christ who, through God, did not hesitate to come among us as a human being and share our human condition to save us from sin and reestablish our friendship with God.
After the Lord’s Prayer comes the Greeting of Peace, a gesture through which we express through a handshake and the devout greeting of peace that accompanies it. This exchange is symbolic. Sharing peace with the people around us represents, for us as well as for them, the totality of the Church’s community and of all humanity.
We make a sign of reverence, before receiving Communion, a bow, a gesture by which we express our reverence and honor Christ, who comes to us as spiritual food. The postures and bodily gestures that we make at Mass fulfill a very important function. The Church sees in these common postures and bodily gestures both a symbol of the unity of those who have come to worship and a means of protecting that unity. We are not free to change these postures to suit our own piety, for the Church makes it very clear that our unity in bodily postures and gestures are an expression of our participation in the one Body formed by those baptized with Christ, our head. When we stand, when we kneel, when we sit, when we bow, as well as when we make a sign as a common action, we unambiguously testify that we are indeed the Body of Christ, united in heart, mind, and spirit.
USCCB, “Posturas y gestos corporales en la Misa”, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, accessed 17 November 2024, https://www.usccb.org/es/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/posturas-y-gestos-corporales-en-la-misa