The Vocabulary of Prayer - Posture

Our posture is another resource for our prayer. It is easy to pay little attention to posture; we simply stand, sit, or kneel at the proper times.

However, there are different ways of standing. There is a difference in simply “standing around” and standing up to greet someone. In the first case, one can simple be “killing time.” In the second our body is part of our communication with the person we are greeting.

Standing is the posture of a free person. The first Ecumenical Council of the Church decreed that it was forbidden for Christians to kneel to pray on Sundays because that was the day of the resurrection.

We stand in the presence of important people. At Mass, we stand to greet Christ in the Gospel. If we are attentive to our posture, our standing is an acknowledgement of the presence of Christ in the Gospel that is about to be proclaimed to us.

When we sit for the first two readings, we can simply sit down or we can sit and focus our attention on the word of Scripture.

We do not spend as much time kneeling in prayer as we once did. But it is still an important posture of prayer, a posture that recognizes the transcendence and greatness of the God to whom we pray.

Another, less common posture is prostrating our self on the floor. It is a dramatic gesture which the liturgy calls for in two instances. At ordinations, the entire assembly calls upon as the saints and those to be ordained are prostrate on the floor of the sanctuary. On Good Friday, the ministers enter in silence and prostrate themselves before the altar in silent prayer.

Although it is customary to depict St. Clare holding the ciborium with the Eucharist, at the convent in Assisi where she lived, she is said to have prostrated herself in prayer before the Eucharist reserved in the tabernacle as she prayed for the deliverance of Assisi from the mercenaries that were marching on the city.

Saint John Paul II’s secretary has said that he would find John Paul prostrate in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

Our bodily posture is meant to be part of our prayer and will be, much more so if we attend to it.