Apr

30

Co-Workers of the Truth 4/30

Posted By reynor | Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth, Quotes & Excerpts 

Excerpts from Co-Workers of The TruthThe Lord gives us his body.  That is why our bodies must share in the response we make to him.  That means, above all, that the Eucharist must extend beyond the walls of the Church building to inspire multiple forms of service to humanity and to the world.  But it also means that our piety, our prayer, requires bodily expression as well. 

Since the Lord, as the Resurrected One, gives himself to us in bodily form, we must answer him with our bodies as well as with our souls.  All the spiritual capabilities of our body have their rightful place within the framework of the Eucharist: song, speech, silence, sitting, standing, kneeling. 

In earlier times, we were perhaps too remiss about song and speech and confined ourselves too exclusively to silence.  Today, on the contrary, we are in danger of being too remiss about silence.  But, in actuality, it is all three together - song, speech, silence - that provide the response in which the fullness of our spiritual life offers itself to the Lord. 

The same is true of the three corporal positions: sitting, standing, kneeling.  In earlier times, we failed perhaps to regard standing - and to a degree sitting as well - as an expression of relaxed listening and confined ourselves too exclusively to kneeling.  In that regard, too, we were remiss.  For here, too, the proper use of all three positions is equally necessary.  Listening to the word of God and reflecting on it in a sitting position is an essential element of the liturgy; standing expresses our readiness to put ourselves at a God’s disposal - just as Israel ate the Paschal lamb standing as a symbol of their readiness for the exodus under the leadership of God’s word; kneeling, finally, is just as essential: it is the bodily position most proper to worship.  In it we remain upright, ready, and responsive to God’s will, but, at the same time, bowed down before the greatness of the living God and of his holy name, which is the name at which “every knee should bend in heaven, on earth and under the earth” (Phil 2:10)

From: Eucharistie-Mitte der Kirche, pp.64-65

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