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At Mass this morning I couldn't adore the Host at the Elevation after the Consecration because the person in the pew in front of me, like everyone else except for me and one other, was standing.
Nothing unusual about that, at the "New Mass" (Novus Ordo), but normally at our parish church I'm kneeling in the front pew while everyone else is standing - or even sitting! - behind me.
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| Muslims at prayer - five times a day |
See above, one big reason why in the next half-century or so, Christianity’s long reign as the world’s largest religion may come to an end. Muslims will grow more than twice as fast as the overall world population between 2015 and 2060 and, in the second half of this century, will likely surpass Christians as the world’s largest religious group. Muslims pray on their knees.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/
A priest of the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has been forced by his archbishop to apologize for preaching on the dangers of Islam. At the behest of Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Fr. Nick VanDenBroeke apologized Wednesday for his Jan. 5 homily in which he said, among other things, "Islam is the greatest threat in the world both to Christianity and to America."https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/abp-hebda-draws-apology-from-priest-who-warned-of-islam
But hello, Archbishop Hebda, more than 7,000 Christians have been killed for their faith by Muslims faith in the past five years just in one country, Nigeria.https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/482859-a-militant-group-you-may-not-know-kills-hundreds-of-christians-every
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| Archbishop Bernard Hebda - yes, truly, that's him on the left, protesting the death of one George Floyd |
"In the name of Jesus let every knee bow, of things in heaven, on earth and under the earth: and let every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father."
| Latin Mass goers at prayer |
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| New Mass (Novus Ordo) Catholics at prayer |
I know, I know: most Latin Massgoers can't abide the Novus Ordo and its "infantilism" (to quote my avowedly apostate brother, Karl du Fresne).
It was borne in on me this morning also, as the parts of the Mass were being sung, how Novus Ordo Massgoers tend to lack musical talents; musos like my two brothers were driven out of the Church to a large degree by the awful tunelessness of the hymns - now more honestly called songs - which were part of the NO package and which still repel many lovers of melody (not to mention lovers of good lyrics - and theology).
| Latin Mass goers |
But to stay away from the NO altogether means you deprive yourself of the inestimable graces of the Eucharist, and risking the infirmity and weakness St Paul warns of in 1 Cor. 11:30. Many like me would have experienced this first-hand during PM Jacinda Ardern's lockdown, when our bishops locked up the Blessed Sacrament, locked Catholics out of our churches and cancelled the Mass, and then denied us Communion on the tongue for so long.
So to me, when you can't attend the Latin Mass taking your missal along to the 'New Mass' is a no-brainer. For NO people, acquiring a missal (look in the sacristy cupboard at your parish church) and following the Mass with it, will acquaint them gradually with the "most beautiful thing this side of Heaven" (Father Faber) and give them a thirst for it. Pope Benedict XVI would encourage you:
There are groups ... trying to talk us out of kneeling. "It doesn't suit our culture", they say (which culture?) "It's not right for a grown man to do this -- he should face God on his feet". Or again: "It's not appropriate for redeemed man -- he has been set free by Christ and doesn't need to kneel any more".Bishop Peter Cullinane tried to tell the Palmerston North Diocese that we should stand because we are "an Easter people". It's mostly thanks to him that people still stand and block others' view of the Eucharist, or loll about in the pew on their bottoms, in front of the Lord of lords.
The word proskynein (kneeling) alone occurs 59 times in the New Testament, 24 in the Apocalypse, the book of the heavenly Liturgy, which is presented to the Church as the standard for her own Liturgy.
Jesus' prayer on the Mount of Olives was especially important. According St Matthew (22:39) and St Mark (14:35), Jesus throws Himself to the ground; indeed, He falls to the earth (Matthew). However, St Luke, who in his whole work ... is the theologian of kneeling prayer, tells us that Jesus prayed on His knees.
On Good Friday ... it is the fitting expression of our sense of shock at the fact that we by our sins share in the responsibility for the death of Christ. We throw ourselves down and participate in His shock, in His descent into the depths of anguish."Not in my parish, but then my parish is in the PN Diocese, with priests still under the thumb of +Cullinane ...
We throw ourselves down and so acknowledge where we are and who we are: fallen creatures whom only He can set on their feet. We throw ourselves down, as Jesus did, before the mystery of God's power present to us, knowing that the Cross is the true burning bush, the place of the flame of God's love, which burns but does not destroy.
Mark 1:40. A leper comes to Jesus and ... falls to his knees before Him and says: "If you will, you can make me clean". ... What we have here is surely not a proper act of adoration, but rather a supplication expressed fervently in bodily form, while showing a trust in a power beyond the merely human." And the ship's crew came and said, falling at His feet, 'Thou art indeed the Son of God'" (Mt 14:33, Knox version).
The man born blind replies: "Tell me who He is, Lord". When Jesus says, "It is He who is speaking to you", the man makes the confession of faith: "I do believe, Lord", and then he "[falls] down to worship Him" (Jn 9:35-38, the spiritual and bodily meanings of proskynein are really inseparable. The bodily gesture itself is the bearer of the spiritual meaning, which is precisely that of worship. Without the worship, the bodily gesture would be meaningless, while the spiritual act must of its very nature, because of the psychosomatic unity of man, express itself in the bodily gesture.I started to kneel years ago, simply because I'd had some training in theatre. Unless the mind is deliberately concealing the truth, the body should automatically express what soul and spirit experience.
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| "We should all face the tabernacle and mostly kneel when we pray in church" Benedict XVI |
Worship is one of those fundamental acts that affect the whole man. That is why bending the knee before the presence of the living God is something we cannot abandon.
The Hebrews regarded the knees as a symbol of strength, to bend the knee is, therefore, to bend our strength before the living God, an acknowledgment of the fact that all that we are we receive from Him. In important passages of the Old Testament, this gesture appears as an expression of worship.
The Acts of the Apostles tells us how Saint Peter (9:40), Saint Paul (20:36), and the whole Christian community (21:5) pray on their knees.Stephen, on his knees, takes up the petition of the crucified Christ: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (7:60).
It is precisely this humility, which comes from love, that is the truly divine reality and procures for Him the "name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Phil 2:5-10).
The Christian Liturgy is a cosmic Liturgy precisely because it bends the knee before the crucified and exalted Lord. Here is the center of authentic culture - the culture of truth. The humble gesture by which we fall at the feet of the Lord inserts us into the true path of life of the cosmos.Saint James, the "brother of the Lord", the first bishop of Jerusalem and "head" of the Jewish Christian Church, had a kind of callous on his knees, because he was always on his knees worshipping God and begging forgiveness for his people (2, 23, 6).
Again, there is a story that comes from the sayings of the Desert Fathers, according to which the devil was compelled by God to show himself to a certain Abba Apollo. He looked black and ugly, with frighteningly thin limbs, but most strikingly, he had no knees. The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical.
The expression used by Saint Luke to describe the kneeling of Christians (theis ta gonata) is unknown in classical Greek. We are dealing here with a specifically Christian word. With that remark, our reflections turn full circle to where they began. It may well be that kneeling is alien to modern culture -- insofar as it is a culture, for this culture has turned away from the faith and no longer knows the one before whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture.
https://www.tldm.org/news8/popebenedictxvitheologyofkneeling.htmThe kneeling posture symbolises, above all, the worship and humility that has vanished with the New Mass, together with almost all of the usus antiquior (Latin Mass) texts which don't just ask but beseech the Lord for:
- the intercession of the saints
- delivery from "the unjust and deceitful man" (vide our unborn children dying now by the thousand at the hands of 'kind' Ardern and Little)
- delivery from "our iniquities" (such as contraception, abortion, fornication, adultery, racism etc)
- Forgiveness of "my own countless sins, offenses and negligences" (ditto)
- Mercy, asked six times over in the old Kyrie
- cleansing and purification (before the Gospel)
- clemency
- delivery from eternal damnation
- that Almighty God command His holy Angel to bear these offerings to His altar on high
- some part and fellowship with the Apostles and Martyrs
- the intercession of the blessed and glorious Mary ever Virgin
- sanctification
- grace
- preservation of soul unto life everlasting
- a pure mind
- an eternal remedy
- that no stain of sin remain in us
- propitiation
- "Destroy not my soul with the wicked, O God: nor my life with men of blood. In whose hands are iniquities: their right hand is filled with gifts" (Labour Coalition Government, slaughtering innocents and bribing the electorate with millions of dollars in handouts).
Not only is kneeling the exercise sine qua non for the soul, it's great exercise for the body.
You can make any standing core exercise more effective by dropping to your knees.When standing, you can widen your feet for a stronger base of support. In a full kneel, you’re forced to narrow your stance, which recruits more deep core muscles. Plus, your knees can't grip the ground in the same way that your feet can, calling for more core strength to keep you balanced. Kneeling also improves in-the-gym posture, recruits more glute muscles, and requires more spinal mobility since you need to flex it laterally (rather than squat or pivot your whole body) during exercises like rainbow slams.https://furthermore.equinox.com/articles/2019/12/kneeling-core-workoutYou have to wonder, do you not, how many Muslims require expensive surgery to get new knees?
The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core.Pope Benedict is far too much the diplomat to admit publicly that because the Novus Ordo is "no longer familiar with kneeling" it is indeed "sick at the core". He concludes:
Where it has been lost, kneeling must be rediscovered, so that, in our prayer, we remain in fellowship with the apostles and martyrs, in fellowship with the whole cosmos, indeed in union with Jesus Christ Himself.
