|
Kneeling
/ Prostrating / Bowing / Genuflecting |
"Enter,
let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the LORD who made
us." (Ps. 95:6)
"In the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that
are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth" (St. Paul, Phil. 2:10)
"All
who sleep in the earth will bow low before God; All who have gone
down into the dust will kneel in homage." (Ps. 22:30)
"I
bend my knee to the Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all
paternity in heaven and on earth is named" (St. Paul, Eph. 3:14).
"All
the nations you have made shall come to bow before you, Lord, and
give honor to your name." (Ps. 86:9)
"Exalt
the LORD, our God; bow down before his footstool; holy is
God!" (Ps. 99:5)
"Exalt
the LORD, our God; bow down before his holy mountain; holy is the
LORD, our God." (Ps. 99:9)
"Give
to the LORD the glory due God's name. Bow down before the LORD'S
holy splendor!" (Ps. 29:2)
"Serve
the LORD with fear; with trembling bow down in homage, Lest God be
angry and you perish from the way in a sudden blaze of anger.
Happy are all who take refuge in God!" (Ps. 2:11)
"To
me every knee shall bend" (Isa. 45:23)
"It
is, therefore, the keen desire of the Church that all of the
faithful kneel at the feet of the Redeemer to tell Him how much they
venerate and love Him." (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei)
"A
faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at
the core." (Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI)
"Throughout Scripture, lay
people, prophets, and saints have prostrated themselves or bowed
down before God. Moses, Aaron, Abraham, and Joshua are but a few
of those who are shown to prostrate themselves in the Bible. In
the New Testament, the magi prostrate in front of the infant
Jesus, as does the man tormented by unclean spirits, and as do the
apostles at the Transfiguration of Jesus. In Revelation, the
heavenly beings also prostrate... Jesus himself prostrates in prayer
before his Father. If you would bend your knee for an earthly king
or queen, how much more should you show reverence towards your
Lord and Creator!" (Flier:
"Our Responsibilities in God's House")
["He
answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe in (the
Son of God)? And Jesus said to him, You have both seen him, and it
is he that talks with you. And he said, Lord, I believe. And
falling down, he
worshipped him." (Jn. 9:36-38)] An
example to us, not to pray to God with uplifted neck, but
prostrate upon earth, suppliantly to implore His mercy." (St.
Bede the Venerable, Doctor of the Church)
"['The
Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you,
that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers,
or even as this Publican.' (Lk. 18:11)] It is said 'standing,' to
denote his haughty temper. For his very posture betokens his
extreme pride." (St. Theophylact)
"Just
as prayer is primarily in the mind, and secondarily expressed in
words...so too adoration consists chiefly in an interior reverence
of God, but secondarily in certain bodily signs of humility; thus
when we genuflect we signify our weakness in comparison with God,
and when we prostrate ourselves we profess that we are nothing of
ourselves." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church and
"greatest theologian in the history of the Church")
"But
as when the Body of our Lord lay in the sepulcher, Angels are said
to have stood by, so also at the time of consecration are they to
be believed to stand by the mysteries of Christ. Let us then after
the example of the devout women, whenever we approach the heavenly
mysteries because of the presence of the Angels, or from reverence
to the Sacred Offering, with all humility, bow our faces to the
earth, recollecting that we are but dust and ashes." (St.
Bede the Venerable, Doctor of the Church)
"As
Damascene says (De Fide Orthodoxa iv,12), since we are composed of
a twofold nature, intellectual and sensible, we offer God a
twofold adoration; namely, a spiritual adoration, consisting in
the internal devotion of the mind; and a bodily adoration, which
consists in an exterior humbling of the body. And since in all
acts of latria that which is without is referred to that which is
within as being of greater import, it follows that exterior
adoration is offered on account of interior adoration, in other
words we exhibit signs of humility in our bodies in order to
incite our affections to submit to God, since it is connatural to
us to proceed from the sensible to the intelligible." (St.
Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church and "greatest theologian
in the history of the Church")
"But
what means His bending of knees? of which it is said, And he
kneeled down, and prayed. It is the way of men to pray to their
superiors with their faces on the ground, testifying by the action
that the greater of the two are those who are asked. Now it is
plain that human nature contains nothing worthy of God's
imitation. Accordingly the tokens of respect which we evince to
one another, confessing ourselves to be inferior to our neighbors,
we have transferred to the humiliation of the Incomparable Nature.
And thus He who bore our sicknesses and interceded for us, bent
His knee in prayer, by reason of the man which He assumed, giving
us an example, that we ought not to exalt ourselves at the time of
prayer, but in all things be conformed to humility; for God
resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (St.
Gregory of Nyssa)
"Nevertheless
Christ did work some miracles on the soul of man, principally by
changing its lower powers. Hence [St.] Jerome, commenting on Matthew
9:9, 'He rose up and followed Him,' says: 'Such was the splendor
and majesty of His hidden Godhead, which shone forth even in His
human countenance, that those who gazed on it were drawn to Him at
first sight.' And on Matthew 21:12, '(Jesus) cast out all them
that sold and bought,' the same Jerome says: 'Of all the signs
worked by our Lord, this seems to me the most wondrous - that one
man, at that time despised, could, with the blows of one scourge,
cast out such a multitude. For a fiery and heavenly light flashed
from His eyes, and the majesty of His Godhead shone in His
countenance.' And Origen says on John 2:15 that 'this was a
greater miracle than when He changed water into wine, for there He
shows His power over inanimate matter, whereas here He tames the
minds of thousands of men.' Again, on John 18:6, 'They went
backward and fell to the ground,' [St.] Augustine says: 'Though that
crowd was fierce in hate and terrible with arms, yet did that one
word ... without any weapon, smite them through, drive them back,
lay them prostrate: for God lay hidden in that flesh.'" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church and
"greatest theologian in the history of the Church")
"Standing
may be for reverence, but kneeling is for worship."
Also
See: Reverence
| Silence
in Church | Beauty
& Decorum in the House of God
| Proper
/ Improper Church Attire |
Latin Mass Postures: When to Sit, Stand & Kneel at the Traditional Latin
Mass (User-Submitted Article) | "Our
Responsibilities in God's House" (Flier / Resources) | Bowing
Down (Topical Scripture) | Reverence
(Topical Scripture) | Fear of the Lord
(Topical Scripture) | Humility
(Topical Scripture) | News
Links/Current Issues Section | Catholic
Basics Section
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