Archived comments from the post: "On the sacramental hermeneutics of fittingness in posture for prayer" (Musings, March 2, 2006):
I think that there is a cogent argument to be made for the piano posture. In fact, I would ask that anyone who is right now lounging on a piano top with a martini in hand will please repeat after me: "Misere mei Deus..."
Kathy | Homepage | 03.02.06 - 4:04 pm | #
Kneeling. This is appropriate to any prayer: it is expressive firstly of the fact that prayer is a specific activity, involving a concentration of both mind and body, that is distinct from other activities. Mental prayer, of course, can be made while walking, sitting, even lounging on a piano. But when we involve our whole body in a posture of prayer, we are doing something more. And, of course, if we sing the prayer, we pray twice
Govelling (sic) in the dust might strike one as appropriate to a penitential psalm, but it seems to me expressive in the way that interpretive dance is expressive. Sure, if you happen to be grovelling in the dust anyway, in horror at and repentance for your sins, Psalm 51 would be a good thing to pray. But actually getting down in the dust for the purpose of praying Psalm 51 seems to me artificial and self-indulgent.
John Hudson | 03.02.06 - 4:47 pm | #
"...it seems to me expressive in the way that interpretive dance is expressive."
Hee-hee!
Optimally, I would say kneeling or possibly the orans position. Or standing or sitting in choir.
Kathy | Homepage | 03.02.06 - 4:58 pm | #
Myself, I like grovelling--otherwise known as prostrations--and wish everyone else did. Why should Christian Orthodox and Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists get all the fun disciplines, and leave us so abstracted or sentimental that some of us have gone to schlepping around for "Christian Yoga" classes?
little gidding | 03.02.06 - 4:58 pm | #
And if everyone were doing prostrations, it would not call attention to yourself if you did them. I already cause myself some mild anxiety when I go up to communion and genuflect before receiving, when I'm in a church where no one else is doing this or receiving on the tongue. If everyone else were doing this, of course, then one could feel perfectly supported and uninhibited about signifying one's devotion without wondering whether one was (or was being seen as) a Pharisee. As it stands now, I feel ashamed that peer pressure exists *against* showing devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.
little gidding | 03.02.06 - 5:40 pm | #
Since Psalm 51 is a Jewish prayer, should we not do what they do?
Realist former Convergent | 03.02.06 - 6:05 pm | #
Since it's penitential, and if you're referring to the Latin Rite, I'd say kneeling for sure.
Maybe rending one's garments would be more appropriate, at least for times of despair!
Garrett | 03.02.06 - 6:18 pm | #
I know it's not one of the options, but prostration is an excellent position for prayer, particularly the penitential prayers. The Miserere is so evocative of the need for mercy from a just God that lying prostrate seems like a particularly appropriate symbol of our own contrition. I'll go for kneeling, as well.
Tyrell | Homepage | 03.02.06 - 6:23 pm | #
Or maybe grovelling in the dirt is prostration? Hmmm. I like that!!! Memento mori.
Tyrell | Homepage | 03.02.06 - 6:24 pm | #
"Since Psalm 51 is a Jewish prayer, should we not do what they do?"
Jews pray the Psalms without finding in them the meaning, which, to a Christian, is most fundamental to them, the relationship of God to the world through the Incarnation. A "hermeneutics of posture" for Christians should consider, therefore, more than the fact that the Psalms were written and prayed by, and continue to be prayed by Jews. It should consider how they fit into a Christian prayer life as well.
little gidding | 03.02.06 - 7:15 pm | #
And on another note, Professor, I think you overlooked some other possibilities for postures or physical disciplines, ones that would draw the attention of the more vital element among us, rather than the effete who spend their evenings lounging around pianos, or who find even kneeling beneath their dignity.
There is this one, for example, for the Sun Dance, pictured in an old photo by Edward Curtis:And on another note, Professor, I think you overlooked some And on another note, Professor, I think you overlooked some other possibilities for postures or physical disciplines, ones that would draw the attention of the more vital element among us, rather than the effete who spend their evenings lounging around pianos, or who find even kneeling beneath their dignity.
There is this one, for example, for the Sun Dance, pictured in an old photo by Edward Curtis:other possibilities for postures or physical disciplines, ones that would draw the attention of the more vital element among us, rather than the effete who spend their evenings lounging around pianos, or who find even kneeling beneath their dignity.
There is this one, for example, for the Sun Dance, pictured in an old photo by Edward Curtis:
http://www.snowwowl.com/images/e...urtis/ pg201.jpg
And on another note, Professor, I think you overlooked some other possibilities for postures or physical disciplines, ones that would draw the attention of the more vital element among us, rather than the effete who spend their evenings lounging around pianos, or who find even kneeling beneath their dignity.
There is this one, for example, for the Sun Dance, pictured in an old photo by Edward Curtis:And on another note, Professor, I think you overlooked some And on another note, Professor, I think you overlooked some other possibilities for postures or physical disciplines, ones that would draw the attention of the more vital element among us, rather than the effete who spend their evenings lounging around pianos, or who find even kneeling beneath their dignity.
There is this one, for example, for the Sun Dance, pictured in an old photo by Edward Curtis:other possibilities for postures or physical disciplines, ones that would draw the attention of the more vital element among us, rather than the effete who spend their evenings lounging around pianos, or who find even kneeling beneath their dignity.
There is this one, for example, for the Sun Dance, pictured in an old photo by Edward Curtis:
http://www.snowwowl.com/images/e...urtis/ pg201.jpg
But it requires incisions, skewers, and considerable fortitude.
Or this one, attendant upon the land diving on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, on the young men's nangol towers (these guys are good Catholics, I hear):
http://www.isitlike.com/is/artga...el/ vanuatu.html
little gidding | 03.02.06 - 8:58 pm | #
little gidding,
You noted:
"Jews pray the Psalms without finding in them the meaning, which, to a Christian, is most fundamental to them, the relationship of God to the world through the Incarnation."
Since the Jews wrote and have prayed from the Psalms probably a 1000 years before we Catholics "stole" them, I dare say they find plenty of meaning in them. And do you know what the standard procedure is for saying the Psalms in a synagogue?
Realist former Convergent | 03.02.06 - 11:22 pm | #
When St. Paul got knocked off (and on) his ass, I am guessing he was "in the dust".
When Isaiah was visited by the Lord and his angels, he said,"Woe is me!" I picture him prostrated, or kneeling at LEAST. And trembling!
In the Byzantine rite, during lent, we prostrate ourselves repeatedly during the Liturgy.
I DON'T think it is self-indulgent. It is self-effacing.
michael hugo | 03.03.06 - 6:51 am | #
We did not steal the Psalms. Their most fundamental meaning was only made manifest at the Incarnation. It was only then that they came fully into their own.
little gidding | 03.03.06 - 8:17 am | #
Or, to put it another way--If David is in heaven now, as one might assume that he is--he bends his knee at the name of Jesus Christ.
little gidding | 03.03.06 - 8:39 am | #
What strikes me as interesting here is that there is quite clearly some variety of ways in which this prayer might be 'incarnated' quite fittingly in bodily form. This, it would seem to me, also lends credebility to some variety in forms of 'inculturation' of Christian prayer. Yet there are clearly limits to what is fitting and appropriate; and there are some bodily postures that are clearly more appropriate than others to what is being expressed in the Psalm. This question of 'fittingness', furthermore, isn't completely reducible to culturally conditioned variables. It's hard even to imagine a culture in which all symbolism would be turned on its head -- where, for example, kneeling with bowed head would be understood as expressive of defiance or standing with upraised clenched fists would be understood as expressive of humble contrition or penitence.
Pertinacious Papist | Homepage | 03.03.06 - 9:37 am | #
I just realized that except for transitory gestures (making the sign of the cross, genuflecting) all traditional prayer postures are bilaterally symmetrical. Well, except for Carthusian prostrations, which are on the side and can be very lengthy. (That reminds me, how do people breathe when they're ordinarily prostrating?)
On the other hand, Dr. Blosser's penitential postures all seem to compromise the upright posture unique to us rational embodied beings.
In other words, penitence is expressed with ordinary bilateral symmetry and diminished upright posture. Does that sound right?
Kathy | Homepage | 03.03.06 - 10:21 am | #
Kathy, sounds right to me.
Pertinacious Papist | Homepage | 03.03.06 - 11:55 am | #
"Since the Jews wrote and have prayed from the Psalms probably a 1000 years before we Catholics 'stole' them, I dare say they find plenty of meaning in them."
We didn't "steal" what belongs to us by right. We are the Jews who wrote and have prayed the psalms for 1,000 years before the People of God was reconstituted in the New Covenant. What non-Christian Jews after the time of Christ may or may not do tells us nothing about what Spiritual Jews should or shouldn't do.
"And do you know what the standard procedure is for saying the Psalms in a synagogue?"
Which synagogue? Aschenazic? Sephardic? Karaite? Falasha? Orthodox? Reform? Conservative?
Jordan Potter | 03.03.06 - 1:36 pm | #
Jordan,
Any or all of the synagogues listed. Glad to see you are listed in the Jewish brotherhood or sisterhood (if you are using a fictitious name). And to me it would be educational to know in what manner the Jewish congregations repeat their/our Psalms.
We should at least give credit/references to the Jewish scribes who wrote the Psalms. At the moment, it is analogous to plagiarism.
Realist former Convergent | 03.03.06 - 1:48 pm | #
Aargh. Isn't this a thread about the phenomenology of prayer posture?
I mean, "who wrote the Psalms?" God did. Presumably with a wide audience in mind.
Kathy | Homepage | 03.03.06 - 2:37 pm | #
Kathy, you're right. "Realist, former Convergent," if you're interested in how the Psalms are prayed by the Jews, you might consider attanding a Shabbat service. Try an Orthodox service. It's quite an exerience, I assure you.
One sidenote on this: Fr. Fessio in his excellent essay, "The Mass of Vatican II," says that he once tried to find the answer to that question by calling "1-800-JUDAISM." He writes: "So I did. And I got an information center for Jewish traditions, and they didn't know either. But they said, 'You call this music teacher in Manhattan. He will know.' So, I called this wonderful rabbi in Manhattan and we had a long conversation. At the end, I said, 'I want to bring some focus to this, can you give me any idea what it sounded like when Jesus and his Apostles sang the Psalms?' He said, 'Of course, Father. It sounded like Gregorian Chant. You got it from us.'"
Pertinacious Papist | Homepage | 03.03.06 - 3:25 pm | #
PP,
Great story!!!
The best Gregorian chant I ever heard was by the Franciscan Friars at our parish church. The parish was the residence for most of the Friars that taught at the local Catholic high school. Unfortunately most of the Friars passed on or left the Order to get married. Now there are no Friars in residence.
Realist former Convergent | 03.03.06 - 6:37 pm | #
Kathy,
Well how about the Psalms written by God through the hands, mind and music of Scribe Benjamin? Of course since we are all Sons and Daughters of God, "written/made by God" should precede everything we do.
Realist former Convergent | 03.03.06 - 6:45 pm | #
The Psalms are Jewish compositions from a variety of sources, which say nothing whatever about the Incarnation. Just as Benedict XVI recognizes that the Song of Songs was a set of secular lovesongs or wedding songs later used at songs of love between Israel and God, or between Christ and the Church, so let us recognize the Jewish integrity of the Psalms, while accepting that we can use them in Church finding new resonances in them in light of Christ. The Psalms are the bedrock of the prayer of the Church and perhaps also of the prayer of Jesus himself. Their simplicity, even nakedness, is a curative for faith that gets bogged down in doctrinal elaborations.
Spirit of Vatican II | Homepage | 03.03.06 - 10:14 pm | #
Speaking of bodily gestures - why was the bowing of one's head at the Holy Name of Jesus dropped? I was raised in U.K. prior to Vatican II and remember that we used to take great delight when watching carol singing on television because we could spot the Catholic children because they all bowed their heads in unison when they sang the Holy Name. The priest in the pulpit would raise his birretta (sp.?) when he spoke the Holy Name. How did so many Catholics drop the practice so easily? Did they stop feeling that little tug in the heart when they heard the name of Jesus? We would also strike our breasts as a sign of penitence, not a meaningless gesture as some might think, but rather a reinforcement of the words spoken. At one time we all did these things, but now very few of us do.
ellen | 03.04.06 - 7:43 am | #
You have to be more specific, don't you? I mean, what if you're sitting down with your head in your hands, sobbing over a mortal sin, and then all of a sudden your sorrow for your sin turns into anger for it and you rise up and rend your shirts before an image of our Beloved? And as you are standing there - surely in his presence! - you begin to recite Psalm 51?
Or what if your standing outside looking at the stars and realize how insignificant you are, and then you fall to your knees and begin praying Psalm 51?
Or what if you're a successful business woman who, upon encountering a poor begging family, realized how full of greed your life has been. You then go to your usual lounge and find yourself sitting on the piano after a few martinis, singing Psalm 51 in smooth jazz.
Or what if you're a drunk you has just got word that the car you hit last night had a newborn babe in it who died upon contact, and then in a moment of tormenting anguish you fall to the ground and begin to govel in the dust?
St Pio | 03.04.06 - 10:22 am | #
"Spirit," that was beautifully put, on the Psalms.
Ellen, what a wonderful point you make. I do notice priests and deacons, and occasionally some lay Catholics continuing this gesture. But my hunch is that, like so many other wonderful little treasures that got washed out with the bath water in the aftermath of Vatican II, this has simply been forgotten.
What about bowing (which used to be genuflecting) at the "incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est" in the Nicene Creed?
... Or blessing oneself when passing a Catholic Church?
... Or prayers before and after Mass, rather than arriving late and dashing out early?
Pertinacious Papist | Homepage | 03.04.06 - 4:14 pm | #
St Pio, thanks for your observations. Yes, one has to get specific; and when one does, the possible unique circustances are of cours endless.
The same is true of exceptional, often makeshift, circumstances under which the Mass could be (and has been) celebrated -- on top of the hood of a jeep in WWII, on a sandy beach in Kuwait with troops, in an open meadow in Central America, in a dorm with college students, etc.
I don't suppose such exceptional and variable circunstances changes the principles involved, nonetheless. In the examples you describe, all the gestures fittingly express emotions appropriate to Ps. 51. Yet none of those gestures would be of the kind we would likely want see prescribed as normative for the reading or chanting of Ps. 51 under the more ordinary circumstances of a Lenten Mass in church.
I suppose what I should do is to raise more specific questions as to what gestures and postures would be more or less fitting in specific parts of the Mass. This I may do in forthcoming posts.
Pertinacious Papist | Homepage | 03.04.06 - 4:27 pm | #
"We should at least give credit/references to the Jewish scribes who wrote the Psalms. At the moment, it is analogous to plagiarism."
It's not possible to plagiarise one's self, so that's a bad analogy.
Jordan Potter | 03.05.06 - 7:55 am | #
"What about bowing (which used to be genuflecting) at the "incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est" in the Nicene Creed?
"... Or blessing oneself when passing a Catholic Church?
"... Or prayers before and after Mass, rather than arriving late and dashing out early?"
...Or KNEELING to receive the Holy Eucharist??
Megan Z | 03.05.06 - 3:47 pm | #
The Psalms do indeed have everything to do with the Incarnation and that is the reason why they have always formed the backbone of the Divine Office.
little gidding | 03.05.06 - 4:30 pm | #
Realist, I'm not sure what you mean by the Psalms of the scribe Benjamin.
Spirit, I don't think that your assessment of the Psalms as independent of and later applied to Christ is accurate. It's not Biblical--e.g. the Gospel of Matthew, Peter's sermon in Acts, St. Stephen's sermon in Acts, etc.
I especially doubt that a good Augustinian like the Holy Father would read the Old Testament without understanding it as reaching its fullness of meaning in Christ. (Augustine sort of regularly says things like "This Psalm speaks of the Lord's passion.")
Did the Pope say this Psalm was "later used as" describing the relationships you mentioned? What exactly did he say?
Anonymous | 03.05.06 - 7:11 pm | #
B16, Deus caritas est, par. 16: How might love be experienced so that it can fully realize its human and divine promise? Here we can find a first, important indication in the Song of Songs, an Old Testament book well known to the mystics. According to the interpretation generally held today, the poems contained in this book were originally love-songs, perhaps intended for a Jewish wedding feast and meant to exalt conjugal love.
par. 10: Eros is thus supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with agape. We can thus see how the reception of the Song of Songs in the canon of sacred Scripture was soon explained by the idea that these love songs ultimately describe God's relation to man and man's relation to God. Thus the Song of Songs became, both in Christian and Jewish literature, a source of mystical knowledge and experience, an expression of the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed enter into union with God—his primordial aspiration.
YES, THE NEW TESTAMENT probably understands the Psalms as speaking directly, prophetically of the Incarnation (as of course Origen, the founder of systematic Christological reading of all Old Testament texts did); the NT and Origen also held that the Song of Songs was about God and Israel, Christ and Church, and the secular reading of it as a set of lovesongs was condemned at Chalcedon.
SO THE POPE IS ADOPTING THE MODERN PERSPECTIVE ON THIS and correcting the New Testament and Patristic hermeneutics. No big news to those who have looked at the 1994 document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, on the vatican website.http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/ PBCINTER.HTM
Spirit of Vatican II | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 9:34 pm | #
Actually, I don't recall if the NT ever refers to the Song of Songs. Was it already canonized as part of the Hebrew Scriptures at that time?
Spirit of Vatican II | Homepage | 03.05.06 - 9:36 pm | #
Anonymous,
Jewish Scribes/Priests wrote the Psalms did they not? So to be fair ,as we reference passages from M,M,L,J and P, we should also give proper respect to the authors of the Psalms. Maybe "The J/P Team" would be a better name for the authors.
And we should applaud "The S/P Teams" for their vivid imaginations. The A&E magic garden and talking serpent followed by Noah's global flooding and "Verne-like Ark" are almost as good as the Greek myths.
I wonder if M,M,L,J and P got their training from "S/P Teams"?
Realist former Convergent | 03.06.06 - 9:37 am | #
Spirit, I don't know which among the many "modern perspectives" you are referring to, but nothing in what you have quoted suggests that the Pope thinks the SOS "say[s] nothing whatever about the Incarnation"--as you seem to want to imply.
I think that more is implied in the Pope's expression "the reception of the Song of Songs in the canon of sacred Scripture" than you are accepting. I would think he intends to say that divine inspiration underlies its canonicity.
Kathy | Homepage | 03.06.06 - 12:12 pm | #
I agree with Kathy. When the Psalms were written, the writers themselves had no explicit knowledge of Jesus. But in the light of the Incarnation, we now understand how the Psalms look ahead to Jesus. That is where we are now, as Christians. We therefore have little obligation to try to re-create, in our own prayer, the original recitation method or "original meaning" of the Psalms, as if we were Civil War re-enactors trying to recreate the Battle of Antietam.
The Psalms are tied to the Incarnation because in reciting them, we imitate our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who also recited the Psalms. In addition, from the earliest days of the Church, Christians have understood that the Psalms have been put into a new light and been given their fullest meaning with the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
If the Psalms had not been revalorized, Christians would surely have let them go long before this. This does not at all contradict the plain fact that when the Psalms were first sung by the community in which they were written, that they did not have this meaning and that they did not function in the way they must for us.
little gidding | 03.06.06 - 1:20 pm | #
Exactly.
Kathy | Homepage | 03.06.06 - 6:49 pm | #
My reference to Deus Caritas Est should by par 6 not 16. The Pope accepts that the SOS is a collection of Jewish love songs (as argued massively in Marvin Pope's Anchor Bible commentary). This view was fiercely resisted for many centuries.
The Jewish acceptance of the book as canonical on the basis of its allegorical interpretation cannot be made to mean that the allegorical interpretation was part of the original authors' intention. You can say that God as the inspirer was aware of overtones the authors did not intend (though it should have been easy for the authors, as Jews, to refer to God's husbandly love for Israel found in Hosea etc.), or that there is a logic of eros/agape and of Incarnation that makes it inescapable to find this deeper meaning in the Song and in human fleshly love as such. I was merely making a comment on the empirical exegesis of the text.
Spirit of Vatican II | Homepage | 03.06.06 - 11:02 pm | #
Ellen, PP, and Megan - It is still common Anglican practice to bow the head at the name of Jesus and at the doxology, and to either bow from the waist (Sarum practice) or to genuflect at the incarnatus est, and to bow or genuflect when coming out of the pew to receive communion, usually kneeling at the rail, but sometimes standing.
rob k | 03.07.06 - 5:46 am | #
"Spirit," yes the Song of Songs (or of Solomon) were in the Palestinian Hebrew canon by the time of Christ. They were also in the Greek translation of the Septuagint made several centuries prior to Christ's advent.
You're right, of course, that B16 is pressing a naturalist interpretation that may be called 'modern' here. But there is nothing counter to Catholic tradition in this, even if such an interpretation was not belabored in earlier times. St. Thomas Aquinas would have likely called it the 'literal' sense of the Scripture in question -- this view that it is comprised of songs for wedding feasts. In one sense, Aquinas can be seen as stressing this 'literal' sense as the bottom line, the foundational sense of Scripture, though, of course, he admits a number of other senses, including the allegorical, as having a legitimate place. I doubt whether B16's accent on the 'literal' sense here would necessarily mean he would simply eschew the legitimacy of the other senses, like the 'allegorical.'
I agree with you, however, in finding the accent on the 'literal' sense in our times refreshing. At the same time, I think a common danger with the historical-critical approach so widespread in our own day is a complete loss of the inner 'spiritual' meanings of Scripture (and I doubt you would disagree).
Pertinacious Papist | Homepage | 03.09.06 - 10:53 am | #
Just returning to this thread, after making one of the earliest comments. I hadn't made a connection between grovelling in the dirt and prostration, so didn't consider the latter because it had not been included in the original list of options. Having experienced Orthodox prayer including prostration, I would certainly include that action as an appropriate prayer posture.
Liturgical prostration seems to me an action of great dignity and symbolism. The word grovelling suggests to me something more naturalistic.
John Hudson | 03.10.06 - 3:26 am | #
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