If you would like to ask me a question regarding the liturgy, simply click asktom@tomrichstatter.org If I am able, I will e-mail you an answer. I will publish on this page some of the answers that might be of interest to others and which are not answers to personal questions.
Standing for Holy Communion February 16, 2005
Dear Fr. Richstatter:
My husband and I are immigrants from Peru and we are now living in Canada.
When we go to communion we used to make a genuflection before receiving Holy Communion, but now our Priest told us not to genuflect because there are new regulations from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Why is it impossible to genuflect before receiving Communion?
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Thank you for your letter.
Devotion and reverence are difficult subjects to address because they are very much conditioned by our culture and our memories of holy events.
In an earlier time when servants showed devotion to their king and serfs showed respect to the land owner by kneeling down when they spoke to him, these social customs entered the church and we began to kneel at prayer and to kneel before our Lord in the blessed Eucharist. For many of us these gestures have become part of our prayer and our piety.
Today in the U.S. and in Canada we do not have the custom of kneeling when speaking to a superior. However, this is not the primary reason for changing our expression of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. For one thing, the traditional position of prayer and reverence has been standing – standing in readiness to carry out God’s will.
But even more importantly now that we hear the prayers of the Mass in our own language we hear at each mass that we ask the Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ so that the Holy Spirit might change us, who eat and drink into the body of Christ. Consequently our devotion to the Eucharist is expressed primarily by the reverence and the respect we give to one another as Christ’s body. Our reverence for the Eucharist is expressed especially in our concern for the poor and God’s “little ones”.
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:31-36)
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