{"id":58516,"date":"2015-08-20T07:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=58516"},"modified":"2015-08-20T15:41:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T22:41:35","slug":"open-hearts-sweaty-palms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2015\/08\/20\/open-hearts-sweaty-palms\/","title":{"rendered":"Open hearts and sweaty palms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"facebook alignnone wp-image-58569 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Hands.jpg\" alt=\"Hands\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/>Today I would like to discuss briefly a liturgical question of our time: <strong>should the congregation\u00a0hold hands during the Our Father?\u00a0<\/strong>In 1963, the Beatles sang <span style=\"color: #000080\"><em>&#8220;I wanna hold your hand&#8221;<\/em><\/span>. Well, that&#8217;s all fine and good, but there&#8217;s a time and place for everything&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/46_yYR6tGOI?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aleteia.org\/en\/religion\/article\/the-lords-prayer-during-mass-should-we-hold-hands-or-raise-them-in-the-air-5887027807518720\" target=\"_blank\">link to an article<\/a>\u00a0which argues why the congregation should not hold hands during the Our Father. Broadly speaking, I agree with the arguments made in the article. However, when people bring up this subject, I often\u00a0take a different tack to the explanation\u00a0presented in the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>A slightly different approach<\/h2>\n<p>For the sake argument, let&#8217;s assume that there are no liturgical objections to holding hands at the Our Father. I actually don&#8217;t think this is the case, but let&#8217;s just say that it is. On this basis,\u00a0should we do it? I would argue that the answer should still be &#8220;no&#8221;. Why? Because the Church does not direct us to do so&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I think that there&#8217;s a real problem if I take it upon myself to adjust the liturgy as I see fit. It sets the precedent for <strong>placing my own opinion over and above that of the Church<\/strong>. If every person in the pew is an armchair liturgist who decides what he is going to do based on what he feels then I would suggest we&#8217;re heading for trouble.<\/p>\n<p>I have attended Mass at some\u00a0very orthodox parishes which nevertheless departed from the rubrics. To pick an example other than the Our Father, I recall one parish which prayed the <em>&#8220;St. Michael the Archangel&#8221;<\/em> prayer together after Communion. One could argue that this is a good addition to the Sunday Mass. I have to say, personally, I did rather like it, reminding me of the post-Mass prayers in the Extraordinary Form. I have also been at Masses where the priest has not followed the words of the Missal and has, instead, extemporized. The words have often been rather beautiful.\u00a0However, if we would allow for this change, then on what grounds would we be able to reject other changes to the liturgy?<\/p>\n<p>If you <em><strong>really<\/strong><\/em> want to hold the hands of the people around you during the Our Father and they&#8217;re okay with it, who am I to say otherwise? However,\u00a0I would suggest that the solution to a lot of difficulties\u00a0is simply to pray the liturgy given to us by the Church. In the Roman Missal, the words to be spoken are in black and the actions to be performed are in red. If we all simply <strong>&#8220;Say the black and do the red&#8221;<\/strong> we can know we&#8217;re on firm ground and we can avoid so many different problems. \u00a0When we depart from that, things get much more dicey&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I would like to discuss briefly a liturgical question of our time: should the congregation\u00a0hold hands during the Our Father?\u00a0In 1963, the Beatles sang &#8220;I wanna hold your hand&#8221;. Well, that&#8217;s all fine and good, but there&#8217;s a time and place for everything&#8230; A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a link to an article\u00a0which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[3230,2969,3231,3232,91,223,112,3229],"class_list":["post-58516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-do-the-red","tag-featured","tag-hands","tag-hold-hands","tag-liturgy","tag-mass","tag-our-father","tag-say-the-black"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Hands.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58516"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58781,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58516\/revisions\/58781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}