"There are groups, of no small influence, who are trying to talk us out of kneeling." - Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI on the theology of kneeling...
"My children, kneel before your God in the Eucharist. Do not stand like you stand in meeting halls, but kneel and give Him a just love and observance of honor." - Our Lady of the Roses, July 14, 1979
The following writings of Pope Benedict XVI are from the chapter, "The Body and the Liturgy", in The Spirit of the Liturgy:
There are groups, of no
small influence, who are 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".
If we look at history, we can see that the Greeks and Romans rejected kneeling.
In view of the squabbling, partisan deities described in mythology, this
attitude was thoroughly justified. It was only too obvious that these gods were
not God, even if you were dependent on their capricious power and had to make
sure that, whenever possible, you enjoyed their favor. And so they said that
kneeling was unworthy of a free man, unsuitable for the culture of Greece,
something the barbarians went in for. Plutarch and Theophrastus regarded
kneeling as an expression of superstition.
Aristotle called it a barbaric form of behavior (cf. Rhetoric 1361 a 36).
Saint Augustine agreed with him in a certain respect: the false gods were only
the masks of demons, who subjected men to the worship of money and to
self-seeking, thus making them "servile" and superstitious. He said that the
humility of Christ and His love, which went as far as the Cross, have freed us
from these powers. We now kneel before that humility. The kneeling of Christians
is not a form of inculturation into existing customs. It is quite the opposite,
an expression of Christian culture, which transforms the existing culture
through a new and deeper knowledge and experience of God.
Kneeling does not come from any culture -- it comes from the Bible and its
knowledge of God. The central importance of kneeling in the Bible can be seen in
a very concrete way. The word proskynein alone occurs fifty-nine times in
the New Testament, twenty-four of which are in the Apocalypse, the book of the
heavenly Liturgy, which is presented to the Church as the standard for her own
Liturgy.
On closer inspection, we can discern three closely related forms of posture.
First there is prostratio -- lying with one's face to the ground before
the overwhelming power of God; secondly, especially in the New Testament, there
is falling to one's knees before another; and thirdly, there is kneeling.
Linguistically, the three forms of posture are not always clearly distinguished.
They can be combined or merged with one another.
Prostration
For the sake of brevity, I should like to mention, in the case of prostratio,
just one text from the Old Testament and another from the New.
In the Old Testament, there is an appearance of God to Joshua before the taking
of Jericho, an appearance that the sacred author quite deliberately presents as
a parallel to God's revelation of Himself to Moses in the burning bush. Joshua
sees "the commander of the army of the Lord" and, having recognized who He is,
throws himself to the ground. At that moment he hears the words once spoken to
Moses: "Put off your shoes from your feet; for the place where you stand is
holy" (Josh 5:15). In the mysterious form of the "commander of the army of the
Lord", the hidden God Himself speaks to Joshua, and Joshua throws himself down
before Him.
Origen gives a beautiful interpretation of this text: "Is there any other
commander of the powers of the Lord than our Lord Jesus Christ?" According to
this view, Joshua is worshipping the One who is to come -- the coming of Christ.
In the case of the New Testament, from the Fathers onward, Jesus' prayer on the
Mount of Olives was especially important. According to Saint Matthew (22:39) and
Saint Mark (14:35), Jesus throws Himself to the ground; indeed, He falls to the
earth (according to Matthew). However, Saint Luke, who in his whole work (both
the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles) is in a special way the theologian of
kneeling prayer, tells us that Jesus prayed on His knees. This prayer, the
prayer by which Jesus enters into His Passion, is an example for us, both as a
gesture and in its content. The gesture: Jesus assumes, as it were, the fall of
man, lets himself fall into man's fallenness, prays to the Father out of the
lowest depths of human dereliction and anguish. He lays His will in the will of
the Father's: "Not my will but yours be done". He lays the human will in the
divine. He takes up all the hesitation of the human will and endures it. It is
this very conforming of the human will to the divine that is the heart of
redemption. For the fall of man depends on the contradiction of wills, on the
opposition of the human will to the divine, which the tempter leads man to think
is the condition of his freedom. Only one's own autonomous will, subject to no
other will, is freedom. "Not my will, but yours ..." -- those are the words of
truth, for God's will is not in opposition to our own, but the ground and
condition of its possibility. Only when our will rests in the will of God does
it become truly will and truly free.
The suffering and struggle of Gethsemane is the struggle for this redemptive
truth, for this uniting of what is divided, for the uniting that is communion
with God. Now we understand why the Son's loving way of addressing the Father,
"Abba", is found in this place (cf. Mk 14:36). Saint Paul sees in this cry the
prayer that the Holy Spirit places on our lips (cf. Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6) and thus
anchors our Spirit-filled prayer in the Lord's prayer in Gethsemane.
In the Church's Liturgy today, prostration appears on two occasions: on Good
Friday and at ordinations. On Good Friday, the day of the Lord's crucifixion, 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. 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.
At ordinations prostration comes from the awareness of our absolute incapacity,
by our own powers, to take on the priestly mission of Jesus Christ, to speak
with His "I". While the ordinands are lying on the ground, the whole
congregation sings the Litany of the Saints. I shall never forget lying on the
ground at the time of my own priestly and episcopal ordination. When I was
ordained bishop, my intense feeling of inadequacy, incapacity, in the face of
the greatness of the task was even stronger than at my priestly ordination. The
fact that the praying Church was calling upon all the saints, that the prayer of
the Church really was enveloping and embracing me, was a wonderful consolation.
In my incapacity, which had to be expressed in the bodily posture of
prostration, this prayer, this presence of all the saints, of the living and the
dead, was a wonderful strength -- it was the only thing that could, as it were,
lift me up. Only the presence of the saints with me made possible the path that
lay before me.
Kneeling before another
Secondly, we must mention the gesture of falling to one's knees before another,
which is described four times in the Gospels (cf. Mk 1:40; 10:17; Mt 17:14;
27:29) by means of the word gonypetein. Let us single out Mark 1:40. A
leper comes to Jesus and begs Him for help. He falls to his knees before Him and
says: "If you will, you can make me clean". It is hard to assess the
significance of the gesture. 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.
The situation is different, though, with the classical word for adoration on
one's knees -- proskynein. I shall give two examples in order to clarify
the question that faces the translator.
First there is the account of how, after the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus
stays with the Father on the mountain, while the disciples struggle in vain on
the lake with the wind and the waves. Jesus comes to them across the water.
Peter hurries toward Him and is saved from sinking by the Lord. Then Jesus
climbs into the boat, and the wind lets up. The text continues: "And the ship's
crew came and said, falling at His feet, 'Thou art indeed the Son of God'" (Mt
14:33, Knox version). Other translations say: "[The disciples] in the boat
worshiped [Jesus], saying ..." (RSV). Both translations are correct. Each
emphasizes one aspect of what is going on. The Knox version brings out the
bodily expression, while the RSV shows what is happening interiorly. It is
perfectly clear from the structure of the narrative that the gesture of
acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God is an act of worship.
We encounter a similar set of problems in Saint John's Gospel when we read the
account of the healing of the man born blind. This narrative, which is
structured in a truly "theo-dramatic" way, ends with a dialogue between Jesus
and the man He has healed. It serves as a model for the dialogue of conversion,
for the whole narrative must also be seen as a profound exposition of the
existential and theological significance of Baptism.
In the dialogue, Jesus asks the man whether he believes in the Son of Man. 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, Knox version
adapted). Earlier translations said: "He worshiped Him". In fact, the whole
scene is directed toward the act of faith and the worship of Jesus, which
follows from it. Now the eyes of the heart, as well as of the body, are opened.
The man has in truth begun to see.
For the exegesis of the text it is important to note that the word proskynein
occurs eleven times in Saint John's Gospel, of which nine occurrences are found
in Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman by Jacob's well (Jn 4:19-24).
This conversation is entirely devoted to the theme of worship, and it is
indisputable that here, as elsewhere in Saint John's Gospel, the word always has
the meaning of "worship". Incidentally, this conversation, too, ends -- like
that of the healing of the man born blind -- with Jesus' revealing Himself: "I
who speak to you am He" (Jn 4:26).
I have lingered over these texts, because they bring to light something
important. In the two passages that we looked at most closely, 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.
The two aspects are united in the one word, because in a very profound way they
belong together. When kneeling becomes merely external, a merely physical act,
it becomes meaningless. One the other hand, when someone tries to take worship
back into the purely spiritual realm and refuses to give it embodied form, the
act of worship evaporates, for what is purely spiritual is inappropriate to the
nature of man. 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.
In saying this, we come to the typical gesture of kneeling on one or both knees.
In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the verb barak, "to kneel", is
cognate with the word berek, "knee". 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.
At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon kneels "in the presence of all the
assembly of Israel" (II Chron 6:13). After the Exile, in the afflictions of the
returned Israel, which is still without a Temple, Ezra repeats this gesture at
the time of the evening sacrifice: "I ... fell upon my knees and spread out my
hands to the Lord my God" (Ezra 9:5). The great psalm of the Passion, Psalm 22
("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"), ends with the promise: "Yes, to
Him shall all the proud of the earth fall down; before Him all who go down to
the dust shall throw themselves down" (v. 29, RSV adapted).
The related passage Isaiah 45:23 we shall have to consider in the context of the
New Testament. 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.
Particularly important for our question is the account of the martyrdom of Saint
Stephen. The first man to witness to Christ with his blood is described in his
suffering as a perfect image of Christ, whose Passion is repeated in the
martyrdom of the witness, even in small details. One of these is that Stephen,
on his knees, takes up the petition of the crucified Christ: "Lord, do not hold
this sin against them" (7:60). We should remember that Luke, unlike Matthew and
Mark, speaks of the Lord kneeling in Gethsemane, which shows that Luke wants the
kneeling of the first martyr to be seen as his entry into the prayer of Jesus.
Kneeling is not only a Christian gesture, but a christological one.
The Name above all Names
For me, the most important passage for the theology of kneeling will always be
the great hymn of Christ in Philippians 2:6-11. In this pre-Pauline hymn, we
hear and see the prayer of the apostolic Church and can discern within it her
confession of faith in Christ. However, we also hear the voice of the Apostle,
who enters into this prayer and hands it on to us, and, ultimately, we perceive
here both the profound inner unity of the Old and New Testaments and the cosmic
breadth of Christian faith.
The hymn presents Christ as the antitype of the First Adam. While the latter
high-handedly grasped at likeness to God, Christ does not count equality with
God, which is His by nature, "a thing to be grasped", but humbles Himself unto
death, even death on the Cross. 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).
Here the hymn of the apostolic Church takes up the words of promise in Isaiah
45:23: "By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a
word that shall not return: 'To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall
swear'". In the interweaving of Old and New Testaments, it becomes clear that,
even as crucified, Jesus bears that "name above every name" -- the name of the
Most High -- and is Himself God by nature. Through Him, through the Crucified,
the bold promise of the Old Testament is now fulfilled: all bend the knee before
Jesus, the One who descended, and bow to Him precisely as the one true God above
all gods. The Cross has become the world-embracing sign of God's presence, and
all that we have previously heard about the historic and cosmic Christ should
now, in this passage, come back into our minds.
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.
There is much more that we might add. For example, there is the touching story
told by Eusebius in his history of the Church as a tradition going back to
Hegesippus in the second century. Apparently, 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.
But I do not want to go into more detail. I should like to make just one more
remark. 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. 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. 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.
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“The United States of America heads fast to a schism. Fight, My children; do not give in to the forces of evil. Fight the enemy with prayer.” - Our Lady of the Roses, May 29, 1976
The amazing
Bayside Prophecies...
These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica
Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.
YOUR KING
"Why must you insult My Son? Can you not bend your knees? Is He not your King?"
- Our Lady, November 21, 1970
BOW YOUR KNEES
"Remember, My child, shout it from the roof. My Son is with you until the end of
your time. It is truly His Presence, His Real Presence, His divine Presence, His
Body and His Blood. Do not treat Him with disrespect! Bow your knees; cover your
head! Do not chew Him!" - Our Lady, June 8, 1974
REAL PRESENCE
"You violate your sacred trust. You have taken the Body of your Creator, the
Son of your God in the Trinity, and violated Him. You must do your eating at
home! When you come to the great Sacrifice, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, you
come in reverence. You must go down upon your knees and do penance now for the
offenses to your God! ...
"As in the past, cannot you recognize the mystery of Heaven and earth? Did
not the staff of Moses turn into a serpent in the will of God? Did not the river
in Egypt turn into blood in the will of God? And cannot God, in His will, come
to you changing the bread and wine into the actual Presence, the real Presence,
the factual Presence of His Body and Blood?" - St. Michael, February 1, 1977
HONOR
"All honor must be given to My Son in the Eucharist. Man must kneel. My Son's
House is the House of God and a house of prayer, and it must not be turned into
a meeting hall." - Our Lady, July 25, 1979
RESTORE HOLINESS
"In the beginning I gave to you, through your prophets, the establishment of My
Church upon earth. The rules were simple but now have become changed and defiled
to please the carnal nature of mankind. You must restore the holiness to My
House! You must bend your knees in humility and penance." - Jesus, December
31, 1975
RESTORE ALTAR RAILINGS
"I have asked you to get down on your knees. Clergy in My Son's House, His
Church, restore the altar railings, that man may be on his knees. For many shall
crawl on their knees in desperation seeking to flee, but nowhere shall they
escape the flames. Restore My Son's Church while there is time. Return the
railings! Have the people make atonement upon their knees to their God!" -
Our Lady, May 30, 1981
Directives from Heaven... http://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm
D146 - Honor the Eucharist, Part 1
D147 - Honor the Eucharist, Part 2
D184 – Church of Man, Part 1
D185 – Church of Man, Part 2
D198 - Kneel before your God
Articles...
"Kneel before your God in the Eucharist"
http://www.tldm.org/News5/kneeling.htm
Latin, the universal language of the Catholic Church
http://www.tldm.org/news5/latin.htm
The case for the Latin Mass
http://www.tldm.org/news5/latinmass.htm
Vatican on kneeling for holy Communion
http://www.tldm.org/vatican%20letter.htm
Should women cover their heads in Church?
http://www.tldm.org/news6/veils.htm"You cannot separate Tradition from your Faith"
http://www.tldm.org/news6/tradition1.htmVatican II, part 1: Infiltration of the Church
http://www.tldm.org/News6/VaticanII-1.htm
Vatican II, part 2: Dark clouds forming before Vatican II
http://www.tldm.org/News6/VaticanII-2.htmVatican II, part 3: the satanic revolution gains momentum at the Council
http://www.tldm.org/News6/VaticanII-3.htm
Links...
Vatican confirms that U.S. bishops norms on Communion does not forbid kneeling Mons. Mario Marini Undersecretary, Congregation for Divine Worship, February 25, 2003
Letter on the posture of the people during Mass, Cardinal Medina Estévez, November 7, 2000
Kneeling and Faith in the Eucharist, by Fr. Regis Scanlon
Standing or Kneeling during the Liturgy?, by Fr. Joseph Fessio, S. J.
Standing Up for Kneeling (Catholic Insight - December 1997)
Kneeling (EWTN Library - Winter 1991)
Kneeling after the Lamb of God (EWTN Library)
Kneeling and genuflection, Catholic Encyclopedia
Your names have been written in Heaven… "It is not by accident that you are called by My Mother, for your names have been written in Heaven.... But with this great grace you have great responsibility to send this Message from Heaven throughout the world, for if you are able to recover just one more for Heaven, an additional star shall be placed in your crown." - Jesus, August 5, 1975
A great obligation to go forward... "It is not by accident that you are called by My Mother, for it is by merit and the prayers that have risen to Heaven for your salvation. For those who have received the grace to hear the Message from Heaven, you have a great obligation to go forward and bring this Message to your brothers and sisters. Do not expect a rest upon your earth, for you will have eternal rest very soon." - Jesus, June 12, 1976
The sin of omission... "The sin of omission shall condemn many to hell, be they layman or Hierarchy. I repeat: not the sin of commission, but the sin of omission will commit many to hell." Our Lady of the Roses, October 6, 1980
We encourage everyone to print or email copies of this web page to all the Bishops and all the clergy. Also, email or send this web page to the news media and as many people as possible.
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