Dear Father Paul: I’ve recently become Catholic. I went to church in another state while on vacation and saw people raising and holding their hands in the air during the “Our Father.” We don’t do it in my parish, but what is the proper thing to do? I want to be as Catholic as I can, so should I start raising my hands? – K.G.
Dear K.G.: There has been a great deal of unnecessary confusion about the posture that various people use for the “Our Father.” I’ve seen people folding their hands by themselves, or simply raising their open-palmed hands a little or raising them high in the air.
I’ve also seen people holding their neighbor’s hands, raising their hands while holding their neighbor’s hands, holding hands and squeezing their neighbor’s hands at certain points in the prayer and sometimes with complete strangers. I’m not surprised that you wonder what is correct.
After COVID, many people no longer wanted to touch anyone else, so handholding abated in parishes where that had been the practice. It seems to be making a comeback now that fears of disease are less prevalent.
That said, it has never been part of the liturgical tradition to hold the hands of other people during Mass. The practice seems to have started unofficially sometime during the 1970s. The bottom line is that it is inappropriate.
But what about raising one’s hands during the “Our Father” at Mass?
The answer depends on who you are. The priest is supposed to raise or extend his hands in the orans position during certain prayers at Mass. Orans is a Latin word meaning “praying” and refers to the way the ancients beseeched and thanked God with arms outstretched. This orans position of the priest is required of him as the main celebrant of the Mass during the “Our Father.”
The priest also raises his hands in prayer during other parts of the Mass, such as the Opening Prayer, the Prayer over the Gifts, the Preface and Eucharistic Prayers and the Prayer after Communion. He does this because he is designated by God and the Church to pray officially in the name of the entire Body of Christ.
Of course, we all pray at Mass. But we are not all the same in our roles at Mass. The priest has the responsibility to offer the prayers and sacrifices in union with the one sacrifice of Christ at Mass. He gathers, as it were, our prayers when he says, “Let us pray.” At those words, he is to pause for silence so that we can unite our interior prayers and intentions with his formal prayer.
We also unite our sacrifices to his offering when he says, “Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.” In these instances, we do not all shout out our intentions to God. Instead, we offer them as rational human beings by spiritually uniting ourselves to the priest and to the Church and to God.
An example from ordinary life is when one says from the heart to a friend, “I’m with you in your suffering,” or when one expresses to a loved one that he/she is missed. It is a way of expressing interior or spiritual union.
When the priest raises his hands and prays, he is speaking to God on our behalf. When the priest raises his hands at the “Our Father,” and we pray with him, he is still the one who is offering our prayer to the Father.
When we are praying the “Our Father” with the priest, we are both speaking to God and simultaneously uniting ourselves with the priest whose responsibility it is to bring us and our needs to God.
Perhaps for some, this is a time to reflect on the childlike humility required to surrender our prayers and needs to the priest, our spiritual father, so that he can bring them to God for us. Even a deacon in the sanctuary would not dare to raise his hands at that point. Nor would a priest who is “merely” attending Mass, but not concelebrating, raise his hands.
It is not the right of any priest to raise his hands at certain times during prayer, but only that of those who are actually celebrating the Mass.
The 1997 instruction “On Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priest,” article 6, seeks “to promote the proper identity” of the roles of clerics and lay people in liturgical actions. Specifically, deacons and non-ordained members of the faithful may not “use gestures or actions which are proper to the same priest celebrant.”
The “Our Father” is not to be reduced to a community prayer. It is more than that because it is the preparation for Holy Communion. The “Our Father” is a time to join hearts, not hands, in praising and beseeching God’s mercy and love.
