XXI

PEACE:

After the our Father, the priest says the prayer for peace with outstretched arms: Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant us peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

This peace, this delivery from "anxiety" or "distress" is an important part of being Christ's people. As Jesus told his disciples he would soon be leaving them, he said "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid." (John 14:27). This is one of the other prayers that is addressed to Jesus Christ himself, not to the Father.

The highly nuanced and simple beauty of the ritual in the Roman Catholic liturgy finds expression within the Sign of Peace. It is understood not only in the words that are said, but in the gesture, as well as in its location within the Sacred Liturgy.

To the greeting of the priest: the peace of the Lord be with you always, the people respond saying: And with your spirit.  It expresses the reality of Jesus Christ really present in the very person of the priest, who by the unique character he has received in the Sacrament of Holy Orders acts as an alter Christus (another Christ). In contrast, the General Instruction for the Roman Missal (the laws governing how the liturgy is executed) reminds us that when the laity offer peace to one another with the words, "The peace of the Lord be with you always," the response is "Amen." (GIRM 154).Not: And with your spirit.

In receiving the peace offered by God Himself and then turning to one's neighbor and offering the Lord's peace, the splendor of the Church as one Body united under Christ Her head is revealed. Within the expression of the gift of peace we also find the faithful fulfilling the Lord's command as seen in the Gospel according to St. Matthew: "If you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift." (Mt 5:23-24)

The gifts of bread and wine are offered to the Father and in His paternal goodness He sends the Holy Spirit to transform them into the very body and blood of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. But before we receive the Sacred Body and Blood of the Lord, the liturgy has us offer peace to those around us, and thereby recall that we are to be at peace, we are to be reconciled with our brothers and sisters before we partake of the Eucharist.   

The manner in which the Sign of Peace is given varies from culture to culture, but no matter what its expression, it is the call to enter into a life of love — the life of God who is Love. 

The Sign of Peace was reintroduced into the Mass when the Liturgy was reformed after Vatican II. For some people, it was a wonderful opportunity to express their love and sense of community.

The congregation for Worship said, "if it is foreseen that it will not take place properly," it can be omitted. But when it is used, it must be done with dignity and awareness that it is not a liturgical form of "good morning," but a witness to the Christian belief that true peace is a gift of Christ's death and resurrection.

This is a telling moment! In a few moments, we will be sharing communion with those around us. We will come into communion  with - we will become the Body of Christ. This Rite - the Sign of Peace - forces us to realize what that means. Our Communion is not simply a private love-affair with our Beloved Lord. It demands that we recognize Him in those around us - those with whom we have shared communion - and those who are not able to share that communion.

In his book, “How to Understand the Liturgy”, Jean Lebon lays down a challenge: “It (the Sign of Peace) is a point where one sees whether the liturgy holds together. If the congregation has not really been welded together during the course of the Mass, then it is useless and inappropriate to perform this action.”

This seems very stern -but emphasizes the importance of what we say we are doing. If we are who we say we are - the Body of Christ - a gathered community - an assembly of God - a congregation of worshippers - then this is the time to show that that means we see one another and can reach out in love and the peace of Christ to our neighbour.

XX Our Father:

In the new translation of the Roman Missal, the Lord's Prayer is introduced with the words, "At the Saviour's command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say..."

The older text had a Latin word closer to courage rather than dare.  However, ‘courage’ and ‘daring’ are potentially quite different in meaning. ‘Courage’ does not necessarily invoke a feeling of humility, whereas ‘we dare to say’ inherently recognizes our insignificance before the Father. We use the word ‘courage’ to imply some talent or accomplishment on our part, for example, we can say that we have the courage to speak publicly. But when we use the words, ‘we dare to say’, we humbly admit that it has nothing to do with us, in fact, it admits that is not anything which we can ever hope to accomplish. The words convey a profound sense of unworthiness, we are in no position to make any claims or demands.

The adjective "Our" as used by us, does not express possession, but an entirely new relationship with God. We are a people bound together by the New Covenant that God has made with us through his Son in the Holy Spirit. While we are indeed individual persons, we are also persons in communion with each other because we have been baptized into communion with the Holy Trinity. We cannot pray 'our' without including every single person for whom Christ died. The Our Father erases all boundaries between us and them, between past and present. It calls us into the family circle, saints crossing elbows with sinners, rich with poor, criminal with law-abiding, powerful with victimized, living with dead. God's love has no bounds, neither should our prayer.

After the initial address, the Lord’s Prayer contains seven demands, or traditionally, seven petitions. The seven petitions can be found in both the Gospel of Matthew and our liturgical version of the prayer. It is interesting to note that the Gospel of Luke contains only five of those seven petitions. The number ‘seven’ always symbolized perfection, thus the Lord’s Prayer perfectly summarizes all that we need petition to the Lord in any form of prayer.  That is why St Thomas Aquinas calls it the ‘Perfect Prayer.’ Tertullian goes so far as to claim that the Lord’s Prayer is ‘summary of the whole gospel.’ Of seven demands in the Lord’s Prayer. The first three ‘draw us toward the glory of God’ and the last four ‘commend our wretchedness to his grace.’