| | |  Cdl. Arinze with hands joined, the position normally associated with silent priestly prayer or with his prayers offered with the congregation | The first thing to notice here is that, with the problematic exception of the Our Father, the orans position is prescribed for the priest only when he is praying aloud and alone as, for example, during most of the Opening Prayer, the Prayer over the Gifts, and the Post-Communion Prayer. When, however, the priest is praying aloud and with the people, for example, during the Gloria or the Creed, his hands are to be joined. In other words, a priest praying aloud and on behalf of a then-silent congregation is clearly exercising a leadership role. The orans posture being used then cannot occasion congregational imitation because the people are silent at that point in the Mass. On the other hand, when prayers are being said aloud by the priest and people, the fact that the priest’s hands are joined during such prayers occasions — if anything by way of congregational imitation — the traditional gesture of joined or folded hands that is common among the laity at Mass in the West. | From all of this, it seems that the rubric calling for the priest to assume the orans position during the Our Father, in which prayer he joins the people instead of offering it on their behalf, is at least anomalous, and probably inconsistent with the presidential symbolism suggested today by the orans position elsewhere in the Mass. There remains to consider, though, how this apparent miscue appeared in the liturgy. I suggest that originally, the orans rubric for the priest during the Lord’s Prayer was not a mistake but that it became one in the course of liturgical reforms undertaken by Pope Pius XII just prior to Vatican II. Let's back up a bit. The Our Father (Pater noster) has been a part of the Mass for many centuries. Over that time, of course, language barriers occasioned and rubric evolution reinforced the assignment of nearly all Mass prayers to the priest. Eventually, the Pater became a prayer that was offered by the priest on behalf of the people, whose exterior participation in that prayer was, by the early 20th century, limited to a vicarious one via the server’s recitation of the closing line, Sed libera nos a malo (But deliver us from evil). A look at pre-Conciliar rubrics in any Sacramentary regarding the Pater is consistent in showing that the priest’s hands are extended, that is, in an orans position, as one would expect for prayers the priest offers on behalf of the congregation. But in 1958, as part of Pope Pius XII’s liturgical reforms, permission was granted for, among other things, the congregation to join the priest in praying the Pater, provided that they could pray it in Latin (See AAS 50: 643; Eng. trans., Canon Law Digest V: 587). Thus, for the first time in many centuries, a congregational recitation of the Lord’s Prayer was made possible. Lay recitation of the Pater was not mandated and there is no evidence that this very limited permission for congregational recitation of the Pater occasioned awareness that such permission, if it were ever widely acted upon, might necessitate a change in the rubrics for the priest. Unfortunately, by the time such changes did come about, it seems, the orans posture and the Lord’s Prayer had become associated, not with the manner in which the prayer was being offered, but with the prayer itself. From there, it seems, the rubric calling for or the priest to continue using the orans position during the Our Father simply passed unnoticed into the new rite of Mass. |
