Homily - 1 October 2017 - On the act of genuflecting

The Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Dear brothers and sisters,

As pundits and commentators across this nation debate the proper posture before sporting events as if it were a matter of the highest importance, Saint Paul reminds us today that, because of his “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, “every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:8, 10-11). Is this not why we make a genuflection to the Blessed Sacrament each time we enter a church or chapel where the sanctuary candle gently burns?

It is not my intention today to comment upon the secular argument presently embroiling so many because whether one stands, kneels, or sits during the national anthem is not among the concerns of the Church. I do, however, wish to pose a related question: How different would this country be if Catholics cared as much about proper respect for the Blessed Sacrament as they seemingly do about a flag? To be sure, rage is certainly not a virtue, but when did you last hear of someone becoming upset enough to speak up about a lack of reverence toward the Eucharist? Romano Guardini once asked this question:

Is there anything more embarrassing than the manner in which some people, upon entering a church, after an anemic genuflection immediately flop into their seats? Isn’t this precisely how they take their places on a park bench or at the movies? Apparently they have no idea where they are…[1]

This does not seem to be a particular problem here at St. Augustine’s, but the fact that so many Catholics are apparently quite upset about a perceived disrespect of a flag but say nothing when the Blessed Sacrament is disrespected shows that something is awry in regards to our faith.

All this being said, there is something good to be found in the present debate, namely the recognition that “action is more than mere external happening.”[2] To put it another way, there is a recognition that

the nobler, the more difficult or important the task to be accomplished, the more completely I must give it my attention, earnestness, eagerness, and love, participating in it from the heart and with all the creative élan [energy] of the mind. That is composure: heart and mind concentrated on the here and now, not off on daydreams; it is being all here.[3]

If this is true of patriotic gestures, how much more so is it of what regards the divine? How much more so must we have proper composure before God?

Our word genuflect comes from two Latin words: genu, meaning knee, and flexio, meaning to bend. To genuflect, then, means to bend the knee and, as such, is a movement filled with much meaning.

In the first place, the act of genuflecting before God reminds us that “the body has a place within the divine worship of the Word made flesh.”[4] In the second place, it reminds us that “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, expresses itself in the bodily gesture.”[5] We must, then, have the proper composure when we genuflect if we are not to be like that son who said, “‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go” (Matthew 21:30).

Today, we tend to view the strength of a man as a being in his upper body, which is possibly why many, as we say, skip leg day. But this was not always the case with every people. For example, we often forget what the Hebrews knee. They “regarded the knees as a symbol of strength.”[6] If we think about this for just a moment, it makes great sense. If you take a stick and strike a man on his knees, what happens? He falls to the ground. His strength fails. This does not generally happen if you strike him on his upper body. “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.”[7] It is a gesture by which we seek to place all that we are before God, to set ourselves aside in his service and for his honor.

To our modern ears, this might seem old-fashioned or an abnegation of our freedom and something demeaning to our own dignity. This is why Saint Paul tells us to “have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus” who “emptied himself” (Philippians 2:5, 7). Saint Augustine reminds us that Jesus “is said to have ‘emptied himself’ in no other way than by taking the form of a servant, not by losing the form of God.”[8] If the Son of God lost nothing of his dignity when he took our lowly flesh, neither will we lose any of our dignity when we bend the knee before him. When we kneel before God, we express in our body what should already have taken place in our hearts, a turning away “from the wickedness [we have] committed” to do “what is right and just” (Ezekiel 18:27). When we kneel before the humility of Jesus, we say to him, “The sins of my youth and my frailties remember not; in your kindness remember me, because of your goodness, O Lord” (Psalm 25:7). We should long to bend our knees before Jesus because he “guides the humble to justice, and teaches the humble his way” (Psalm 25:9).

If nothing else, the act of genuflecting should remind us that

we do not come to church to attend the service (which usually means as a spectator), but in order, along with the priest, to serve God. Everything we do – our entering, being present, our kneeling and sitting and standing, our reception of the sacred nourishment – should be divine service. This is so only when all we do overflows from the awareness of a collected heart and the mind’s attentiveness.[9]

Let us, then, strive to have the proper composure whenever we make a genuflection, lest our external action not mirror our internal desire. Let us recognize the Eucharistic Lord who is present with us humbly bow down in love.

Whenever we bend the knee before the Lord Jesus, we cannot fail to remember that

He has himself knelt down to wash our feet. And that gives to our adoration the quality of being unforced, adoration in joy and in hope, because we are bowing down before him who bowed down, because we bow down to enter into a love that does not make slaves of us but transforms us. So let us ask the Lord that he may grant us to understand this and to rejoice in it and that this understanding and this joy may spread out from this day far and wide into our country and our everyday life.[10]

Amen!

---

[1] Romano Guardini, Meditations Before Mass (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1993), 29.

[2] Ibid., 27.

[3] Ibid., 27-28. Emphasis original.

[4] Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2000), 176-177.

[5] Ibid., 190.

[6] Ibid., 191.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Contra Faustum, 3.6. In Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament Vol. VIII: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians. Thomas C. Oden, et al, eds. (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 1999), 230.

[9] Romano Guardini, Meditations Before Mass, 31. Emphases original.

[10] Joseph Ratzinger, God is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2003, 113.

On bending the knee

In the ancient world the knee symbolized the strength of a man.  Why?  Take a stick and whack a man on the knee and see what happens.

To genuflect, then, - to literally "bend the knee" - is bend one's strength to God.  To genuflect before God serves both to place oneself at his service and to honor his authority.

Too many Catholics genuflect far too lightly, both exteriorly and interiorly.  Sometimes I wonder - without judging individuals - if too many of the elderly too lightly opt to bow instead of genuflecting.

This morning at the altar of God the importance of genuflecting hit me, as it were, in a particular way.

After the consecration of the host and then of the chalice the priest is instructed to make a genuflection.  With my arthritis, genuflecting in the morning is not always a simple effort and this morning I had to muster additional strength to place myself back at a standing position (the weather forecast, by the way, seems to be missing something).

As I worked my way back up, I said offered a little prayer: "What strength I have, Lord, little as it is, I give to you."

It seems to me this is not a bad way to start a day, if the reminder of weakness is not always welcome.

Homily - 23 November 2008 - The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King (A)

We are gathered today by the Lord to celebrate a great mystery, to honor and adore the One who is both Lamb and Shepherd, who is both Shepherd and King, who is both man and God.

By and large the image of sheep is lost on us who have such limited contact and knowledge of them. Let us put it simply: sheep need a shepherd because they often stray away from the fold and find themselves in danger. Are we not very much like sheep? The prophet Isaiah says this of us: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6).

It is not for nothing that God sees his people Israel as his flock, as his sheep (cf. Ezekiel 34:11-12). With all of the passion of his love, the Lord says,

I myself will pasture my sheep; I myself will give them rest… The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy, shepherding them rightly (Ezekiel 34:15-16).

The life of a shepherd is not easy as he stands under the sun and moon, in the heat and cold, in the wind, rain, and snow with his sheep. So great is the Lord’s love for his flock that he himself weathers the elements with his sheep, he suffers with them and guides them along right paths (cf. Psalm 23:3).

There is something within us that inherently recognizes ourselves to be like sheep. This is why so many of us have an almost automatic love of Psalm 23, which begins, “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). The question, then, comes to us: How well do I listen to my shepherd and follow him? Do I know the voice of my shepherd? Do I let myself be led and guided by him?

One verse of Psalm 23 that is particularly comforting to many people is not sung in today’s Mass: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). The staff he carries is the shepherd’s crook, with its hook that is used for pulling back, prodding along and even an occasional knock on the head, in order to keep the sheep on the right path. The rod he carries is the scepter of a king, the symbol of his authority. What is the connection between these two?

Just after the Lord promises to judge between his sheep, he says through his prophet Ezekiel, “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:23). David, then, was appointed to govern and shepherd of Israel, the two chief duties of a king.

When the only Son of God took on flesh and became man, he did so to shepherd his flock both as the Good Shepherd (cf. John 10:14) and as their true and eternal King; he came to fulfill what began in David.

We see this most clearly in today’s Gospel. He is the king who, like a shepherd, separates his flock into sheep and goats, into those who served him and those who did not (cf. Matthew 25:31-34).

Why is it that Christ, our King and Shepherd, will seek the lost and heal the sick, but destroy the sleek and strong? The lost and the sick are the sheep who, having heard the voice of the shepherd, have accepted his sovereignty and leadership; they accepted his love. The sleek and the strong are those who rely on their own power and strength and refuse to submit to the gentle yoke of Christ. They will not be pulled back from sin; they will not be prodded on to holiness; they will not take a knock on the head, even for the good of their souls. They will not kneel before Christ; they think themselves sovereign and free, but they are, in fact, slaves to themselves.

There is yet a further way that the image of Shepherd and King are joined together in Christ. John the Baptist announced Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Christ the Good Shepherd became a Lamb for us and in his vision of the heavenly liturgy, Saint John the Evangelist saw “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). The Lamb stands as though slain because he was in fact slain, but now is risen from the dead. The Lamb is victorious and “has put all his enemies under his feet” (I Corinthians 15:25). It is because of his victory over sin and death that the hosts of heaven cry out, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (Revelation 5:12)! After this, John says, “And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever” (Revelation 5:13)! Then they fell down and worshipped him.

This Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ the King is the last Sunday in the Church’s calendar; it is, in a certain sense, the culmination of the Church’s year. Everything leads up to this day, to the celebration of Christ as King and we as his servants, just as everything in our lives leads up to our judgment before the Redeemer King. It is a call for us to recognize our true identity as servants and sheep, to accept the lordship of Christ over every aspect of our lives, to place ourselves lovingly in his service, to worship and adore him alone.

Because we are human beings, because we are both body and spirit, our worship of the Lamb is also done in both body and spirit.

When we enter the Church and approach the Lord present in the Blessed Sacrament, we perform an act of adoration, of homage; we make a genuflexion. This act of reverence that we pay to our Eucharistic King – to the Lamb of God - is one that we too easily take lightly.

The word “genuflect” comes from the Latin genu flexio, meaning “to bend the knee.” From ancient times the knee has been seen 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 we are we receive from him.”[1]

When we kneel before the Lord, the King of the Universe, we kneel before the humility of him who knelt to wash our feet. This act of adoration is an act of love and is the genuine response of faith to what the Lord has done.

Kneeling before the Eucharist is a profession of freedom: those who bow to Jesus cannot and must not prostrate themselves before any earthly authority, however powerful. We Christians kneel only before God or before the Most Blessed Sacrament because we know and believe that the one true God is present in it, the God who created the world and so loved it that he gave his Only Begotten Son (cf. John 3: 16).[2]

Whenever we bend the knee in church, let us do so purposefully and with great reverence, remembering always before whom it is we kneel. With this gesture, let us recognize him as our only king and serve him with great joy and devotion. Amen!

[1] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy. John Saward, trans. (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2000), 191.
[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 22 May 2008.