February 2006

Questions Bishops are asked

By Bishop Kevin Manning, Catholic Outlook, February 2006

When and why should we genuflect?

 

Question:
Recently, I visited your beautiful St Patrick's Cathedral in Parramatta for Sunday Mass, which was a wonderful spiritual experience. However, I noticed that not everyone genuflected when passing through the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. Some appeared not to notice the Reserved Sacrament at all; others gave hasty or profound bows of their heads; while some actually genuflected. My question is: when and why should we genuflect at all?

Answer:
To verify your comments, a few Sundays ago I checked those passing through the Blessed Sacrament Chapel on their way into Mass and your description was spot on. Before the Blessed Sacrament some appeared decidedly pious and genuflected, others made a profound bow of their heads, still others, generally running late, hurried past the Blessed Sacrament as though it never existed.

Genuflection by which we humble ourselves before God by bending our right knee to the ground is a posture that has developed over some centuries. Christians have used this, and other postures, like bowing, to express their humility and reverence before God. It is a most appropriate action that recognises Jesus' presence in the Blessed Sacrament, acknowledging His loving and abiding presence.

In Cathedrals such as St Patrick's, and St Peter's Basilica in Rome, we have a special Eucharistic Chapel for prayer and adoration. Because the Blessed Sacrament is present in the Tabernacle worshippers should genuflect in that Chapel, and make a deep bow to the Altar of sacrifice, which represents Christ, in the body of the Cathedral.

Genuflection is peculiar to the Roman rite and has now, almost everywhere in the Western Church, been substituted for the profound bowing down of head and body that formally obtained, and is still maintained in the East, as the supreme act of liturgical reverence.

The practice of genuflecting has no claim to antiquity of origin and appears to have been introduced in the West during the later middle ages, but was not generally looked upon as obligatory before the end of the 15th Century. The older Roman missals make no mention of it. The early 1600s is given as the date of the formal and semi-official recognition of these genuflections.

A point of interest is the Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites of 7 July 1876, which insists that women as well as men must genuflect before the Blessed Sacrament.

The simple bending of the knee cannot be traced to sources outside Christian worship, but the act of falling down, or prostration, was introduced into Rome when the Caesars brought from the East the oriental custom of worshipping the emperors in this manner as gods.

The liturgical rule for genuflecting today is quite clear, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament whether reserved in the Tabernacle, or exposed for public adoration, in which case a double genuflection (on both knees) is the norm as authorised by the Australian Catholic Bishops, one should genuflect, if impeded, a reverent bow suffices.