A few weeks ago we resumed our implementation of various aspects of the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal or GIRM. As you may recall I wrote about why we are now asked to bow during the Creed at the phrase: “by the power of the Holy Spirit hewas born of the Virgin Mary and became man”. We will now move on to implementing a change in posture which occurs during the preparation rite, after the gifts are brought forward and ritually placed upon the altar.
After the washing of the priest’s hands the preparation rite concludes with an invitation and a prayer. It is the custom of the church to stand for the prayer as we stand for all the presidential prayers (opening prayer, prayer over the gifts, closing prayer.) This prayer is the only one of those mentioned above that has an invitation that is not “let us pray”.
The invitation to this prayer is: “Pray brothers and sisters that this our
sacrifice be acceptable to our Almighty Father”. The assembly responds:
“May the Lord accept this sacrifice from your hands…” In order to connect
in a more integrated fashion the invitation to the actual prayer, the GIRM asks the people to stand for both the invitation and the prayer.
This means that in a few weeks’ time we will all be invited to stand before the priest begins “Pray brothers and sisters…” We will then remain standing until after the Holy, Holy, Holy during the Eucharistic Prayer. Confused? You won’t be once we begin this practice and see how it logically flows together.
It seems that Mother Nature is enjoying giving us challenging weather on the weekends! If you are unable to get to mass don’t forget that you can catch up on all the week’s news, meetings and announcements on line at our web site: St.Mattpar.org. Thanks to the work of parishioner Jim DeHart, the coming week’s bulletin is usually on line by Friday afternoon. Look for more information on the web page over the coming weeks.
As a youngster one of the Lenten practices that I always looked forward to was going to weekday mass. In fact a whole bunch of us kids from the neighborhood made this a Lenten must do, thanks to the encouragement of our teachers, the Sisters of St. Joseph. I’m sure this had a formative effect on my love for the celebration of the Eucharist in later years. However, at the time, my friends and I really didn’t understand why it was so good for us. It was just peer pressure I guess
(imagine that!)
Here at St. Matthias we have weekday mass on Monday, Tuesday and Friday at 9AM. On the Thursdays of lent we will have a variety of prayer experiences from Morning Prayer to the praying of the rosary. On the days we don’t have mass or when we celebrate a funeral, remember that the Sisters of The Good Shepherd have mass at 11am across the street in their chapel. Many of our parishioners from New Horizons worship there when the weather is too cold or nasty to come over to St. Matthias. Perhaps coming to some daily celebrations of the Eucharist could be part of your Leten journey this year.
