Question Corner: Is it appropriate to hold hands or lift your hands up during the Our Father at Mass?

Q: The priest of my parish says it’s not appropriate to hold hands or lift your hands up during the Our Father at Mass. Is this true? And if so, why do so many people continue to do it?

A: While in my opinion holding hands during the Our Father at Mass is hardly the worst of liturgical abuses, your parish priest is correct. That is, holding hands or lifting up hands is not something that the Church actually envisions for the assembled lay faithful during the Mass.

As some important background, it’s helpful to recall the nature of liturgical prayers, like the Mass, in the life of the Church.

Of course, prayer in general is a broad category that legitimately encompasses a variety of different practices. For example, all Christians are encouraged to engage in personal prayer where they privately talk to God in their own voice, and the Church welcomes the variety of popular devotional prayers that have sprung up as the result of popular piety over the ages.

However, liturgical prayer is special, because it is the official prayer of the Church herself. When we engage in liturgical prayer, we are specifically praying in the name of the Church. Or as the Vatican II document “Sacrosanctum Concilium” puts it: “Liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church, which is the ‘sacrament of unity,’ namely, the holy people united and ordered under their bishops.”

Because of this “official” character, the Church generally spells out in detail how different liturgical functions are to be celebrated. With respect to the Mass, we have a document called the “General Instruction of the Roman Missal” (GIRM) as our guidebook.

The “General Instruction” does provide direction of the various bodily gestures that are to be made during the Mass. Most of these prescribed gestures do pertain to the celebrating clergy, but the “General Instruction” also in several places describes the physical gestures that the laity in the congregation make as well.

For example, GIRM 43 discusses at which points in the Mass the faithful are to kneel, and GIRM 160 tells us that: “When receiving Holy Communion, the communicant bows his or her head before the Sacrament as a gesture of reverence.”

However, GIRM 81, the section of the “General Instruction of the Roman Missal” which discusses praying the “Our Father” at Mass, tells us among other things that “The priest pronounces the invitation to the prayer, and all the faithful say the prayer with him.” Yet at the same time, it makes no mention whatsoever of any gestures that the assembled lay faithful in the congregation should be making.

Going back to “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” we read that, because the liturgy is not the private spiritual property of any individual person or local community, “Therefore no other person (i.e., besides the Holy Father in Rome), even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.”

So, in light of this, I don’t think it would be appropriate for any parish priest or parish community to decide to add in a new gesture like hand-holding during a certain prayer at Mass.

As for the second part of your question, regarding why hand-holding during the “Our Father” became a fairly widespread practice in the first place, I did some research but I’m still honestly not sure! Some of my canon lawyer colleagues think it may have been a practice in some Protestant communities that neighboring Catholic parishes picked up.

As to why people continue to do this, I think a big part of it is that people often feel comfortable sticking with the same habits of prayer they have developed over the years. But changing in order to be more faithful to the Church’s liturgical laws — even if it means moving out of one’s comfort zone — can be a beautiful invitation to grow spiritually.

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