Genuflecting—an acknowledgement of the Presence
What makes Catholic churches different? Our artwork, candles, the smell of last Sunday's incense hanging in the air….and of course the constantly burning red light, the tabernacle lamp which burns outside the tabernacle where the Eucharist is kept, signifying the divine presence of Christ.
We are taught from our earliest years that whenever we enter a Catholic church our gesture is to be that of going down on one knee or two before the tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament that is the body of the Lord, Holy Communion reserved from what is left after the faithful have received at Mass. Originally the reservation of the Sacrament was for those who were physically unable to gather with the community, so that they could receive the Eucharist in their homes, or place of sanctuary or prison. Later, the practice of Eucharistic adoration grew up and flourished with great solemnity in various parts of the world.
The Eucharist is essentially an event, a ritual sacrificial meal; it is something that is not static, but happening, unfolding, it is an experience in which humans engage with all the senses and with a movement of the heart towards the things of the Spirit. With the gesture of genuflecting, we are making an act of faith which is an expansion of our belief in the risen and glorified Christ.
Genuflecting is not just a simple ritual movement of the body: it is much deeper in significance than that. It is a offering of the person, an offering of my will and my desire to live in the light of the paschal mystery. It expresses a profound spirit of adoration, present and active in the one who genuflects. It underlines the lordship of God in my life. Remember what St. Paul wrote in his great hymn in the letter to the Philippians: “....so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, 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” (2:10-11).
Genuflecting is a bodily sign of our confession of faith, and of our longing to participate eternally in the salvation won for us by Jesus Christ. The Eucharistic mystery celebrates our whole being, since in baptism and the life of faith we are being called to die and rise constantly in the sacrificial banquet of the Lord, and to be one bread, one body, as we sing. This bending of the knee expresses too our readiness to commend ourselves as an offering to God.
Of course, the routine nature of this gesture which we repeat frequently can become such a habit that it doesn't always have the internal meaning that we might desire; we acknowledge that sometimes the genuflection looks more like a curtsey, that it can be more perfunctory than profound. Yet that is the risk God takes in allowing us to be so close to the liturgical action, and so close to his divinity. He takes that risk! When we remind ourselves of how gracious and generous our God is, perhaps then it calls forth from us a desire to make every genuflection a true act of adoration, and a word of worship spoken not with the mouth but with the body. Our fidelity is at times somewhat lacking, our genuflection though is a bow to that fidelity of God which is never lacking, but which in Christ has made up for all that may be lacking in us.
The fulfilment of our genuflecting, our acknowledgement of the divine presence, will be the completion of this earthly worship with Jesus our Master in the communion of the saints in his heavenly Jerusalem. What a foretaste of glory then, our Eucharist truly is, and worthy of our genuflection!
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