Last week I introduced Pope Francis's Apostolic Letter on liturgical formation. In the upcoming weeks I will share individual paragraphs from the Letter along with thoughts from members of the Liturgy Committee about that specific paragraph.

Every gesture and every word contains a precise action that is always new because it meets with an always new moment in our own lives. I will explain what I mean with a simple example. We kneel to ask pardon, to bend our pride, to hand over to God our tears, to beg his intervention, to thank Him for a gift received. It is always the same gesture which in essence declares our own being small in the presence of God. Nevertheless, done in different moments of our lives, it moulds our inner depths and then thereafter shows itself externally in our relation with God and with our brothers and sisters. Also kneeling should be done with art, that is to say, with a full awareness of its symbolic sense and the need that we have of this gesture to express our way of being in the presence of the Lord. And if all this is true for this simple gesture, how much more will it be for the celebration of the Word? Ah, what art are we summoned to learn for the proclamation of the Word, for the hearing of it, for letting it inspire our prayer, for making it become our very life? All of this is worthy of utmost attention — not formal or merely exterior, but living and interior — so that every gesture and every word of the celebration, expressed with “art,” forms the Christian personality of each individual and of the community.

This week Anne Borgmeyer reflects on the words about gestures in the beginning of that paragraph, and next week on the art of listening to the Word:

It was paragraph 53 that really hit home for me: Every gesture and every word contains a precise action that is always new because it meets with an always new moment in our own lives.

I think we are being reminded that liturgy is prayer and embracing the gestures and words can deepen our prayer and faith. Each time we pray we find ourselves in a different time in our lives and therefore the words and gestures may take on new meaning.

So often we feel we are doing the same thing over and over by rote without any meaning but if we truly take care to be “in the moment,” each time we pray will be different and more meaningful. Even the same gesture will be unique for each person in the congregation and possibly different for each individual person at the different times in their life. Each gesture whether kneeling, standing, sitting or raising our hands in prayer has meaning if we are actively conscious of what we are doing. I think about not only ritual gestures, but times when we truly allow ourselves to sing and pray with our whole self.

For children, gestures come very naturally. They are uninhibited and put their whole self into their prayer. It seems that as we get older we become more self-conscious and worry more about appearance than letting ourselves express prayer with our whole self. We are being called to “hand over to God” our prayer that it may affect our “relation with God and with our brothers and sisters.”