Praying with your hands
- Parent Categories: Spirituality
The cover photo of the November magazine, two hands raised in supplication, prompted me to ask why people keep their hands together when praying. Is it just a symbol or is it a way of keeping the soul focused on the feelings of the prayer itself?
Rovira Alessio, Castel Madama (RM)
In Christian antiquity it was customary to raise one's hands in an attitude of offering or receiving. As we see in the frescoes of the Roman catacombs, it was the attitude of those who are praying, and we can still observe it today. The liturgical rubrics prescribe that the priest, at certain moments of the Mass, pray with his hands raised.
Later the use of clasped hands was introduced. The clasped hands recall the ancient gesture of tying the hands of prisoners (an action that is still alive today for brides in oriental liturgies). For this reason, those who were about to be martyred proceeded with their hands clasped and in those moments they certainly prayed.
The apocryphal gospels sparks of light in popular tradition
2015 Calendar of the Pious Union of Transit
by Franco Cardini
Each month the 2016 calendar is accompanied by episodes from the life of Jesus told by the "apocryphal gospels", almost underground rivers that supported the popular faith of the first Christians. The professor. Franco Cardini, professor of Church history, illustrates these "hidden good news" which are not part of the Church's canon. In the next issue, the watercolors illustrating the individual episodes will be illustrated.
The Greek word apokryphos means "hidden": this was how the Christian Churches of the 1st-2nd centuries indicated those Jewish-Christian evangelical texts that were kept secret and which it was deemed appropriate not to divulge. It is obvious that they became, over time, a matter of initiatory tradition and that some considered them bearers of higher and deeper truths, to be drawn from an esoteric level, that is, reserved for those who had access to higher levels of theological or mystical.
Walking together in mutual service supported by love
- Parent Categories: Spirituality
Synod on the family
by Gianni Gennari
Two Synods (2014 and 2015) desired by Pope Francis. The news. Never had a Synod been preceded by a consultation of all the churches of the world. And here it was about family, marriage and sexuality, topics on which the Council, by papal decision, closed the discussion even among the bishops. After the Council, the theme of the family was addressed many times again, even in a Synod dedicated to it and concluded with the "Familiaris Consortio" of Saint John Paul II (1980). Taking this into account in 2014 one could simply refer to the text of Saint John Paul II: confirmation and forward... It didn't go that way...