Orans is Latin for “praying.” In liturgy today, the “orans position” is the gesture whereby the priest extends his arms out from his sides, with hands open and facing up, during certain of his audible prayers at Mass.
What Is It for Today?
The orans position (or sometimes, orante), is obviously different from the priest folding or joining his hands, and is prescribed for the celebrant at various points in Mass: for example, during the Opening Prayer, most of the Eucharistic prayer, and the Our Father. The “orans issue” is the recent practice of some lay persons in the congregation adopting this gesture as their own, notably during the Our Father, and introducing thereby, if nothing else, disunity in worship.
While the orans position has rich tradition in Jewish and even ancient Christian prayer life, there is no precedent for Catholic laity assuming the orans position in Western liturgy for a millennium and a half; that alone cautions against its (re)introduction without careful thought. More specifically — and notwithstanding the fact that few liturgical gestures are univocal per se — lay use of the orans gesture in Mass today, besides injecting some gestural disunity in liturgy, could be used by some to suggest a blurring of the differences between lay liturgical roles and those of priests just at a time when distinctions between the baptismal priesthood and the ordained priesthood are struggling for healthy rearticulation.
Since at least the mid-1990s, bishops, liturgists, and other observers have discussed the orans issue at Mass and possible ways to resolve it, including ratifying the gesture for lay use. These discussions (summarized in Adoremus Bulletin, November 2003) have been interesting as far as they go, but they seem not to ask the fundamental question: Namely, what is the orans position in liturgy for today? From insight into its contemporary liturgical purpose, presumably, one could formulate rubrics for its use. The orans issue is not one that congregations invented; rather some liturgical activists seem to have promoted it as a vehicle to advance an agenda. Still, I want to consider the further possibility that the current rubric calling for the priest to assume the orans posture during the Our Father might itself be misplaced and susceptible to confusion in the congregation.
When the Priest Prays Aloud and Alone
The first thing to notice in this matter is that, with the problematic exception of the Our Father, the orans position is prescribed for the priest predominantly when he is praying aloud and alone as, for example, during the Opening Prayer, the Prayer over the Gifts, and the Post-Communion Prayer. When, however, the priest is praying aloud and with the people, for example, during the Confiteor or the Creed, his hands are usually joined. In other words, when the priest is praying aloud and on behalf of a then-silent congregation, clearly exercising a leadership role, the orans posture being used then does not occasion congregational gestural imitation because the people are silent at that point in the Mass.
Conversely, though, when prayers are said aloud by the priest and people, the fact that the priest’s hands are joined during such prayers occasions — if anything by way of congregational imitation — the traditional gesture of joined or folded hands expected among the laity at Mass in the West. From these observations, it seems that the rubric calling for the priest to assume the orans position during the Our Father, in which prayer he joins the people instead of offering it on their behalf, is at least anomalous, and possibly inconsistent with the presidential symbolism suggested today by the orans position elsewhere in the Mass.
There remains to consider, though, how this miscue (if it is one) appeared in the liturgy. I suggest that originally, the orans rubric for the priest during the Lord’s Prayer was not a mistake, but that it quietly became one in the course of liturgical reforms undertaken by Pope Pius XII just prior to Vatican II.
A Case for Changing the Rubrics
The Our Father (Pater) has been a part of the Mass for many centuries. Over that time, of course, language barriers occasioned and rubric evolution reinforced the assignment of more and more prayers to the priest. Eventually, the Pater became a prayer that was offered by the priest on behalf of the people, whose exterior participation in that prayer was, by the early 20th century, limited to a vicarious one via the server’s recitation of the closing line, Sed libera nos a malo (But deliver us from evil). A look at the pre-Conciliar rubrics in any sacramentary regarding the Pater is consistent in showing the priest’s hands extended, that is, in an orans position, as one would expect for prayers the priest offers on behalf of the congregation.
But in 1958, as part of Pope Pius XII’s liturgical reforms, permission was granted for, among other things, the congregation to join the priest in praying the Pater, provided that they could pray in Latin (AAS 50: 643; Eng. trans., Canon Law Digest V: 587). Thus, for the first time in many centuries, a congregational recitation of the Lord’s Prayer was possible. Lay recitation of the Pater was not mandated, and there is no evidence that this limited permission for congregational recitation of the Pater occasioned awareness that such permission, if it was widely acted upon, might necessitate a change in the rubrics. By then, it seems, the orans posture and the Lord’s Prayer were associated, not with the manner in which the prayer was being offered, but with the prayer itself. From there, it seems, the orans rubric for the priest during the Our Father simply passed unnoticed into the new rite of Mass.
Today, of course, the priest is not praying the Our Father for the people the way he does several others prayers on their behalf in Mass, and in which prayers they participate by silent interiorization, marked by a vocal “Amen”; rather, the priest and people pray the Our Father together in Mass. Lay persons should not be imitating the priest in what seems to have become in the West a posture appropriate (in public liturgical prayer, anyway) to celebrants. But, if the above analysis is correct and the orans position has come to symbolize priestly prayer over the congregation instead of with it, then neither should the rubrics any longer call for the priest to extend his hands during the Our Father as if he is praying on behalf of the congregation. The rubrics should be changed to direct the priest to join his hands during the Our Father, as he does for other vocal prayers offered with the people. If Rome decides to do this, I think the orans issue might resolve itself quickly.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Edward Peters has doctoral degrees in canon and civil law. His canon law website can be found at www.canonlaw.info. The opinions expressed in this article are Dr. Peters’, but some of the ideas behind this analysis arose from bright students’ questions in his Liturgy & Sacraments classes.
