Fall on Your Knees: Why Kneel to Pray?
By: Joseph Serwach
Tags: Prayer, Spirituality, Religion, Catholic, Christianity

Why we fall on our knees: It was our son’s third birthday in August 1990, and I was outside planting trees.

The whole world fixated on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Iraq took over the news for months (then years, then decades). By early 1991, it felt like all worldly power united. Iraqi soldiers begged for mercy, hands up in the air, falling to their knees in surrender.

When all else fails, we surrender, hands up, falling to our knees

Many good people have their own story of total surrender: We spend years doing things our way, looking everywhere for love, for fun, and answers. When all else fails, we try the one last thing: surrendering.

Usually, it involves a relationship, one door slamming shut: someone is dying or already dead, a job is lost, a dying marriage, animosity within families, a time of public humiliation, or a time when we are out of money and hope, a moment when the world seems almost united against us.

We surrender, falling on our knees, pleading, “What do you want me to do, God? I’ll do whatever You want me to do. Give me the strength, send me a sign, please show me The Way.”

That moment of surrender is when the impersonal relationship (thinking of God as a force of nature or maybe a kind, good teacher) turns into a personal relationship, where respect turns into a close encounter, getting to know Him.

“Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts.” ― Mother Teresa.

Why do Catholics genuflect, sit, stand — and kneel in Mass?

Genuflecting at the sight of Jesus? Genuflecting is a sign of adoration, something people do before their King. We enter or exit a chapel and see the cross or the tabernacle holding the Most Blessed Sacrament, and we bend the right knee to the ground, making the sign of the cross.

Genuflecting is a sign of adoration, something people do before their King. We enter or exit a chapel and see the cross or the tabernacle holding the Most Blessed Sacrament, and we bend the right knee to the ground, making the sign of the cross. Sitting helps us listen to the Word of God: When someone has something vitally important to tell you, they first ask you to “sit down.” That focuses us on what we are about to hear. We sit listening to the Old Testament, Psalms, and New Testament readings. If you attend the Catholic Mass every day for three straight years, you will hear about 13 percent of the Old Testament and more than 71 percent of the New Testament read aloud during the course of those Masses.

When someone has something vitally important to tell you, they first ask you to “sit down.” That focuses us on what we are about to hear. We sit listening to the Old Testament, Psalms, and New Testament readings. If you attend the Catholic Mass every day for three straight years, you will hear about 13 percent of the Old Testament and more than 71 percent of the New Testament read aloud during the course of those Masses. Standing is a sign of honor and respect: Just as Americans stand when a judge enters a courtroom or when the president enters a room, we stand when the priest enters and leaves the Church during Mass. We also stand as we hear the Gospel (only a priest or deacon can read the Gospel at Mass). We also stand for the Nicene Creed, where we share what we believe as the Body of Christ.

Image by Deborah Eilert from Pixabay

Kneeling is a sign of respect, adoration, and surrender. Just as a man “gets down on one knee’’ to propose marriage, we kneel when the priest turns bread and wine into the Body and Bread of Christ. When consuming the Eucharist, we are consuming Christ Himself. Falling to your knees is also a sign of surrender, putting “Thy Will’’ above “my will.’’

“Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices! O night divine, O night when Christ was born… So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming…The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger; In all our trials born to be our friend.” — John Sullivan Dwight.

When hardened hearts break apart, they open to the light and love

If you really want to understand love or truth or an uncertain Universe, you go to the Author of the Universe, who is love and truth itself. After reading the book, why not get close to the Author and learn the rest of the story?

This is why St. Maria Faustina Kowalska wrote, “If the angels were capable of envy, they would envy us for two things: one is the receiving of Holy Communion, and the other is suffering.” (Diary, 1804).

We make ourselves completely vulnerable through suffering, our hardest walls of defense fall apart, and our inner core is exposed. St. John Paul the Great referred to “redemptive suffering” as the way we take up our own cross and suffer as Christ suffered on the cross to redeem ourselves and others.

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”― Søren Kierkegaard.

Suffering then Surrendering: Heart without words

People who knew John Paul recall how he often stopped at the nearest chapel to lay prostrate for as long as he could: his arms and legs straight out, lying flat, face down before the altar.

Laying prostrate is a sign of humility, submission, adoration, offering your whole life for the one you love. Our spiritual director says this complete surrender allows you to let go and let God take over. To truly feel close.

Picture two dogs fighting: the bigger dog takes over, assuming all control, so the smaller dog falls flat to the ground, paws in the air completely surrendering to the mercy of the other.

The “winning” dog then stops fighting, opens his heart then backs away. Then? Peace because they have settled who will lead and who will follow.

For centuries, the greatest saints and Catholic school students put three initials on the corner of every page of writing they wrote: “JMJ,” for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This was how they let the world know all they wrote was for the Holy Family, something greater than themselves.

Mahatma Gandhi explained, “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

A dream of Jesus from Jordan Peterson: the greatest kings buried in a great cathedral came back to life, and these heroic kings were ready to battle because each had ruled their world their way. “What stops the great kings of the past from fight?”

They all bowed down to Christ, a “transcendent” king all could — even the most tyrannical kinds — could agree above all of us. We all have an inner spark of divinity others can recognize, he argues. When we make anything less than God our king, we get lost. The encounter with something truly admirable and greater produces awe.

If we put the world first in our lives, there is little time left for anything else: a new study says Americans spent 17 hours per day looking at electronic screens, which may have risen to 19 hours during the Pandemic.

If we put Jesus first, surrendering ourselves to a cause higher than ourselves and our world, we find our capacity to love everyone else in our lives is limitless.