Before we come to the table of Eucharist together we first
confess our sins so that we as a community might be in right relationship with
God and each other to actually be what we receive: Communion. When we pray, ‘I
have greatly sinned”, we speak through the words of King David’s prayer of
repentance to God (1 Chr. 21:8) echoing his sorrow. Along with prayers of sorrow,
in the Old Testament, God’s people would repent through physical expressions of
sorrow: beating of the breast, tearing their clothes, sitting in sack-cloth and
ashes, etc. During this prayer we enter into this practice by making a fist
with our hands and gently striking our breast as we pray the three-fold
repetition: ‘through my fault’. This repetition makes present that experience
of being so sorry that we apologize more than once to fully express our sorrow
and desire to be in right relationship.
If sin is an obstacle in our relationship with God, then we
need a moment to acknowledge what keeps God from working effectively in our
lives. In an important way, then, we are
acknowledging our need for God, his place in our lives, and inviting him into our
hearts that need healing. The gesture of
striking our breast is thus not simply remorse, but also focus, invitation.
(Information in this post was compiled by Fr. Pat, Jonathan, and Suzanne.)
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