PRAY 🤲

PRAYING WITH YOUR WHOLE BODY

The priest's posture during the communion prayer is a descendant of this.

Kneeling became fashionable in the Middle Ages.

 It was a position that people were used to because you knelt before a lord or the king.

We are all Brother & Sisters on earth

 Kneeling was used because as people began to have a more personal idea of God, they related to God as they would to their social superior. 

A similar theme can be seen in other cultures. Muslims, for example, bow, kneel and then bow their heads to the ground in prayer, which again imitates the posture used in the presence of a king or superior in Eastern medieval culture.

In some places, people lie face down on the floor to pray.

This is called prostration, and it is usually kept for particularly serious times of prayer 

In some churches now, it is used on Good Friday,or at the ordination of new clergy. 

In the past, monks or nuns might pray all night lying on the floor before taking vows to join the Monastery, and a knight might do the same before a battle.

Nowadays, the most common posture for prayer is sitting down.

 Differences are primarily about what you do with your hands—clasped together? Flat together?

 Open on your knees as if waiting to receive something from God.

 In the air, as if you are carried away at a rock concert or celebrating a goal?