Sign of Peace or Mere Greeting . . .

In many Catholic Churches, today, the Sign or Kiss of Peace has gotten way out of hand. Instead of a devout, dignified part of the liturgy, it has turned into a mad scramble to grab as many hands as possible before the priest reaches the Lamb of God and, even then, people are still racing around the church looking for unshaken hands. To me, it is a major distraction to what we have gathered at Mass to celebrate. It is not a time to renew friendships or grab in bear hugs people we just talked to coming into Mass. A missionary priest once explained the right and wrong way to approach this part of the Mass and a parishioner came out exclaiming, "If I want to extend the Sign of Peace and Christ's Love, I'm going to spread the Peace of Christ to as many people as possible!" This was even after it was explained that this was symbolic and if you run  around the pews in a handshaking frenzy, you are just greeting people . . . and greeting people belongs outside of the church.

A friend passed the following on to me from her church bulletin. It is nice to see a pastor giving such good instruction and I hope he has better luck with it than I've seen at our parish!

The Kiss of Peace has two directives from Scripture; to greet each other with a holy kiss, and, to leave your gift at the Altar and be reconciled with each other. Neither directive is to be taken literally. It is symbolic of the Peace of Christ flowing from the priest who is Christ to the people gathered in thanksgiving and then to all we meet beyond the Assembly. IT IS NOT A FREE-FOR-ALL. The Kiss of Peace should be characterized by dignity, not frenzy. So here goes:

1) The priest says: "The peace of the Lord be with you always".

2) We respond: "And with your spirit".

3) He says: "Let us offer each other the sign of peace".

4) We turn to the persons on our right and on our left and offer our hand (or if it is someone we are morefamiliar with, our cheek) and say "Peace be with you".

5) They respond: "And with your spirit".

We have to remember that the Eucharistic Liturgy/Mass is the Prayer of Christ to His Father. It’s NOT ours. We are privileged guests and we should behave with dignity and decorum, with respect. It’s not a rave or a tailgate party. So let’s take the instruction from our Bishop seriously and respect WHAT we do, and DO it with reverence.