Dear Parishioners,

In my bulletin article from last week, I began a series of reflections on liturgical gestures focusing mainly on the Sign of the Cross and the various times and ways this embodied action is woven throughout the Mass. This week I invite us to consider another gesture in the Mass, namely Striking One’s Breast.

As a liturgical act, striking one’s breast is prescribed in the Confiteor of the Mass which is sometimes prayed as part of the Penitential Act at the beginning of the sacred liturgy. It is one of several options that highlights human sinfulness and our utter dependence on God’s loving kindness. At one time, prior to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the Confiteor was prayed by the celebrant in the sacristy. It was intended to be a means of interior preparation prior to celebrating the formal ritual of the Mass. Over time, this prayer and the ritual of striking one’s breast got moved from the sacristy to the sanctuary immediately after the priest and servers entered and before the official beginning of the rite. With Vatican II, this entire Penitential Act (The Confiteor being but one option) became itself the beginning of the Mass that was prayed by the entire assembly, priest and assembly. Also prior to the liturgical reforms of the Council, striking one’s breast was done at other times in the Mass, e.g., at the consecration of the bread and wine, at a specific phrase in the Eucharistic Prayer when the priest prayed though we are sinners, we trust in your mercy and love, and at the Lamb of God. Now it is called for only in the Confiteor.

Striking one’s breast is a sign of repentance and humility. One can find it alluded to in the Bible, for example in Psalm 51, where the author speaks to God saying, a humble and contrite heart, O God, you will not spurn. It is more explicitly described in the New Testament parable of Jesus about the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:13). The evangelist wrote, But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” While his words expressed repentance verbally, the gesture of striking his breast expressed his repentance physically, in the language of the body.

The early Christians were familiar with this gesture. The church fathers, St. Augustine and St. Jerome both refer to it in their writings. St. Jerome stated: We strike our breast because the breast is the seat of evil thoughts: we wish to dispel these thoughts, we wish to purify our hearts" (In Ezekiel, c. xviii). In an old portrait of St. Jerome, he is depicted in the desert, kneeling on the ground and striking his breast with a stone. It appears as a somewhat violent gesture because in the ancient world it was believed that human thoughts and decisions emerged from the heart, not the mind. Striking one’s breast was tantamount to beating at the gates of our inner world so as to shatter them and expel all that was evil and opposed to God’s will. This mentality inspired some of the ancient Christians to strike their breast whenever sensual sins were mentioned.

Romano Guardini was one of the great liturgical scholars of the Second Vatican Council who laboriously tried to recover the meaning and relevance of certain signs and gestures. In his book, Sacred Signs, he describes the action of striking one’s breast.

“Made carefully and with full awareness, (this gesture) can communicate to ourselves and to others more than mere words can say, that we recognize our sinfulness and publicly declare our sorrow for our sins… Try it yourself. The rib cage is like an echo chamber. It you strike your breast properly, you’ll hear the sound of it: like the sound of thunder.”

***While in the current, reformed liturgy, the number of times this gesture is prescribed has been significantly reduced, the place where it is called for now receives greater prominence. Acknowledging our human sinfulness at the start of Mass is not intended to foster a negative understanding of our mortality as depraved, unholy and unworthy of God. (There are plenty of other realities in life that exist to convince us of this.) Instead it celebrates the abundance of God’s goodness who willed to walk among us in the person of Jesus Christ to assure us of our inherent goodness as creatures made in the image and likeness of God. When we strike our breasts we ultimately celebrate that Amazing Grace that saved a bunch of wretches like ourselves.

The following reflection by Barbara Schmich opens up various and subtle meanings of this humble sign.

Beating the Breast
How refreshing
to stop blaming others
to leave off looking for scapegoats
to finish with excuses

once for all.

How simple to say
“It is my fault”:
I have a share in the sad division of this world.
Out from the center of myself –

my heart, my breast –
under the pressure of my own suffering
have come thoughts and words and deeds
which discourage and separate and destroy.
From that place where alone I could resist
I have cooperated.
And the good, too, that is at the center of myself –
my heart, my breast –
the joyful good which forgives and encourages and unites the good which has occurred to me I have often left unthought, unsaid, undone. “It is my fault.” How right to beat my breast accepting my own ambivalence, my creaturely lot, and how liberating. I can begin to experience the mercy of God who takes unto himself the sin of the world and who grants us his saving peace. In him the good I do and the suffering I endure break forth into the fullness of life everlasting.

Blessings of the Easter Season,
Fr. Gabriel, OSB

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