To the Band of Brothers: January 28, 2021

Fr. Willie ‘87
Good morning!

As you know, we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Belen last week with a schoolwide Mass. Even though most of you attended the Mass virtually, we did have the sixth-graders there. I did something that may have been a bit unusual, even though it really shouldn’t be. You may have noticed it while you were tuning in on YouTube. As a matter of fact, I kept the sixth graders a little longer in the gym afterward to explain to them why I did it.

At the moment of the consecration and then again right before communion, I asked them to kneel. Right there where they stood, with no kneelers, on the basketball court, I asked them to kneel. It’s really not that unusual. The rubrics for the Mass ask for the people in the congregation to kneel. Actually, it gives them an option to either kneel or stand, but the standing option is really for those who physically can’t get down on two knees.

Here’s the thing. The most powerful prayer we have in the Church is the Mass. From the moment the priest processes in, to the moment he processes out, everything is one big, fat, powerful prayer. It is more powerful than the Our Father and more powerful than a Hail Mary (or 50 of them in the Rosary). It is even more powerful than any novena. Mass is the prayer king. In it you have a little bit of everything, but, most importantly, you have the Eucharist. You have the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

That’s it! Like in the 80s commercials for Old Milwaukee Beer, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Jesus becomes not symbolically present, but sacramentally present. It is his real presence as he promised it would be during the Last Supper and mandated it to be done all the time. If, then, bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus in one of the most significant moments of the Mass, why wouldn’t we kneel?

We oftentimes think that prayer is simply an exercise of the will expressed verbally or contemplated mentally. In reality, it is the whole person that prays, with thoughts, words, and physical expression. In other words, our body language is just as powerful as the words that come out of our mouths. Don’t believe me? Just see how your mother reacts when you tell her you will clean your room as you roll your eyes. Saying you will clean your room is one thing, rolling your eyes means something else.

When we kneel, it’s a physical expression of prayer. It’s an expression of recognizing that we are in the presence of something much greater than ourselves. Like men who bow or women who curtsy when approached by the queen, we kneel when in the presence of the King, Jesus Christ. Someone might think that Jesus doesn’t need us to kneel in his presence to know that we love him. That may be true, but my mother doesn’t need me to get her a gift for her birthday for her to know that I love her and, yet, I do it.

In fact, it's not so much what kneeling does for Jesus, but what kneeling does for us. It is one of the very few opportunities we get in life to express humility. We live in a society that has a hard time doing that, but humility is a great and underrated virtue. Kneeling helps remind us that we are not gods and that we need the One who is. Kneeling in the presence of the Eucharist is an exercise that helps us become better men and better Christians. And when you have to do it when there is no kneeler, then the greater effort means a greater expression.

So, that’s it. Don’t be surprised the next time we are at Mass and you hear me remind you again. The plan is to keep saying it until, as a community of faith, we do it without the need to be prompted. Hopefully, it won’t take too long. You guys are fast learners.

Auspice Maria
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BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain.  The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline.  In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty.  The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow.  Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.