Getting Ready to Pray
The traditional clasping of our hands together in prayer suggests begging or pleading. We petition God with hearts and hands in a posture of poverty and diminishment. We kneel in a similar posture of deep need.
Our reception of the Eucharist is the acceptance of the always-present offering of Life into our hands, received while standing. Open hands speak of an abiding sense that the divine generosity is available and expected.
Some Thoughts
These days as we prepare for celebrating this Divine Presence, we might practice open-handed praying and receiving of all the other ways the Divine Generosity is revealed.
We can pray with open hands with what has already been offered and maybe not totally accepted just yet.
We can live prayerfully these days with the increased awareness of all the other presences of God which can quite easily slip past our closed hands and hearts.
