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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
For when men pray they do with the members of their bodies what befits suppliants—when they bend their knees and stretch out their hands, or even prostrate themselves, and whatever else they do visibly, although their invisible will and the intention of their heart is known to God. Nor does He need these signs for the human mind to be laid bare to Him. But in this way a man excites himself to pray more and to groan more humbly and more fervently. I do not know how it is that, although these motions of the body cannot come to be without a motion of the mind preceding them, when they have been made, visibly and externally, that invisible inner motion which caused them is itself strengthened. And in this manner the disposition of the heart which preceded them in order that they might be made, grows stronger because they are made. Of course if someone is constrained or even bound, so that he cannot do these things with his limbs, it does not follow that, when he is stricken with remorse, the inner man does not pray and prostrate himself before the eyes of God in his most secret chamber.
(Augustine: De cura pro mortuis 5.7)
One smiles and tells the expert chef how good the sauce béarnaise is, not so much to inform him about the sauce (he knows better than we do how good it is) as to assure him that we are enjoying it and that we appreciate his efforts. But when a man kneels in his pew and repeats a litany of thanksgiving it is not, it seems, that he means to be informing God of anything—not even of his thankfulness. For God, unlike the chef, has no need of information.
1 In a passage somewhat reminiscent of Augustine, Jonathan Edwards says this: “To instance in the duty of prayer: it is manifest that we are not appointed in this duty to declare God's perfections, His majesty, holiness, goodness, and all-sufficiency. and our meanness, emptiness, dependence, and unworthiness, and our wants and desires, to inform God of these things, or to incline His heart, and prevail with Him to be willing to show us mercy; but suitably to affect our own hearts with the things we express, and so to prepare us to receive the blessings we ask. And such gestures and manner of external behaviour in the worship of God. which custom has made to be significations of humility and reverence, can be of no further use than as they have some tendency to affect our own hearts, or the hearts of others.” (THE RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS 2.9) Edwards's suggestion that one reason for gesticulation is to affect the hearts of others seems a natural addition to what Augustine says. It is noteworthy, however, that Edwards, unlike Augustine, shows no puzzlement over the idea that “external behaviour” might have “some tendency to affect our own hearts.“
2 “No less than words, actions or gestures are also a type of language; they too hold a message for us. They have a meaning which the person who sincerely wishes to pray the liturgy must get to know. Whether used by man for practical or symbolical reasons. gestures or ceremonies help man to express himself better, make his thought and intent clearer and more vivid.” FUNDAMENTALS OF THE LITURGY by John H. Miller C.S.C. (Notre Dame: Fides, 1959), p. 188.
3 “In the liturgy … kneeling was usually associated with fasting and was a penitential and suppliant posture.” op. cit., p. 192.
4 Augustine identifies the inner man indifferently as the soul (anima), rational soul (animus) and the mind (mens).
5 “They bless with their mouth, but they curse’ inwardly. ‘(Ps. 62:4)
6 I owe the idea developed in this section and the next to discussions with Stanley Cavell.