…And With Your Spirit. {Part 2}

The Sign of Peace, as I mentioned last week, has always been a part of Mass that holds great significance for me. It truly serves a healing purpose in my mind, a notion which originated in my family’s treatment of the Sign of Peace as a time to hug one another, even if others around us at our home parish were shaking hands.

In high school, the hugging became the norm: in fact, I am sure visitors to Jesuit High School are shocked at the amount of enthusiastic hugs that are shared during weekly Friday Masses. The Sign of Peace is quite a unique countercultural experience for teenagers at my high school, which was (and is) key to forming the incredible sense of community there. I have that community to thank for so much of who I am today.

So what does the Sign of Peace mean at Notre Dame?

The Sign of Peace at a Ryan Hall retreat

The Congregation of Holy Cross takes as its model the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  Speaking to hall staff this past summer, Fr. Pat Reidy, C.S.C. described this familial charism as guiding the residential mission of Notre Dame: 

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph offer us the model for how any group of people should love each other, united in charity.  Following their model of love, Holy Cross seeks to build communities that attend to one another in struggles, assist one another in good works, and celebrate together in times of joy.  Family isn't necessarily an easy thing for us – it certainly wasn't always for the Holy Family - and yet, it’s precisely the work of our growing into holiness, into wholeness, into the men and women that God created us to be.”

In a very real way, the Sign of Peace is the epitome of the familial atmosphere in our residence halls. It is a time to show one another both that we are a family and that we are loved as individuals. The point is not to prove that one knows everyone in the dorm; the time set aside for the Sign of Peace can, I think, be taken too far. There is a right concern with interrupting the prayerful atmosphere directly after the Our Father, and the community love seems to be taken to an extreme when the priest must practically wrestle people back for the Lamb of God.

But when the Sign of Peace is a nod to the community gathered, flowing from the Eucharist, it serves the function it is meant to in the Mass. “Eucharist” means “Thanksgiving.” Through the Sign of Peace, we reverence Christ’s presence in others as we prepare to share the Eucharist, and allow them to do the same in us.

The Catholic faith is an incarnate faith. In-carnate. Embodied in flesh. Human createdness – incarnational createdness – is expressed very clearly through the physicality of practically everything we do at Mass. We pray with our bodies; we are not just spirits. There is a reason what we do involves water and bread and wine. We hold hands at the Our Father. We represent what is going on at Mass by sitting and standing and kneeling at various points. If we didn’t have bodies, in fact, many ways in which we experience God, such as in nature in things like mountains and sunsets (to give some larger, more typical examples), in a very real way wouldn’t matter.

On this same strain, I love hugs. I know I am not alone in saying that the Sign of Peace would not have the same effect for me if it was constituted by a set of a couple stiff handshakes with the people immediately to my right and left. My cousin, a recent graduate of Notre Dame, commented,

“[During the Sign of Peace] we are wishing that peace and God be with other people who we attend mass with on a pretty frequent basis (whether we actually know them or not). This should be something to hug about!!!” 

While I understand the need to re-evaluate the ways in which the Sign of Peace might more fully meet the faith-based needs of the congregation (as discussed above), I believe it should meet the community-based needs as well. Obviously this will look different for various communities, but I think hugging accomplishes the goal of the Sign of Peace quite well in its current form in most residence halls here on campus.

Before the Church expanded all over the world, parishes used to be made up of one’s family. Our dorms are our homes, and dorm Masses are like celebrating Mass with family. They are our mini parishes. At least in worship, our residence halls are, in a lot of ways, the family and community many parishes are meant to be and hope to create. Rather than making normative a lesser, more formal ideal, why not make normative a community living in the loving image of the Holy Family and strive for that?

While it will clearly vary from parish to parish, region to region and country to country, the Sign of Peace remains both a sign of community shared and a real manifestation of Christ’s unconditional love and peace just before we break bread with one another. It is important, as the Circular Letter points out, to evaluate whether the Sign of Peace meets these goals for each specific community. I would certainly argue that the hug-fest-style Sign of Peace in residence halls at Notre Dame, when done respectfully and reverently, serves just the purpose it is meant to.

May the Peace of Christ be with you.