Bulletins
November 20, 2016
Download the Bulletin as a PDFWhatever the prayers and blessings were said before and after the pax and however many people eventually exchanged the pax, the Kiss of Peace itself also involves words.
When at the beginning of the third Christian millennium Pope St. John Paul II revised the prayers of the Ordinary Form of the Mass and published in 2002 the Third Edition of the Missale Romanum a proposed change in the Sign of Peace was not immediately obvious. The rubric in the body of the Roman Missal still stipulates that the pax “may” be done but offers little other guidance. With regard to the gesture it simply states: “And all offer one another a sign, in keeping with local customs, that expresses peace, communion, and charity.” The General Instructions for the Roman Missal, which appears at the beginning of the Roman Missal, specifies that the manner of the “sign of peace to be given… be established by the Conferences of Bishops in accordance with the culture and customs of the peoples”. With regard to words to be used during the pax, the GIRM states in paragraph 154 that “while the Sign of Peace is being given, it is permissible to say, The peace of the Lord be with you always, to which the reply is Amen.”
Even before the current English translation took effect in 2011, the new instructions for the Mass that appeared in the Missale Romanum became normative for us when an official English translation was released in the year 2003. You may recall from then that Bishop Loverde commissioned a detailed catechesis that was to be read at Mass, in which he encouraged us, among things, to use those words “The peace of the Lord be with you always” and ”Amen.” if and when the Sign of Peace was exchanged.
In the first millennium the words accompanying the pax were even more involved.
Those who handed on the kiss and those who received it were to say together: Pax Christi et ecclesiae abundet in cordibus nostris. (May the peace of Christ and of the church abound in our hearts.) In other cases this phrase is featured at least as the response of the [ministers], or it is put into the mouth of the celebrant, usually in combination with the aforementioned prayer, and with the variation: in cordibus vestris (in your hearts). But then the simpler Pax tecum (Peace be with you), the greeting which we heard from the lips of our Saviour Himself, with the answer of the recipient, Et cum spiritu tuo (and with your spirit), comes more and more into use.
(The Mass of the Roman Rite, pp. 332)
Now more than ever we know we need peace. May it abound in all our hearts!
God bless you.
Rev. Christopher J. Pollard
