By Katharine E. Harmon, February 2, 2026
So this is where we are. The world is falling into chaos. Children deported to meet quotas. Earthquakes in San Francisco. War in the Holy Land. Polar bears falling off melting ice caps.
And we’re really worried about kneeling for reception of holy communion?
Oh yes we are.
Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte issued a pastoral letter on norms for Holy Communion this past December which has now been making the rounds, even in secular media sources like the Washington Post. Why do we care so much? In a world where nothing seems controllable—neither the most depraved tendences of humanity nor the defenseless polar bears—we sure can control how we respond to the Divine.
We are responding to the Divine, right?
When we choose to kneel—to sit, to stand, or to adopt some posture culturally understood as reverent—we are kneeling (or sitting or standing) to convey our relationship to the Other. For many of Euro-North American heritage, we kneel because we did so in feudal Europe as a sign of submission. We stand to signal the importance of the person/s we are encountering, hearing, or seeing. And, we sit when we are in the presence of equals. Or to listen comfortably while there are many announcements.
The liturgical rite offers us the opportunity to show how we are in relation to God through how we move, how we sit, and how we stand. There is general uniformity around how we do these things for the universal Church. The cultural vicissitudes around postures and symbolic gestures surrounding liturgical symbolic acts, such as communion reception, are determined by regional episcopal conferences.
In the United States, an individual may make a choice to make a profound bow, receiving communion in procession, or to kneel. Choice is good. Free will is good. Usually. Except when it isn’t.
Why should we have this urge to kneel? Kneeling provides us a break with our normal postures—in a world where there are no holy things—changing one’s body so that it can only be reasonably read as responding to the holy presence of God makes perfect sense.
But the right to personal spiritual growth from electing to kneel for communion reception says nothing about the necessity of extra furniture in the communion rite, nor the battle lines of “traditional” and…um…”traditional,” drawn by such oppositions of kneeling and standing for communion reception.
Yes, let’s kneel if we want to, in order to receive holy communion (though we could easily note that unified gestures express unity of the Mystical Body, but let’s not bother with that). And if your historic church still has its altar rail, you should just leave it there, along with all the statues, stations, and gobs of votive lights. I’ve had enough of torn-apart, stripped down churches which were once painstakingly adorned by our immigrant forefathers and mothers.
But of all things—if bishop says we shall stand to receive communion—let us accept it and start to consider what these symbols mean. Standing together, on a pilgrimage to the Lord, seeking to be fed by the One who changes all things and gathers all people to himself.
And, just maybe, we should pay attention to more that comes from our bishops’ mouths and pens than words about liturgical aesthetics. Maybe we should pay attention to mercy. To charity. To the poor.
So, the next time you’re en route to receive communion—where is your mind and heart? On what you’ll look like when you’ll receive? Or on the One you’re receiving?
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