In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, the future Pope Benedict XVI frets over the fact that believers have grown unaccustomed to kneeling. Not prone to hyperbole, Ratzinger said that a “faith no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core” because it “no longer knows the One before Whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture” ( The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 194). His is a clarion call to the Faithful to rediscover both the necessity and power of kneeling during prayer.
By referring to kneeling as an “intrinsically necessary gesture,” Cardinal Ratzinger is making a profound point, that given our cultural malaise, we are prone to miss. A gesture can be necessary; necessary because as body-soul composites we are incapable of being “spiritual” without accompanying bodily postures. To divorce our bodily actions from our spiritual ones does not make us more spiritual, but makes us less human. Worship for man is done in his body and therefore must be reflected by his body bodies. Not only that, but his bodily posture affects his soul and disposes it to receive Divine gifts. Common sense would tells us that a man lying in a recliner and addressing Almighty God is far less likely to be disposed to receive the Divine Guest than a man standing at attention or kneeling. Summarizing then, St. Thomas Aquinas says, “thus external, physical symbols are shown to God for the purpose of renewing and spiritually training the inner soul. This is expressed in the prayer of Manasse: ‘I bend the knee of my heart.’ ‘For every knee shall be bowed to me: and every tongue shall swear’ (Is. 45:24)” (Commentary on Ephesians, Chapter 3, Lecture 4).
If our bodily posture conveys a message both to the outer and inner world, then what makes kneeling specifically necessary? There is, of course, the argument from authority. We kneel before “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 3:14) because God has commanded it. “Kneeling,” Ratzinger says, “does not come from any culture—it comes from the Bible and its knowledge of God. The central importance of kneeling in the Bible can be seen in a very concrete way. The word proskynein alone occurs fifty-nine times in the New Testament” (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p.185). St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians says that “In the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10). Kneeling is our response to Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This helps to explain why it is also the preferred position of Christ Himself when He prays, especially when He prays in the Garden of Gethsemane (c.f. Luke 22:42). Since all of our prayer is simply a participation in His prayer, we should assume the same posture. More accurately, when we kneel down to pray, we are kneeling beside Christ Himself and praying with Him.
Why God Wants Us to Kneel
But God does not command us to perform anything without reason so that the reason for kneeling also matters. Kneeling is an exterior manifestation of our interior humility. It is a recognition, and even at times a reminder, of the fundamental chasm between us and God. Prayer, in order to be heard, must come from the place of humility (c.f. Ps 101:18, Sirach 35:21). For “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Kneeling is an act of recognition of one’s weakness and insignificance. Also, because strength is found in the knee, to bend the knee is to make oneself weak and vulnerable. As Ratzinger says, to bend our knee is to bend our strength to the living God in acknowledgment of His lordship over us.
Kneeling then is good for us because it disposes us to receive God as He is and as we are. It is when we are on our knees that we are strongest—“for when I am weak, I am strong.” Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History gives us two examples of kneeling that further demonstrate the point. He tells of St. James the “brother of the Lord” having callouses on his knees from his constant prayer for others. Likewise, he gives an account of a certain Abba Apollo who saw the devil as a hideous creature with no knees. The Devil has no knees because he has rendered himself incapable of adoration. He cannot stoop at all because of his pride. He is, to use modern parlance, spiritual but not religious. At the heart of religion is giving to God what is due to Him so that modern man has lost the ability to kneel because he has ceased to be religious.
Kneeling is the only way in which we might see God. We must make ourselves smaller to see the Big Picture. This is why when Christ reveals Himself to soldiers who seek to arrest Him in the Garden, His words of self-revelation knock them to their knees. Likewise the Wise Men when they journey to meet the King of Kings must stoop to enter the cave in which He was born. It is only from that vantage point that He can be recognized. Kneeling is necessary to see God.