Strike it meaningful.

Thirty years after vatican II, we're now free to reassess some popular devotions despised at the height of reform fever. I recall despising several myself, being wholly ignorant of their history or role in personal spirituality. ("So pre-vatican II," I would sniff at some custom, casting it into the outer darkness.) While certain lost devotions go unlamented -- I doubt that veneration of Saint Thomas Aquinas' chastity belt will ever revive -- others, such as ritual gestures, may bear reexamination within a modern spiritual context.

I enjoy exploring our rich Catholic heritage of bodily prayer and sacred gestures, whether venerable or newly evolved. Some gestures have been simplified, and rightly so. The Tridentine Mass had over 100 signs of the cross -- too much of a good thing. Still others are falling into disuse that may yet serve to unite body, mind, and spirit.

One such gesture -- striking the breast with a closed fist at the Penitential Rite during the Confiteor -- is ancient. Yet I've just begun to use it for the first time since my conversion to Catholicism in 1978. "I confess to Almighty God ... and to you, my brothers and sisters ... that I have sinned through my own fault ... [strike breastl."

Since Vatican II, this gesture has lapsed. But I've finally been moved to try it: timidly, self-consciously, looking to see whether anybody notices.

Striking the breast in remorse or mourning goes back thousands of years. Formal mourning gestures in the ancient world included beating the breast and tearing sackcloth garments, wailing, pouring ashes on the head, dishevelling hair, gnashing teeth. The Old Testament prophet Joel extolled spiritual mourning: "Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God" (Joel 2:12-13).

In the New Testament parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:11-13), the Pharisee prayed in the temple, "`O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity -- greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.' But the tax collector ... would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, `O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'" Even while they shunned him, everyone in that public place knew the state of the tax collector's soul by his body language.

Before our revised liturgy, the breast was struck with the fist three times during the Confiteor because the word fault is repeated. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ("Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault").

Even the early church father Saint Jerome is depicted in art beating his breast remorsefully with a rock. But with good reason: Saint Jerome had such a sarcastic tongue that his fellow monks found him impossible to get along with. As one said of the crotchety Jerome: "You do well to carry that stone, for without it you would never have been canonized."

Melodramatic? Perhaps. But a tiny thud on my heart at Mass makes me stop and think. I feel the weight of the sins I've committed that week -- however briefly. And it brings home the meaning of the words I so glibly recite. "I confess ... that I have sinned through my own fault ..." That tap is my talisman against smugness -- a reminder that the process of conversion is lifelong.

But some will ask, "Hasn't liturgical reform freed us from formal ritualistic gestures no longer based on everyday life? Aren't sackcloth and ashes passed to those accustomed to lifting their spirits with a quick jog and a natural endorphin high?"

The Church at Prayer: Principles of the Liturgy (Liturgical Press, 1987), edited by A. G. Martimort, says: "Far from being pare mental prayer, the liturgy is expressed orally and takes shape in bodily postures and gestures.... [There] is no real thought or feeling that is not spontaneously embodied in a posture or gesture."

This may explain why modern secular culture seems to regard the whole concept of sin as outdated because there are few penitential models or ritual gestures to follow.

Prayer that integrates the word with ritual gesture helps embody our spiritual lives; it integrates body, mind, and soul. It also serves as silent witness to others struggling with sin and faith, just as we are.

Got a rock, anybody?