Keys for Success during the Mass’s Most Stressful Tradition
Sunday Mass: A blessed, 2000 year-old tradition wherein people of faith across the globe gather in celebration and remembrance of God’s loving sacrifice for us. For many, it represents both the spiritual highlight of the week and an opportunity to gather in community with our fellow believers and be reminded of what is truly important.
The truth is, however, not every second of the mass is a picnic. About three quarters of the way through the celebration, after the last words of the Lord’s Prayer are uttered, Mass-goers are ripped from their prayerful, reflective state and thrust headfirst into a ten-second trial of social competency that would cause even the most extroverted of social butterflies to break a sweat: the Sign of Peace.
To an untrained eye, the Sign of Peace might appear to be a simple and brief period for people to exchange greetings and pleasantries with their friends and family before returning their attention to the altar. In reality, it is an intricate and complex obstacle course of social gymnastics which, more often than not, ends in at least one awkward encounter. But, as in any good challenge, failure is not inevitable. On the contrary, I’ve found that a successful sign of peace is relatively simple through three basic, yet vital, strategies. So let’s dive in.
1) Get Aggressive
Here’s the situation: The Our Father has just ended, and “Peace Time” is upon you. You aren’t worried, though, because your best buddy is in the seat directly to your left and should be an easy place to start. However, when you turn his way, you find that he has abandoned any loyalty to you in order to get first crack at the pretty girl to his immediate left. Suppressing your urge to panic, you spin around only to find the person to your right is already shaking hands with someone in the row behind you. Now completely out of options, all you can do is stand there. A sentinel of loneliness, waiting to be someone’s second choice.
If you want to avoid this, you’ve gotta get aggressive. Make a habit of mentally selecting one of the people sitting next to you as your primary target as soon as you sit down. When crunch time arrives, it’s a good idea to be starting your hug/handshake before the priest even finishes the phrase “Sign of Peace.” This ain’t the Olympics, and there’s no penalty for jumping the gun.
A vital tip: make sure that your mentally selected target is not one half of a couple. Couples are a strange beast when it comes to the practice of peace-giving. It doesn’t matter if they have a continuous, 24/7 texting conversation with each other. It doesn’t matter if your friendship with one of them predates their relationship by ten years. It doesn’t matter if they spend every second of their free time in each other’s arms already. The simple fact is that a couple will ALWAYS turn to each other first during the Sign of Peace, despite any plans you may have laid ahead of time. They cannot be counted on. If you can accept that, you’re going to spare yourself a lot of hurt feelings.
2) Be Ready for Anything
9 out of 100 “peace be with you” interactions you’ll experience are going to fall into one of two categories: the traditional handshake, or the more intimate hug. The difficult part comes in determining which one your “peace partner” prefers. Simply taking a guess can be risky business. If you opt for the immediate hug, you run the risk of creeping your partner out and fostering an uncomfortable tension between you for the rest of the mass. If you opt for the handshake when they prefer the hug, you run the risk of offending them and receiving a look of hurt confusion, which can be just as tense.
I have found the best solution to this problem to simply be letting your partner make the first move, without telegraphing any sort of preference on your part. However, there is always a chance that your partner will mimic this strategy, showing body language as ambiguous as yours. In this case, you are left with no choice but to act. The best technique here is a pose I like to call the “shug.” (Get it?) To execute this, you advance toward your partner with your right arm cocked loosely, in a position that could easily accommodate a handshake. At the same time, you hold your left arm up loosely near your head. As you get closer, analyze your partner’s body language for signs of a preference. If they seem to be showing “hug,” simply loosen both of your arms and embrace them in your favorite hugging style. If they seem to be showing “shake,” execute it with your right hand as you normally would and bring your raised left hand down in a warm, yet respectable shoulder clasp. Checkmate.
3) Stay Dry
The human body is an amazing creation. Among hundreds of thousands of other miraculous functions, we’re blessed with a built-in self-cooling mechanism through which sweat is emitted, via the pores of our skin, to keep us from overheating. This is a pretty neat mechanism for activities such as mountain climbing or long distance running. Unfortunately, this same mechanism has an annoying tendency to fire itself up during mass after forty-five minutes of prayerful hand clasping. Trust me: sweaty palms can be a serious problem if you’re hoping to capitalize on the Sign of Peace as an opportunity to make a good impression on the cute mass-goer sitting in front of you. For all you know, she could be your future wife, and this handshake could be the story you tell your grandkids someday. Unfortunately, your chances are going to tank in a major way as soon as she finds herself shaking a hand that feels like it spent the last half hour sitting in a bowl of lukewarm pasta.
For this reason, a preemptive cool-down period is vital. Fifteen minutes or so before peacetime, unfold your hands and use your left one to hold your right wrist. By doing this, you maintain a reverent pose while allowing “righty” the time it needs to air-dry. As a result, you’ll be ready to let the sparks fly when the time comes. In other words, keep your hand dry so your inbox won’t be.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, the Sign of Peace is more than just an awkward pause in the Mass: it’s a chance to look at the people around you, and to be reminded that the Catholic faith isn’t a lone-wolf operation. It’s a membership in a family. And really, family is one of the most important things we have. So for this tiny little thirty-second chunk of your week, every ounce of your focus should be spent on appreciating the people you love. And there’s absolutely no excuse for any of that time to be lost worrying about your overactive sweat glands.
If you stick to these three main strategies I’ve developed over my twenty-one years of mass-going experience, you’ll be able to glide through with no issues. So get out there and shake some hands. Hug some loved ones. Break some hearts. I believe in you.
Gavin Cummings
2019 Graduate