(the above image of Mary is in front of the Hermitage here at Ava Prayer Fraternity)
OPEN HANDS / CLENCHED FISTS & PRAYER
On praying with open, outstretched hands: On one occasion, I gained new insight into this ancient gesture, when I read somewhere that the Assyrians had a word for prayer which meant: "to open the fist." The fist, and especially a fist raised threateningly, is the sign of a high-handed, even violent person. People grasp things in closed hands when they are unwilling to let go of them; they use clenched fists to assault and hurt and, even worse, to beat others down so that they cannot get up.
Those who pray, however, are saying before God that they are renouncing all highhandedness, all pride in their own sufficency, all violence. They open their fists. They hold up their empty hands to God: "I have nothing that I have not received from you, nothing that you have not placed in my empty hands. Therefore, I do not keep a frantic hold on anything you have given me; therefore, too, I desire not to strike and hurt but only to give and to spread happiness and joy. For I myself am dependent on him who fills my empty hands with his gifts."
(Balthasar Fischer in Signs, Words, and Gestures, Pueblo Publishing Co, 1981)
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