Question: During Lent the presider at Mass has the option of saying, after the Postcommunion prayer, a Prayer over the People. I have seen presiders go directly from the Postcommunion Prayer to the Prayer over the People, as though they were two paragraphs of the same prayer, and then say the simple form of the final blessing. In my reading of the rubrics, however, the Prayer over the People is part of the final blessing, and the blessing should be the longer form, not the usual one. Therefore, the proper sequence seems to be the following: 1) Postcommunion Prayer; 2) Announcements (if any); 3) “The Lord be with you …”; 4) “Bow your heads and pray for God’s blessing”; 5) Prayer over the People; 6) Longer form of final blessing, which includes “now, and remain with you forever”; 7) Dismissal. Unfortunately, the Roman Missal does not provide a single place with a full script for this scenario, leaving us unsure of what exactly to do. — D.J., Buffalo, New York
