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Good morning, Father, I would ask you other various questions.
What is Dominican Venia?
Is it a penance?
A devotional practice?
May lay people apply it in their private prayer?
The Priest’s answer
Dear friend from the Philippines,
1. Venia is a prostration that is done by lying on the floor, on the right side and holding the scapular at the height of the face.
It is certainly a penitential practice. That is a ritual in the assembly for sins, when all the friars gather to mutually amend. But it is also done on other occasions.
2. The assembly for sins is the meeting of all the brothers of the community or even of a portion such as the novices among themselves, or the professed students who are not yet priests, or among the priests.
It begins by arranging themselves in two rows facing ad invicem, that is, face to face.
The prior, or the master of novices, who presides, says: faciant veniam qui se reos existimant et dicant culpas suas (let those, who consider themselves at fault, make apologies and tell their sins).
Everyone prostrates making apologies and rises at a sign by the one who presides.
Then, in the middle of the assembly, each one declares his own infractions against the rule and the common life.
The infractions are declared and not the sins, because those are secretly told in confession.
Once his own accusation is over, the subject puts himself in apology and awaits the charitable observations by the brothers and the one who presides.
Then, after receiving the penance, he returns to his place.
3. Venia is made (or rather was made) at the end of the choral celebration whenever a mistake had occurred, for example by reciting an antiphon or a psalm instead of another or for any other error. The same thing is done in the refectory at the end of the meals whenever someone had made mistakes in the reading or had broken or spilled something on the floor.
4. Sometimes, that is done after being caught in the act, for example when one violates silence.
5. In some provinces of the Order, like in France, it is made by all the capitular priests at the time of the election of the provincial prior. In this case, it represents obedience and submission. It is also made at times when obedience is particularly demanding, such as when one moves from one convent to another. Venia is made at the time of reading the assignment to the new convent afore the whole community.
6. In privacy, anybody may do it as often as wanted.
It is one of the various personal ways of praying of St. Dominic, with the only difference that, in that time, our Holy Father was not lying on his side, but he turned his face to the ground.
Here is what we read about this way for praying: “Often the blessed Dominic also prayed lying completely on the ground with his face turned down, arousing feelings of compunction and repentance in his heart; and he repeated, sometimes so loudly as to be heard, that invocation of the Gospel: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner” (Lk 18:13).
Then, with devotion and respectful fear, he was recalling that verse of David: “It is I who have sinned; it is I […] who have done wrong” (2Sam 24:17).
And he was weeping and groaning loudly, adding: “I am not worthy to look up, to gaze into heaven because of my many sins […] because I made you angry, doing wrong in front of your face” (CEB, Prayer of Manasseh, 9-10).
7. The Prayer of Manasseh is an apocryphal work, attributed to Manasseh; by that king of Judah, a prisoner in Babylon, humbles himself abjectly, acknowledges his sins and prays to God to restore him in Jerusalem. His prayer was answered (2Chr 33:12-13).
The Prayer of Manasseh, although not accepted by the Council of Trent among the canonical books, is included in the appendix of the Clementine edition of the Vulgate to avoid losing its memory.
8. Nothing prevents anyone, a lay person as well, from doing it privately.
You can do it as a form of penitential prayer or even simply as a kind of repentance.
Wishing every good, I bless you
Father Angelo