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Author: Uwe Michael Lang
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Pages: 156 pages
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Publisher: Ignatius Press;
First edition (February 28, 2005)
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Language: English
About The
Author
Uwe Michael Lang is a young
German patristic scholar of enormous promise who, from a Lutheran background,
was received into the Catholic Church while at Oxford and is now a priest of
the London Oratory.
Structure
Introduction
I The
Reform of the Liturgy and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar
II Direction
of Prayer, Liturgy, and Church Architecture in the Early Church
1.
Facing East: The Christian Direction of Prayer
2.
The Direction of Prayer and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar
3.
Liturgy and Church Architecture
III The
Common Direction of Liturgical Prayer: Its Theological and Spiritual
Contents
1.
The Relevance of Liturgical Practice in the Early Church
2.
Turning to the Lord—The Theological Dimension of Liturgical Practice
a.
The cosmic symbolism of sacramental
worship
b.
The position of the celebrant and the sacrificial character of the Mass
c.
Adoration and contemplation
IV Turning
to the Lord
Scope
"Turning toward the
Lord" is the translation of a phrase St. Augustine often used when he had
finished his sermon and was beginning the Eucharistic liturgy. While reading
the Scriptures and preaching, Augustine and the lectors
faced the congregation; afterward, he,
the assisting ministers, and the faithful turned toward the Lord, all facing in
the same direction during the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. In recent
times the phrase "facing the people" (versus populum) has been used
for the current practice in which the priest and people face each other during
the Eucharistic prayer. This way of celebrating the Eucharist (not mentioned in
the document on the liturgy at Vatican Council II) took a generation ago when liturgical scholars and reformers
claimed it was the ancient practice. In this book, he adds his voice to the
increasing number of those who seek a reconsideration of the quick introduction, in the later 1960 centuries,
of Eucharistic celebration ‘towards the people’, versus populum. He wants to
demonstrate that there are no historical grounds for the claim that the
Eucharist was celebrated "facing the people" in the early Church. All the evidence—literary, theological,
archaeological—shows that during the Eucharistic prayer the priest and the
faithful faced in the same direction.
The aim of this study are:
First, an
examination of the historical evidence will show that the orientation of priest
and people in the liturgy of the Eucharist is well-attested in the early Church
and was, in fact, the general custom. It will be evident that the common
direction of liturgical prayer has been a consistent tradition in both the East
and the West. Lang makes this examination because some liturgist claimed that
celebrant’s position facing the people during the Eucharist was the practice of
the early Church that should be the norm for our age.
Second,
He likes to argue, relying on the thought
of contemporary theologians, that the permanent face-to-face position of priest
and people are not beneficial for a real
participation of the faithful in the liturgy, as envisaged by Vatican II. Lang
makes this examination because some liturgist also claimed that the active participation of the faithful, a principle that
was introduced by Pope Saint Pius X and is central to Sacrosanctum Concilium, demanded the celebration towards the
people.
THESIS
Lang devotes most of his
study to refuting the two arguments for the priest facing the people. The first
is historical, where he demonstrates that orientation in the strict sense, that facing east, is primitive and
nearly universal in the ancient churches. While compatible with a pagan orientation to the sunrise, and possibly
motivated by distinction from Judaism, its original focus is the risen and
ascended Christ, expected to return, as he had departed, on the Mount of Olives
east of Jerusalem. Its significance was primarily eschatological (the East was
the direction of the Christ of the Parousia, cf. especially Mt 24:27 and 30)
and, naturally, it applied to all the faithful, including their ministers.
It
must be noted that the vast majority of ancient churches have an oriental apse. Granted that the altar was
the most honored object in such
buildings, the only safe inference is, accordingly, that the celebrant stood at
the people’s side, facing East, for the Anaphora. But also, there are delicate and well-documented discussions of the Roman and
North African churches where the apse is in the west, that the celebrant in
such a case prayed facing the doors (and thus the people) but did so with hands
and eyes alike raised to the ceiling of the apse or arch, where the decorative
schemes of early Christian art are focussed. At the end of this effort,
Lang would like to persuade that the celebration versus populum in the modern sense was unknown to Christian
antiquity.
Turning
to the second matter, Lang argues on theological grounds that the ‘active
participation’ of the people in the liturgical action is not impeded but
promoted by facing the same way as the priest at the altar. He had already
shown that ‘towards the people’ was historically never more than descriptive;
it was not seen as theologically or pastorally significant, and the priest was
never understood in oriented prayer to be turning his back on them.
Theologically, the Eucharistic Oblation is not offered by the priest to the
people. It is offered by the people,
through and with the priest, to the Father by the mediation of Christ, our
Great High Priest, in the Holy Spirit. Which spatial arrangement makes this
theological doctrine more visible – celebration versus populum or celebration versus
apsidem, where celebrant and assembly
face together in the same direction? One might well reply that to have asked
this question is already to have answered it, and nothing more remains to be
said.
Now
in an argument which makes interesting use of Protestant experience, and that
of the Tractarians who restored the eastward prayer in the Church of England,
he finds a wide variety of theological support for the typology of prayer in
which priest and people face God together. Worship round the table implicitly
denies God transcendent, whereas prayer towards God is both Trinitarian and
eschatological, speaking to the Father as those united by the Spirit in the
body of Christ, and looking for the coming of the ascended Lord. Even where for
practical reasons this cannot be eastward, where anciently believers looked, it
should be in the same direction, usually
towards the altar. Lang allows that the Eucharist is a meal, but emphasizes
that it is also a sacrifice, which this way of behaving symbolizes.
REFLECTION
This reading is challenging.
Before reading this book I just like most people also thought that the two most
obvious effects of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council seem to
be the disappearance of Latin and the turning of the altars towards the people.
I was astonished to learn that neither is in fact found in the decrees of the
Council, especially that the celebration versus apsidem is out of dated. Affected
in Eastern culture, I think that the celebration
versus apsidem is impolite. By reading this book, now I know that the issue was
not the priest turning away from the people, but, on the contrary, his facing
the same direction as the people. Particularly
in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the priest leads the people in prayer and is
turned, together with the people, towards the Lord. So that, the common
direction of priest and people is intrinsically fitting and proper to the
liturgical action. To understanding this reading well, someone has to have a good sense in symbol and some
background of Eucharistic theology, especially The Eucharis as a sacrifice. Those
who still deny its sacrificial importance will be skeptical when reading this
book. Some of those who find the Eucharistic sacrifice is originally the shared meal will find this patient, skillful argument a considerable
challenge to raise their eyes higher and acknowledge a strand of Eucharistic
vision too easily forgotten.
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