Ad Orientum
This of course is Latin for “toward the East.†It is the traditional orientation of churches as well as the direction the priest faces during the Eucharistic prayer. That is it was up until about forty years ago. What is its significance? First, let me say what it isn’t. It is very often been mischaracterized as the priest facing with his back to the people. While it is certainly true that this is an effect of his orientation, the real problem with this mischaracterization is the same problem we have with popular expectations of the liturgy which are fueled by too many modern liturgists. The problem is that the point of departure for both is the “people†rather than the object of worship which is God. You see the priest, acting in the person of Christ, is mediating Christ’s Sacrifice on the part of the Church, to the Father. The priest is not offering the Sacrifice to the congregation, he is not reenacting a scene for their entertainment, he is sacramentally, Christ. Neither does the congregation play the part of the twelve apostles. The misguided “performance†of some priests who extend and then move the bread and wine from one side to the other during the words of consecration certainly can provide the misimpression that this is somehow a reenactment and that those of us in the pews are playing the part of the twelve apostles. But we are not. We ARE the Mystical Body, the Church. We are joining ourselves to Christ’s Sacrifice and offering the one Sacrifice of the Cross to the Father along with Christ in the person of His priest. Unfortunately, our stark but functional modern architecture, which often resembles an amphitheater more than a church, also often adds to the misimpression that we are there to be entertained. But try as they might, no liturgist with this as their goal as come close to entertaining anyone with the liturgy.Â
A couple of years ago, then Cardinal Ratzinger mentioned in an interview that he thought that a return to the ad orientum orientation would be a helpful move for assisting the faithful to better experience the active part they play in offering the Sacrifice of the Mass. Presumably, this experience would be articulated via necessary catechesis, preparing us for any such changes. He is correct of course. While many of these things are accidents, the way the priest is facing, his posture during consecration, church architecture, the future pope was still correct. Experience is mediated by some articulated structure. Because we are composite body and soul, the physical aspects of worship are an integral part of our total human experience. Knowing why we are doing what we do and having the symbols better express the reality which is taking place, are all so very important for letting the liturgical experience better represent the transcendent reality which our senses do not see. I honestly look forward to seeing a reform of the reform which will keep the good things which we have gained (vernacular, at least in the parts of Mass which change), a better sense of the need, if not actual achievement, for authentic participation (but this does not mean clericalizing the laity), and some (but not all) of the restructuring of the order of the Mass for example.
As I have said before, I have no idea what liturgical changes we will see from B16, which I have also guessed would come sometime after the synod, but I would not be surprised if the priest’s orientation is one of them. By the way, in the same interview, he mentioned that a re-introduction of some Latin would also be a good thing. Some possibilities being such things as some hymns (which is already becoming more and more popular around the U.S.), for the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Pater noster, and Angus Dei.
Hopefully, when they come the modern liturgists will embrace the changes as novelties as much as they do their other innovations?
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Very sensible piece. Let’s keep hoping - even after we are dissapointed. Hmm… I think I’m used to being disappointed (sigh)so I will pray for an increase in the virtue of Hope.
On a lighter note perhaps the people could face the other way and the priest could lead from behind? Oh wait… [cheap shot almost avoided :)]
Comment by Ron — October 25, 2005 @ 10:09 pm
Hopefully, when they come the modern liturgists will embrace the changes as novelties as much as they do their other innovations?
Good point, as long as it is seen progressive, it should be embraced. Ron - don’t repeat your lighter note too many times or you may see it at your local parish soon.
Comment by Anonymous — October 25, 2005 @ 10:17 pm
Ron -
Check out some of the synod’s propositions out today from VIS and Zenit. Proposition 2 is oblique but I still think promising. Proposition 36 seems to go beyond what I would expect with regard to a return to Latin.
Comment by David — October 26, 2005 @ 7:13 pm
Great post. Thanks. Now here’s my two Australian cents worth…
The thought has struck me that we need to understand what was missing from the Last Supper. Many contemporary liturgists want us to feel that we are all just like those disciples gathered around the table soaking up the great vibes, and celebrating the fact that we are all just there and have come as we are.
Well, here’s the rub. Jesus clearly did NOT call everyone to be around his “table”. Only the 12 were called. I can’t see any other explanation except that it was not only the institution of the Eucharist, but also the institution of the Priesthood.
Thus, if the Mass is truly the “do-this-in-memory-of-me” re-presentation of Christ’s eternal Sacrifice, then this example of Christ’s Last Supper is the starting point.
So on a practical level in line with B16’s call for catechesis: we must pass this understanding on to our kids. And then go on to printing off basic prayers in Latin, and learn them (I don’t know them myself, but we’re learning them in the car on the way to school!).
I’ve made some other comments here:
http://adjutoriumnostrum.blogspot.com/2005/10/more-latin-in-liturgy.html
Once again, thanks for your perceptive post.
Comment by Venerable Aussie — October 26, 2005 @ 7:49 pm
I think this suggestion, as well as many of the post-conciliar reforms miss the mark.
The true focus of liturgy was taught in Sacrosanctum Concilium: the worship of God and the sanctification of the people. To the degree that liturgy leaders respond to the Church’s definition of liturgy, yes, a good portion of liturgical effort must be expended to ensure a setting in which holiness is encouraged and developed.
The Western way, probably the main way, is through knowledge. We say, “seeing is believing,” and indeed, our devotional life backs this up: gaze at the host, adore the Body in the ostensorium, and so forth.
It’s my thinking that this sort of thinking contributed to the notion that sight lines should be idealized at Mass, and that amphitheatre seating exemplifies that.
Ad Orientam liturgy, like half-shell seating, have become political caricatures for the positions they oppose. A progressive position would look to monasticism and might suggest antiphonal seating as an ideal. I’ve also thought that seating in the round is an ideal post-conciliar expression. The latter is a radial, rather than a directional geometry that focuses on Christ at the center, which itself is not a bad reminder of the holiness we are called to imitate.
For the average parish in the US, I think Latin is a dead issue. We will not see its return, ever. Had liturgical reforms occurred a hundred or even four hundred years ago, I think there would have been hope. But not today.
Comment by Todd — October 27, 2005 @ 10:57 am
Todd,
I have to admit that I sometimes find your comments singularly unclear. However, I think that you’re advocating an organization of the Church assembly around the altar, as “an ideal post-conciliar expression.”
The problem with this is that it betrays an ignorance of the hierarchical ordering of the assembly, which flows down from the celebrant, its source. The Eucharistic assembly cannot, while being true to its natural symbolism, be a kind of round-table conference.
Moreover, the assembly does not belong to this earth as a static gathering. It is a dynamic gathering, an invitation by the Word to proceed with one another toward the Eucharistic banquet. The banquet has no end in itself; it should orient us toward our final, “parousial” uprooting. As Louis Bouyer put it in “Rite and Man,” (English translation, p 216), — “This is what has given rise to the basic axis, the orientation of the primitive ‘bema’ upon the altar, and of the altar upon the symbolic East, which lifts the earthly celebration above this Earth.”
Comment by Hierothee — October 27, 2005 @ 3:14 pm
hierothee, I disagree, with respect to Bouyer, whom I have read.
First, I’m not thinking round table. The Passover meal at table is the precursor of the Eucharist, though, and isn’t a bad image (among many) for the sacrament.
Stasis/dynamism is a consideration far superior to others advocated for a more linear arrangement. If ad orientam were advanced as an image of the earthly, rather than the heavenly, Church, I could understand it. It would be a strange notion indeed to turn the image on its head that way: that worship in the round imitated the heavenly assembly with completed pilgrimage, and the “traditional” Catholic set-up alluded to the earthly reality.
I agree with your last paragraph and Bouter’s thoughts. But I don’t see how worship in the round negates that.
Comment by Todd — October 27, 2005 @ 4:09 pm
Todd,
I have come to the conclusion that I just do not understand what on earth you’re talking about.
Sorry!
Comment by Hierothee — October 27, 2005 @ 6:56 pm
“The Western way, probably the main way, is through knowledge.”
This seems to betray Cartesian dualism. Knowledge is integral to worship no doubt but it is the whole person who enters into worship and not as an individual knowing but as the Body of Christ assenting. The ring around the altar certainly supports the dualistic view but that is a misappropriation that should not be subsidized.
For the average parish in the US, I think Latin is a dead issue.
The issue is only dead because that also reflects the faith life of the average parish. However, I do believe that the Holy Spirit can breath life into the now lifeless parish life and I have hopes given the comments of then Cardinal Ratzinger and now the Synod that Latin can be in part, the spring board for a new springtime in the Church.
The true focus of liturgy was taught in Sacrosanctum Concilium: the worship of God and the sanctification of the people.
Exactly! I follow Ratzinger/B16, Bouyer, and Hiérothée on this. Ad orientum is the most effective way to reflect the cosmic nature of the liturgy and simultaneously the hierarchical ordering of the assembly. We are directed as a body, mediated through Christ toward worship, of the Father in the most perfect way Jesus gave us, through offering of His Sacrifice as the one Sacrifice of the Church. It is both a personal and also a corporate action.
Comment by David — October 27, 2005 @ 7:02 pm
“(The emphasis on knowledge) seems to betray Cartesian dualism.”
Well, I present it as a fact of the scientific age. I don’t agree with it. But I suspect it can stray very close to a osrt of neo-Gnosticism.
“Knowledge is integral to worship no doubt but it is the whole person who enters into worship and not as an individual knowing but as the Body of Christ assenting.”
Okay, knowledge as part of the whole person. But I think there’s an important distinction between assent as an act of personal will and assent being backed up intellectually. I can assent without full understanding. Some might call that faith, which I would put much farther up the list than knowledge.
“The ring around the altar certainly supports the dualistic view but that is a misappropriation that should not be subsidized.”
I can’t agree.
“The issue is only dead because that also reflects the faith life of the average parish.”
Or it could be that your reasoning on this is circular. “Strong parishes could not possibly be authentic because they worship in the round.”
“Ad orientum is the most effective way …”
Not according to Church teaching. The Church has never advocated any single architectural approach. This remains solidly in the realm of prudential judgment, local tradition, and the particular spirituality of individual parish communities.
Comment by Todd — October 29, 2005 @ 10:53 am
More from Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger), who has been consistent on this theme:
“Because of the rising sun, the east…was naturally both a symbol of the Resurrection…and a presentation of the hope of the parousia. Where the priest and people together face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also an interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of resurrection and trinitarian theology” (Feast of Faith, 140).
The eastward direction of prayer in the Christian assembly is the primitive (in Husserl’s sense) form of the Christian liturgy (see Jungmann and Metzger contra Nussbaum). It connects with the natural symbolism of the Eucharist, which draws us, together, to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. It symbolically orients us, and the cosmos with us, forward. It does not lock us in on ourselves.
I wish to make two ancillary points, briefly: 1) there can be no organic growth in the liturgy that deviates from this primitive form. This is so because an organism can only grow from its primitive form; otherwise, it disintegrates. Our post-Conciliar mess, in this regard, is not organic growth.
2) The “ring-around-the-altar” approach to liturgy is a symbol without any basis in the natural symbolism of the tradition. The best historical scholarship on the liturgy shows this. It is a symbol only in the Romantic sense, i.e., a fabrication from whole-cloth. But, more on this later, as I’ll be presenting Guardini on symbols from his “The Spirit and Forms of Liturgy” (admittedly, there are those who would argue that he did not practice what he preached).
In the present day, it cannot even be said that the “ring-around-the-altar” approach grows organically from local communities. In the post-Conciliar Church, wherever this arrangement of the assembly exists, it does so because it has been foisted upon the people by the faux-magisterium of liturgical periti.
Comment by Hierothee — October 29, 2005 @ 5:31 pm
hierothee, the primitive form, my friend, is the house church of antiquity, not the basilica model.
If we lived in an agrarian society in which east had some significance, the metaphor might have some meaning. Take a street poll, and except for amateur astronomers, see how many people can find east a few hours after sunrise.
I think this is more a case of the tail wagging the dog, this attempt to glorify ad orientam and liturgical east. I don’t see it having any significant legs, and Benedict is unlikely to say or write much more on it other than to reaffirm his prudential opinion on the matter.
I reassert my opinion that the liturgical realization of the Christian pilgrimage facing east is more of an earthly-centered theology, and could easily overwhelm the attempt to draw more vertical conclusions. The four walls and roof still surround the people. We know when we’re sitting/standing/kneeling and not walking. And Catholic saints still surround us. It’s not at all a departure to suggest that a radially oriented worship with Christ at the center and above works against the image of people pausing in the pilgrimage for a foretaste of heaven, surrounded by saints and witnesses.
Comment by Todd — October 31, 2005 @ 1:24 pm
Todd -
I cant help but think that you are focusing on a small aspect of a very large picture. Your preferred model does not integrate the cosmic aspect of liturgy, it diminishes the fundamental intercessory role of the priest, it minimizes the active corporate experience of the offering and lends itself to a passive, spectator experience. East is not earth centered but cosmic.
Unfortunately there is only speculation about the liturgy in the house-churches but based upon archeological suggestions and the widespread early fundamentals when we start seeing documentary evidence, the “primitive form” in the house-churches was likely very close to the form of the basilicas. The ring around the altar over all, make little liturgical sense.
I suspect you are wrong about B16’s future writing in this regard. I think that we will see his ideas published again, but this time with magisterial authority.
Comment by David — October 31, 2005 @ 7:19 pm