Christus versus populum

An interesting post from Catholic Analysis here, which includes an interesting comment from a Lutheran background. It is interesting that, in his graphic showing the versus populum celebration, the lifted Eucharist obscures the face of the priest.

I have already posted on this theme, and received interesting comments on that earlier post. Again, if you read my earlier post, you will see that I was following up a post at Catholic Analysis.

In terms of the direction of prayer, there is a kind of dialogue between seeing it as a facing towards the Lord (in the sense of His second coming "..until he comes again") and in seeing it as an offering to the Father (in which case an upward orientation - expressed in the lifting of the Eucharistic species at the Consecration - may have a certain priority).

Christus versus populum

This is an interesting and well presented post from Catholic Analysis: Christ towards the people.

I do think clergy of the "Good morning, everyone" .... "Good morning, Father" mold would do well to read it. Those of the lay faithful who try to be devout, particularly in terms of trying to get to Mass on a weekday, are not going to Mass because they want to "see Father". On the contrary, they are seeking a meeting with the Lord. Please help us by celebrating with the same kind of purpose: "The Lord be with you" does very nicely, thank you.

If you read Catholic Analysis' post you might be able to see in it (though the post does not make it explicit) something that is common to both ad orientem and versus populum celebration, when both of them are correctly understood. What is common is an underlying meaning of facing towards the Lord - in the former case, the "Lord who is to come" at the end of time and in the latter case the "Lord who is to come" on the altar at the moment of the Consecration. [One could perhaps argue that the ad orientem celebration contains both senses of facing towards the Lord, but I think one is more transparent than the other.] There is no contradiction between the properly understood meanings of both orientations - in fact there is a "mutual enrichment".

The singing of the Sanctus seems to me a particular moment in the Liturgy that expresses this orientation towards the Lord and, during versus populum celebration, should be a moment at which we (ie both priest and lay faithful) particularly focus our attention on the altar and on the bread and wine that will soon become the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Facing East

I came across an interesting "live" insight into the question of the direction of liturgical prayer during the week. As part of my trade union role I am a member of the local authority's Standing Advisory Committee for Religious Education(or SACRE - this is the body responsible for overseeing the teaching of RE in state funded schools that do not have a designated religious character). Our recent meeting was hosted at a Synagogue, where one of the committee members is the rabbi. We took the opportunity to visit the Synagogue itself. To use the rabbi's own words, it was a Synagogue where the services where celebrated in an "Orthodox" way, largely in Hebrew.
The Ark of the Torah was placed centrally against what would theologically speaking (but not geographically speaking - see below) be the eastern wall. The veil or curtain that covered the Ark was of a material that might be described as "worthy" of its purpose. When opened, it revealed a collection of some eight or nine scrolls of the Torah, and the rabbi's description of them being carried through the congregation was rich with echoes of the Gospel procession at Mass. The respect with which the scrolls are treated - once written , the page of the scroll itself is not touched by human hands and a "pointer" is used by the reader to follow his place along the scroll - could perhaps teach us something about how to treat the Book of the Gospels during the celebration of the Christian liturgy.
The arrangement of the seats in the Synagogue was such that the rabbi would lead the service with most of the congregation behind him and only a few in front of him (except when preaching from a position directly in front of the Ark of the Torah). As an Orthodox congregation, the ladies sit in a gallery above the main floor of the Synagogue as well. This prompted one of my fellow committee members to ask the rabbi about not being able to see most of the congregation during the service. I quote the rabbi's immediate and un-hesitating response: "When we stand up to pray, we all face the same way, towards the East". By this, he meant facing in the direction towards the wall that contained the Ark of the Torah - the "theological East" - which was in reality the northern wall of the building - the "geographical north".
So the rabbi's full response had a rather dry, and, I thought, a typically Jewish touch to it: "When we stand up to pray, we all face the same way, towards the East" (at this point, extending his arm to indicate the direction of the geographical east as opposed to the theological east) "though East is really that way".