It
is often said that priests who continue celebrating
the Eucharist on an eastward-facing altar are doing
so "back to the people" - as if his motivation
was to "re-clericalise" the Mass and remove
it from the people. Why would a priest ever want to
do that?
This little article does not have any
pretense to being a scholarly piece of work or even
original. There are many fine works written over the
years, in particular Zum Herrn hin (turned to
the Lord) by the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber and warmly
recommended by the present Pope. Here, our purpose is
to give brief introduction to the subject for those
who have never gone into it, and who might go on to
studying the matter in greater depth.
Establishing the question from a different
angle, most Anglican and Roman Catholic churches have
installed a freestanding altar or a table to stand in
front of the hitherto disused high altar or to replace
it altogether. This was to be the new and definitive
arrangement of churches to allow popular participation
in the Eucharist from the 1960's and 70's, and it led
to many highly regrettable re-orderings and "wreckovations"
of fine medieval, baroque and Victorian church buildings.
The proponents of Mass facing the people would claim
that this was the practice of the early Church of before
medieval clericalism!
For us Anglicans, the eastward position
was one of the six points claimed by the Ritualists
in the mid 19th century. From the 16th century, the
Ornaments Rubric in the Prayer Book was dead letter,
and the altars were replaced by wooden tables. When
the Eucharist was celebrated, the table (or God's
Board) would be carried from the place where the
old altar had stood, and was placed in the choir so
that its ends followed the east-west axis of the church.
Those few faithful who wished to receive Communion would
draw near with faith and gather on the south
side of the table. The priest would occupy the
north side. He faced the communicants across
the table. This way of doing things prevailed until
about the time of Charles II and the Restoration of
the 1660's. From then on, the table was left in place
with a three-sided communion rail around it, and the
north side became the north end, since
the table was no longer moved. Outside service times,
the table had the appearance of an altar, especially
when it was covered with a cloth. The communicants would
no longer approach the table, but would stop at the
communion rail placed between the choir and the altar.
The Anglo-Catholics of the 19th century needed to do
nothing to the church or its furniture. They simply
stood on the west side of the altar facing eastwards
like the pre-Reformation priests at the original stone
altar.
There is an aesthetic consideration concerning
the position of the altar and the modification of an
old church, but the most important thing is the theological
and spiritual dimension. The altar and its position
in the building are highly symbolic. Liturgical objects,
gestures and texts have profound spiritual meaning and
express the belief of Christians. Change the outward
expression and you change the belief and spiritual life
of the people.
First of all, even if the priest is physically
facing away from the people, he is not doing so to exclude
them. He is leading the people in prayer to God who
is the priest's God as much as the people's. The eastward-facing
Eucharist is universal in the western and eastern Churches.
According to the work of scholars like Jungmann, Gamber
and Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), the eastward-facing
Eucharist goes right back to the beginning of the Church's
history. The Roman basilicas are westward-facing, and
on account of this, the celebrant faces east and the
people at the same time. In ancient times, the people
turned away from the altar for prayer, so they
had their back to the altar! Few people know
this, and even scholars were once induced in this way
to think that Mass facing the people was an ancient
practice. It is not.
Why face east? Is not God everywhere?
The east is associated with the coming of Christ, using
the image of the rising sun. In Matthew 24,27 Jesus
says, For as the lightning [the light of the
sun - not thunderbolts] cometh out of the east, and
shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming
of the Son of man be. Christians pray facing the
east because they await the Lord's coming - in the Sacrament
of the Eucharist and in the Last Judgement. The Jews
pray towards the Temple of Jerusalem and the Muslims
pray in the direction of their sacred shrine at Mecca.
Through God is everywhere, man has a need for a symbol
of place and direction. Turning towards the Lord is
a symbol of conversion (in the etymological meaning
of that word), and acknowledging that God chose to dwell
in a place - the Holy of Holies of the Temple in the
Old Testament. The repentance that ended the exile of
Israel was turning toward the Temple, ultimately the
living temple that is Jesus. In the traditional posture
of priest and people facing the same direction, the
eastward position, we are offering our prayer
through Jesus, the New Temple, to the Father who is
in heaven.
Saying that the priest has his back
to the people betrays ignorance, prejudice and misunderstanding
of liturgical symbolism. Journalists and secular-minded
Christians thus betray their failure to understand that
heaven is the true goal of Christian life, and that
doing good for other people is but a consequence
of our devotion to God.
Looking at the question from another point
of view, the practice of facing the people over an altar
placed in the middle of the church has not only created
eyesores in once-harmonious buildings, it has the tendency
of making of the Christian community a self-worshipping
circle! What is even more blatant was not only the position
of the priest at the altar but pushing the cross
or crucifix to one side. In the 1960's and 70's,
the priest would become an entertainer, a talk-show
host. It is the ultimate in clericalism: the president,
or whatever he is called, becomes the new object of
worship! As a youth, I always had the impression of
seeing Buddha or one of those Hindu deities on his altar
when seeing a Eucharist celebrated in the new (facing
the people) fashion!
Now, everything depends on the priest.
The notion of participation is no longer spiritual,
but in the manner of a variety show on television. They
talk of creativity, and the church has become like the
market place, with secularised Christians chattering
and putting God out of the picture. The turning of
the priest toward the people has turned the community
into a self-enclosed circle in the words of Pope
Benedict XVI writing when he was still a Vatican Cardinal.
The eastward-facing liturgy leaves the church as a sacred
space, inspiring us to silence and prayer.
The Mass must not be a "circle"
but open to God. It is not a mere human creation, even
though it was indeed written and organised by men of
the Church - but over centuries and acting according
to a notion of revered Tradition. The liturgy was devised
for man, for God does not need it, but it helps man
to respond to God by prayer and acts of religion. The
liturgy that best does this is one that has centuries
of tradition behind it, making us aware that we are
not alone in time and space, but members of a Universal
Church.
Fr. Aidan Nichols, a well-known Dominican
priest and theologian, wrote that the re-enchantment
of the Catholic Liturgy is the single most urgent ecclesial
need of our time. We need to rediscover a sense
of wonder and awe in the liturgy that alone can shake
us out of spiritual sleep and indifference. My own experience
has always been, since my boyhood in the 1960's and
70's, that the Eucharist has to be celebrated facing
the east on the traditional altar to impress me. The
Mass facing the people (with the casual modern language
and mediocre music) bored me to tears !!!
We are grateful that the question of liturgical
orientation is discussed in the mainstream of the Catholic
Church, and that the once-assumed permanence of the
altar or table facing the people is being questioned.
More and more churches are returning to the eastward
position or at least adopting the "Benedictine
arrangement" - two or six candlesticks arranged
symmetrically on a westward-facing altar with a central
cross, in order to reintroduce the notion of liturgical
orientation to the faithful gradually and without causing
conflict or other disturbances. We in the TAC and other
Continuing Anglican Churches always use the eastward
position even though we use a diversity of rites for
the Eucharist.
Progress is being made, and this fundamental
symbol will certainly do more than anything else to
restore the traditional notion of the Church and the
Christian religion.