Look to the East! The Mass and ad orientem

Over the last few years, I have become convinced that one of the major liturgical treasures lost during the last 40 years has been the common celebration of the liturgy facing East, otherwise known as ad orientem. What this typically means is that both the priest and the congregation face the same direction during worship, particularly during the Eucharistic Prayer (toward the actual "East", or a symbolic "liturgical East").

Contrary to what many Catholics have been taught, the Second Vatican Council never advocated for a change to this practice, yet today, as we know, it has become somewhat normative for the priest to face the people throughout mass in order to stress the communal nature of the liturgy. This is certainly valid, and the mass is still the mass, but it is my personal opinion that reclaiming the ancient practice of celebrating mass ad orientem in the modern liturgy would go a long way in restoring a greater sense of sacred mystery and eschatological anticipation. Now, I'm no liturgist. In the least bit, I know that a shift like this cannot happen without proper education and preparation. And, as those old enough to remember know full well, changing things willy nilly can often be very bewildering and even alienating. But can it be done?

Anglican theologian Peter Toon explains the practice a bit more:

“Ad orientem” is from [Latin] “oriens” meaning “the rising sun” -- thus “the East” or “the dawn” – and with the preposition “ad” ( “to” or “towards”).

In the Early Church the bodily posture of priest and people at the “Eucharistia” was a symbol of Christian hope. Jesus Christ was identified with the dawn and rising sun. And as such His dawn (rising from the dead and then coming in glory) marks the consummation of all things and the restoration of Paradise (Eden lies in “the east”). Not only the celebrant but the whole assembly, united in the one body of Christ, looked to the risen Lord who shall come in glory to restore all things. The eucharistic feast is in anticipation of the messianic banquet at the consummation.

So “ad orientem” is not the priest being bad mannered with his back to the people, but it is the whole people of God looking with awe and joy at the resurrected Lord Jesus and in expectation and hope looking for his coming in glory.

Celebration “ad orientem” does not mean that the celebrant and assisting ministers face East all the time. When they address the people in the ministry of the Word they face the people, for here they are the messengers of God to his people. But when the whole assembly prays they all, laity and priests, face the risen and coming Lord Jesus.

When a congregation is well taught in the content and meaning of the sacred Scriptures and the rich symbolism of the ancient way of celebration is explained to them, then the faithful can see that celebration “ad orientem” can be beautiful and well pleasing to God the Father through His Son and with His Holy Spirit.

Nowadays, you'll find the practice of celebrating mass ad orientem described in silly ways -- the priest "turning his back on the people", and so forth. A few years ago, I heard a priest at a conference refer to his many years celebrating the mass "facing the wall". Our own Holy Father has written extensively on the benefits of ad orientem, particularly in his work, The Spirit of the Liturgy. In his foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer, the Holy Father, then as Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote:

The Innsbruck liturgist Josef Andreas Jungmann, one of the architects of the [Second Vatican] Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was from the, very beginning resolutely opposed to the polemical catchphrase that previously the priest celebrated 'with his back to the people'; he emphasised that what was at issue was not the priest turning away from the people, but, on the contrary, his facing the same direction as the people. The Liturgy of the Word has the character of proclamation and dialogue, to which address and response can rightly belong. But in the Liturgy of the Eucharist the priest leads the people in prayer and is turned, together with the people, towards the Lord. For this reason, Jungmann argued, the common direction of priest and people is intrinsically fitting and proper to the liturgical action. Louis Bouyer (like Jungmann, one of the [Second Vatican] Council's leading liturgists) and Klaus Gainber have each in his own way taken up the same question. Despite their great reputations, they were unable to make their voices heard at first, so strong was the tendency to stress the communality of the liturgical celebration and to regard therefore the face-to-face position of priest and people as absolutely necessary.

More recently the atmosphere has become more relaxed so that it is possible to raise the kind of questions asked by Jungmann, Bouyer, and Gamber without at once being suspected of anti-conciliar sentiments. Historical research has made the controversy less partisan, and among the faithful there is an increasing sense of the problems inherent in an arrangement that hardly shows the liturgy to be open to the things that are above and to the world to come.

I hope to see a gradual return to celebrating mass ad orientem in the Latin Rite. There are a handful of churches throughout the world that do honor this tradition in the context of the modern liturgy. Will it grow? Perhaps the pope's motu proprio will help us appreciate our ancient heritage. Am I alone?