Categories: orthodox-life
Date: 12 May 2006 12:58:56
Kristus het opgestaan!
[last entry: Scottish - Tha Crìosd air èiridh!; response: Gu dearbh, tha e air èiridh!]
One noticeable tradition which marks worship in the Eastern Churches from most of those in the Western Rite is that of the people and clergy all facing the same direction during the Liturgy: generally to the East (as most churches are built this way) -- ad orientem.
This change, as I began to explore Orthodoxy, never bothered me particularly or caused me any angst: in fact it seemed rather natural. Here I was experiencing a new rite, hitherto unknown to me, and the fact we all faced the same direction seemed to me to be part and parcel of this. I have since talked to people who dislike this: while I can see where they are coming from, I respectfully disagree with comments such as 'it is rude that the priest has his back to us' or that 'we are not important and the priest is doing everything'. Pope Benedict XVI, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, counters this view: he even writes that the priest facing the people has caused "unprecedented clericalization": "Now the priest ... becomes the real point of reference for the whole liturgy. Everything depends on him. We have to see him, respond to him, to be involved in what he is doing." He continues, explaining that, to counter this, new roles are then created for people to "make their own contribution"; "Less and less is God in the picture ... The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into an enclosed circle." (p. 80, Ignatius Press, 2000)
He then gives quite a wonderful explanation of eastward celebration:
[note that, at least on my reading, he is not advocating a wholesale sweeping return to the eastward celebration: he notes that constant change and upheaval can be harmful to liturgy -- but it was interesting for me to read about the historic practice and the theology of the eastward celebration]
The common turning toward the east was not a "celebration toward the wall"; it did not mean that the priest "had his back to the people": the priest himself was not regarded as so important. For just as the congregation in the synagogue looked together toward Jerusalem, so in the Christian liturgy the congregation looked together "toward the Lord"(*). As one of the fathers of Vatican II's Constitution on the Liturgy, J. A. Jungmann, put it, it was much more a question of priest and people facing in the same direction, knowing that together they were in procession toward the Lord. They did not close themselves into a circle; they did not gaze at one another; but as the pilgrim People of God they set off for the Oriens, for the Christ who comes to meet us.p. 80, Ignatius Press, 2000
(*)His Holiness had previously explained the correlation between looking toward the East and looking toward Christ, the True Sun, the True Light.