Cardinal Robert Sarah proposes that the Church recover a piece of its tradition.
The Catholic world is abuzz with the recent call by Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, for priest and people to face the same direction, “liturgical East,” when celebrating Mass. Moreover, he insisted that the direction we face at Mass is not a matter of personal preference. The question got more complicated when Cardinal Vincent Nichols insinuated that Sarah himself was imposing his own personal preference.
Through what lens can we read this debate with charity, in fraternal dialogue, and without elevating personal preferences over the teaching of the Church?
Catholic Teaching and Liturgical Tradition
First, let’s consider what the Church currently teaches about the the priest’s orientation at Mass. In September 2000, the Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW) responded to the question whether the General Instruction of the Roman Missal should be read as dictating that the priest must always say Mass versus populum (“facing the people”). In a formal document signed by the prefect and the secretary, the CDW explained that the answer was “no.” Priests can also say Mass versus apsidem (“facing the apse,” which is the front of the Church). More important, whatever physical direction the priest faces, “his spiritual attitude ought always to be versus Deum per Jesum Christum [toward God through Jesus Christ]” (cf. GIRM, 78).
Second, let’s consider the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Although the Council did not speak about the priest’s physical direction at Mass, it did say that what we do in the liturgy is a consequence of who and what we are before God. Since the human body “shares in the dignity of the ‘image of God’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 364), “in the Liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses, and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7). That action is principally “an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ” before the Father in heaven (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7), while “in the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 8).
There are two primary ways in which Christians in their worship in the first centuries of the faith embodied this communal pilgrimage toward heaven:
‐By facing one another for proclamation and dialogue. The priest in the patristic era faced the people during the Liturgy of the Word (as we now call it) so as to fulfill his role, which was to act in persona Christi, both when proclaiming the gospel to them and during those parts of the Mass when he prays in dialogue with them.
‐By facing east for the eucharistic prayer. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI points out in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, priests in the patristic era almost universally faced east, the direction of rising sun, during the eucharistic prayer, anticipating thereby the glory of Christ’s return to earth. In most churches, this also meant that they faced the apse, with the people. Acting again in persona Christi, priests embodied the fact that Christ the Priest became completely as one of us when he journeyed toward the cross and invited us to follow him.
Reform and Renewal
By the Middle Ages, both of those principles had gone from being embodied to being symbolized. Instead of facing the people to proclaim the readings and dialogue with them, the priest remained facing east for the entire Liturgy of the Word. He moved from the right side of the altar (for the reading of the epistle) to the left side (for the reading of the gospel), which was understood to represent the proclamation of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and to the Jews, respectively.
Priests in the patristic era almost universally faced east, the direction of rising sun, during the eucharistic prayer, anticipating thereby the glory of Christ’s return to earth.
And he no longer necessarily faced east in expectation of the return of Christ. Instead, he always faced the apse, which was taken to represent the east, regardless of whether the church was so constructed that by celebrating versus apsidem he was facing literal, geographical east.
These two changes made it more difficult at times to remember the Church teachings that the priest’s movements at the altar were supposed to embody but now only symbolized:
‐The Protestant Reformers and even some Catholics criticized the practice of the priest’s facing away from the people for proclamation and dialogue; it seemed to make the faithful passive participants in the priest’s action rather than his cooperators and full-fledged members of the Body of Christ.
‐The Reformers objected also that Catholic priests always faced toward the apse. Reformers preferred to think of the Eucharist as a simple meal of remembrance rather than as a sacrificial participation in the liturgy of heaven, and so in their eucharistic services their ministers adopted the posture of facing the people to whom they ministered.
At the Second Vatican Council, the Church responded appropriately to these criticisms by calling for the “full, conscious, and active participation” of the faithful at Mass (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 14). To that end, the Church called for two big changes, which were implemented when the Roman missal was revised in 1970:
‐The Church required that, henceforth, “in Masses celebrated with a congregation, the lessons, epistle, and gospel are to be read or sung facing the people” (Inter Oecumenici, 49). The language of this prescription was absolute. The symbolic proclamation of the epistle and then the gospel from different sides of the altar was to be abolished so that the priest could truly embody the principle of proclaiming the scriptures in persona Christi to the people.
‐The Church also suggested that henceforth “the main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people” (Inter Oecumenici 91). The language of this prescription was suggestive rather than absolute. In due course, the General Instruction for the Roman Missal added the qualifier, “which is expedient where it is possible” (GIRM, 299). Although there has been some some debate among liturgists about whether the qualifier refers to Church construction or also to the direction in which Mass should be celebrated, the CDW document linked above says that it applies to both. Still, like Inter Oecumenici, it emphasizes that the instruction should be taken as a suggestion, not a requirement. The only reason given for the suggestion is that “it makes communication easier.”
Since the second change had only the force of a suggestion, it did not forbid celebration facing geographical east. Nor did it forbid symbolic celebration facing “liturgical east,” or the apse. Even today, the Mass rubrics instruct the priest at five different junctures to turn toward the people, a movement he would not have to make were he not already facing another direction (GIRM, 124, 146, 154, 157, 165); the deacon is similarly instructed three times (GIRM, 138, 181, 185).
Neither of the two big post-conciliar changes was intended to alter the Church’s theology of the Eucharist as a participation in the liturgy in heaven in expectation of the rising Son. To return to the two Protestant objections above, both changes were intended to address the first objection, about proclamation and dialogue, not the second, about the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. Facing the people to read scripture embodies the fact that, through the priest, Jesus is proclaiming it to them, making it easier to see that, through the priest, Jesus is engaging in dialogue with them—in fact, every rubric instructing the priest or deacon to turn toward the people occurs at a point where he dialogues with the people.
Conclusion
That’s not to say that this is how most people have understood the liturgical changes enacted in the light of the Second Vatican Council. By and large, they have understood the change to celebration versus populum as theological, not practical. So, the argument goes, that change appropriates the Reformers’ insight into the Eucharist as communal meal without, however, excluding the Catholic belief that it is also sacrificial participation in the heavenly liturgy. There is a certain amount of truth to that theological position. The Eucharist is a meal, albeit a sacrificial one, and it is certainly possible to maintain the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist while the priest faces the people. To argue the contrary is to suggest that the Church has been largely devoid of sacrificial worship for the last half century and that the gates of Hell have nearly, if not actually, prevailed against it. Such alarmism tends to induce toward the kind of emotive extremism that so often attends theological questions concerning the liturgy. Such extremism wounds the peace of the Church even when it does not fracture her unity.
But saying that something is possible is not the same as saying that it is easy. What we do in worship is a reflection of who we are — an understanding that the Christians of the patristic era expressed through their liturgical posture. When the priest proclaims the readings versus populum, he embodies Christ as Prophet — something is lost when he proclaims the readings away from them, even if that posture has symbolic meaning. When he turns toward the people and leads them in dialogue, he embodies Christ as King — again, something is lost when he speaks to them without turning toward them, even if his posture versus apsidem has symbolic meaning.
Yet unless the priest embodies the spiritual principle of turning versus Deum per Iesum Christum, by assuming the same eastward posture as do the members of the congregation, then it becomes more difficult to see reflected in him the humility by which he embodies Christ as Priest, who, as Saint Anselm pointed out, can serve as our mediator precisely and only because he is fully one of us. Pope Francis in his recent ordinary magisterium has tended to focus on the importance of Christ as Priest, who offers forgiveness to us through his merciful sacrifice on the cross and accompanying us on the road to sanctity. Cardinal Sarah’s suggestion may be a way, unexpected but completely in accord with the law and teachings of the Church, of making that truth more apparent.