Turning towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer. By Uwe Michael Lang. Pp. 156. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004. isbn 0 89870 986 5. Paper n.p

Abstract

Lang is a rising scholar of the Oratory who has compiled a compressed and very proficient critique of the practice of celebrating the eucharist facing the people. It has a full bibliography and a serviceable index. Lang begins by reviewing the authority for the practice of versus populum in contemporary Roman Catholicism, and shows from the documents of the Second Vatican Council and its implementation that the ‘westward’ celebration at a free-standing altar began as permissive, and became a recommendation; it was never mandatory, though the fashion seemed to become so in the ‘post-conciliar euphoria’. Lang devotes most of his study to refuting the two arguments for the priest facing the people. The first is historical, where he demonstrates that orientation in the strict sense, that is facing east, is primitive and nearly universal in the ancient churches. While compatible with pagan orientation to the sunrise, and possibly motivated by distinction from Judaism, its original focus is the risen and ascended Christ, expected to return, as he had departed, on the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem. Lang allows Marcel Metzger's critique of Nußbaum, who had tried to prove from archaeological remains that many ancient churches were built for the priest to face the people over the altar; where there is enough evidence to be decisive, it tends in the other direction. There are delicate and well-documented discussions of the Roman churches where the apse is in the west, and the interesting suggestion that in the Roman and African basilicas with a central altar and side aisles the central space was reserved for the liturgical action, and the people in the side aisles could perfectly well turn to the east with the presiding celebrant for the eucharistic prayer. Turning to the second matter, Lang argues on theological grounds that the ‘active participation’ of the people in the liturgical action is not impeded but promoted by facing the same way as the priest at the altar. He had already shown that ‘towards the people’ was historically never more than descriptive; it was not seen as theologically or pastorally significant, and the priest was never understood in oriented prayer to be turning his back on them. Now in an argument which makes interesting use of Protestant experience, and that of the Tractarians who restored the eastward prayer in the Church of England, he finds a wide variety of theological support for the typology of prayer in which priest and people face God together. Worship round the table implicitly denies God transcendent, whereas prayer towards God is both Trinitarian and eschatological, speaking to the Father as those united by the Spirit in the body of Christ, and looking for the coming of the ascended Lord. Even where for practical reasons this cannot be eastward, where anciently believers looked, it should be in the same direction, normally towards the altar. Lang allows that the eucharist is a meal, but emphasizes that it is also a sacrifice, which this way of behaving symbolizes. Those who still deny its sacrificial import will be sceptical. Some of those who like myself find the eucharistic sacrifice is originally the shared meal, will find this patient, skilful argument a considerable challenge to raise their eyes higher and acknowledge a strand of eucharistic vision too easily forgotten.