Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Why Priests Should Face the People During Mass

Still Point of the Turning World 

COMMONWEAL

Why Priests Should Face the People During Mass
Romano Guardini, an influential figure in the liturgical movement of the early twentieth century, was known for the gravitas he brought to the celebration of Mass. Heinz Kühn wrote of him:
What drew me and the small congregation that came from all parts of Berlin to Guardini’s Mass...was simply this: He was a person who by his words and actions drew us into a world where the sacred became convincingly and literally tangible. His mere appearance radiated something for which I have no better word than luminous.... With him on the altar, the sacred table became the center of the universe.... The impact of the sacred action was all the more profound because Guardini celebrated the Mass versus populum—facing the people.
I thought of this when I read Cardinal Robert Sarah’s July 5 plea to priests to abandon the practice of celebrating Mass facing the people, beginning on the first Sunday of Advent. Sarah, who is prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, expressed the view that the liturgy began to deteriorate when bishops implementing the reforms of Vatican II directed their priests to face the people. This has long been a talking point of the “Reform of the Reform” movement, but this time Sarah implied that Pope Francis shared his view, and it made headlines. We need to turn eastward (ad orientem) again, Sarah argued, “toward the Lord” who is coming in the Parousia, in order to combat our community-centered tendencies. Ad orientem is licit, so there is nothing stopping priests from doing it right away. Do it “wherever possible” he urged, “with a pastor’s confidence that this is something good for the church, something good for your people.

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