Looking Towards the East: The Importance of Cardinal Sarah's Call to Celebrate the Mass ad Orientem

Now that the dust has settled somewhat following Cardinal Robert Sarah's controversial, but really not-so controversial, comments on the Sacrifice of the Mass being celebrated ad orientem, it seems to be like a good time to reflect on what’s happened. For those wondering, ad orientem means to “face the East”, and in the context of the Mass, it stands in contrast to versus populum (facing the people), meaning that the priest and congregation face the same direction during the prayers of the Liturgy. It should be noted that not all altars in every church are oriented towards the East, but the Church recognizes this as “liturgical East”, and both congregation and clergy still face the same way when worshiping our Lord. To see Cardinal Sarah’s talk in full, you can read it in full here. The most relevant part of his address is as follows, emphases mine:

“I want to make an appeal to all priests… I believe that it is very important that we return as soon as possible to a common orientation, of priests and the faithful turned together in the same direction—Eastwards or at least towards the apse—to the Lord who comes, in those parts of the liturgical rites when we are addressing God. This practice is permitted by current liturgical legislation. It is perfectly legitimate in the modern rite. Indeed, I think it is a very important step in ensuring that in our celebrations the Lord is truly at the centre.

“At this point I repeat what I have said elsewhere, that Pope Francis has asked me to continue the liturgical work Pope Benedict began. Just because we have a new pope does not mean that his predecessor’s vision is now invalid. On the contrary, as we know, our Holy Father Pope Francis has the greatest respect for the liturgical vision and measures Pope Benedict implemented in utter fidelity to the intentions and aims of the Council Fathers.”

Since these remarks have been made, a lot fuss was made about nothing. Cardinal Sarah was correct in stating that “this practice is permitted” already. Indeed, there are several parishes that celebrate the Ordinary Form (OF) of the Mass ad orientem. Many people erroneously think that only those who participate in Mass in the Extraordinary Form (EF, or Traditional Latin Mass) are permitted to face towards the altar. A good example contrary to this assumption would be Mother Angelica’s recent funeral, were the Mass was said ad orientem, in the OF, and with plenty of Latin interspersed throughout the Liturgy, as called for by the various documents of the Second Vatican Council.

Recently, I was engaged in a discussion in regards to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols’, comments on what Cardinal Sarah had said. He, along with a couple other bishops, had formally deterred his priests from saying the Ordinary Form (OF) of the Mass ad orientem. This of course, is something that the Church has already spoken about, and has proved that she does not necessarily favor one (ad orientem or versus populum) over the other. Fr. Z gives a good explanation of why this is the case. Priests are free to say the OF Mass either facing the people or not. So in this discussion, the charge was made that the Church now favors worship facing the people. This of course couldn't be further from the truth, as seen in the two links above. While it is more common in many places throughout the world, the fact of the matter is that celebrating the Mass ad orientem is also supported by various Doctors of the Church, and also happens to actually be an apostolic tradition. Our last several Popes have exhorted the various Eastern Catholic Churches to retain their traditions and remove all “Latinizations”. Shouldn’t Roman Catholics of the Latin Rite also retain their traditions? One of those traditions being that the priest and congregation are both oriented in a common direction towards the Lord? By delving a little deeper into the sources, things become clearer.

It’s a known fact that many liturgists consider celebrating the Mass ad orientem an extremely important part of the sacred rites. Before looking into the Early Church Fathers, we see the future Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger, made precisely this point in The Spirit of the Liturgy, emphases mine:

"Not surprisingly, people try to reduce this newly created role by assigning all kinds of liturgical functions to different individuals and entrusting the ‘creative’ planning of the liturgy to groups of people who like to, and are supposed to, ‘make their own contribution.’ Less and less is God in the picture. More and more important is what is done by the human beings who meet here and do not like to subject themselves to a ‘pre-determined pattern.’

"On the other hand, a common turning to the East during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of something accidental, but of what is essential. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord. It is not now a question of dialogue, but of common worship, of setting off towards the One who is to come. What corresponds with the reality of what is happening is not the closed circle, but the common movement forward expressed in a common direction for prayer."

At this point, I want to make it known that I usually attend the OF every Sunday (and when I can during the week), and at no point does our priest turn to celebrate ad orientem. I also attend the EF once in a while after being at a parish for two years that offered it every Sunday (along with 2 Spanish Masses and 2 English Masses each Sunday); and I attend the Byzantine Divine Liturgy at the very least once monthly, most often during the weekdays as the nearby Ruthenian Catholic parish often celebrates the Divine Liturgy on major and simple feasts, as well as some regular weeknights. I obviously have nothing against the OF at all, as the most important thing in a liturgical sense is that the Mass is said with great reverence. However, I also understand that there are good and pious reasons why we turn towards a common orientation in the context of the Mass, and why our ancestors in the faith have always done so.

That being said, I would love to see some of our Eastern Catholic brethren give their thoughts on this issue. Every Eastern Catholic parish I've been to has celebrated the Mass, the Divine Liturgy, facing towards the altar in a common direction. Especially in the Byzantine Rite, I've noticed how important this is, particularly when the priest comes out at the end of the Divine Liturgy to make the ambon prayer.

I am curious, are they less enlightened then we Latin Catholics? Despite having our liturgies overwhelmingly face towards the altar along with the East for centuries (notwithstanding some cases in the early 20th century before the Second Vatican Council), I've heard Latin Catholics say, and I quote "That's not our tradition anymore." As if! Again, I don't mind the OF at all, as the issue of Mass being said ad orientem isn't simply EF vs. OF. However, if the Latin Catholic Church has been so greatly blessed by the many changes (positive and negative) that have come with versus populum liturgy... where does that leave our Eastern Catholic brethren? They overwhelmingly haven't turned around. Are they in the liturgical backwaters since they haven't embraced the openness of the Mass being offered facing the people? Are the people at these parishes not participating enough? Because by and large, be it the Ukrainian or Syro-Malabar (or other) Catholic Churches, these parishes "participate" much more actively than nearly any Latin Catholic parish I've been to. We participate more deeply in the Mass by uniting our hearts to God, not by the priest turning to face the congregation for the entire Mass.

Some who are opposed to the idea of turning ad orientem in the present day mistakenly believe that the Mass said versus populum is the preferred method of saying the Mass, especially since, as I was told once before, "now I can actually see the Liturgy; before I could only see the priest's back and his elbows move."

Whenever I attend Divine Liturgy at a particular Church of the Byzantine Rite, rarely can I see what is going on in great detail, due to the iconostasis. This is not a problem for me, and obviously not for Byzantine Catholics. In fact, one can't even see the priest himself most the time, let alone his back and his elbows! Why should this be called a problem? I know when I attend the Divine Liturgy (in any Church) when the consecration takes place. I don't need to see it to be united to our Lord. If I can't see, I make a profound bow, as we are supposed to when I hear those beautiful words, according to the rubrics of the Byzantine Rite. I would like to know what the Byzantines, Syrians, et al. are missing out on. The East and West are one Body. Are Eastern Catholics truly missing out on something profound by not turning away from the East? Of course not.

Still, some people, priests included, believe that facing ad orientem during the Mass has absolutely zero significance. They may personally perceive that to be the case, but that doesn't mean it wasn't meaningful to the early Christians. Let's look at what St. John Damascene says in his Exposition of the Faith, emphases mine:

"It is not without reason or by chance that we worship towards the East. But seeing that we are composed of a visible and an invisible nature, that is to say, of a nature partly of spirit and partly of sense, we render also a twofold worship to the Creator; just as we sing both with our spirit and our bodily lips, and are baptized with both water and Spirit, and are united with the Lord in a twofold manner, being sharers in the Mysteries and in the grace of the Spirit. Since, therefore, God is spiritual light, and Christ is called in the Scriptures Sun of Righteousness and Dayspring, the East is the direction that must be assigned to His worship. For everything good must be assigned to Him from Whom every good thing arises. Indeed the divine David also says, Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth: O sing praises unto the Lord: to Him that rideth upon the Heavens of heavens towards the East. Moreover the Scripture also says, And God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed: and when he had transgressed His command He expelled him and made him to dwell over against the delights of Paradise, which clearly is the West.

"So, then, we worship God seeking and striving after our old fatherland. Moreover the tent of Moses had its veil and mercy seat towards the East. Also the tribe of Judah as the most precious pitched their camp on the East. Also in the celebrated temple of Solomon, the Gate of the Lord was placed eastward. Moreover Christ, when He hung on the Cross, had His face turned towards the West, and so we worship, striving after Him.

"And when He was received again into Heaven He was borne towards the East, and thus His apostles worship Him, and thus He will come again in the way in which they beheld Him going towards Heaven; as the Lord Himself said, As the lightning cometh out of the East and shineth even unto the West, so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be.

“So, then, in expectation of His coming we worship towards the East. But this tradition of the apostles is unwritten. For much that has been handed down to us by tradition is unwritten."

That seems very significant to me, Cardinal Sarah, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, and many others in the Catholic Church, both East and West. If this is an apostolic tradition, and I see no reason to not take the Church Fathers at their word, it's something that should not be so easily dismissed, especially if it would only be at certain points of the Mass (not the entirety), just as Cardinal Sarah had suggested. Cardinal Sarah also realized and stated in his address, the fact that some people might not understand this right off the bat, which calls for catechesis on what our forefathers taught us:

"...dear Fathers, I ask you to implement this practice wherever possible, with prudence and with the necessary catechesis, certainly, but also with a pastor’s confidence that this is something good for the Church, something good for our people."

Still, some in the Church think this to be a burden; to know why we face ad orientem is something the average Joe in the modern pew can never comprehend. In Sacrosanctum Concilium, Blessed Pope Paul VI said,

"The rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity; they should be short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions; they should be within the people's powers of comprehension, and normally should not require much explanation."

Indeed, how much more simple can we get in our reasoning for facing a common direction towards our Lord in prayer? Isn't what St. John wrote that "noble simplicity"? That we face East because the Apostles told us to expect Christ, and the Apostles told us He will come from the East? Is that not clear? Did those few sentences entail "much explanation"? I think not.

At this point, the point may be raised that St. John Damascene was an Eastern Church Father, and lived in the 8th century, right at the tail end of the Patristic age. Supposedly this means, as I was once told, that this particular quotation by St. John, "is not indicative of how the Roman rite should worship; any more than someone of the Roman rite telling the Eastern rites how they should worship." But really, what does it matter that he lived during the 8th century, or that he lived in the Eastern regions of the Roman empire? He said it was an apostolic tradition. Was he speaking a falsehood, or did it only pertain to Christians in Byzantium?

In the context of this writing, he is talking about Christian traditions, not something native to only Eastern or Western Christians. St. John was Catholic through and through. Have we forgotten that he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII in 1890? It's safe to say that his corpus of writings pertains to the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, as it does the rest of the Universal Church. To compare St. John's explanation of why all Catholics (Latin, Byzantine, Syrian, etc.) faced to the Orient during prayer (with the sacrifice of the Mass being the highest form of prayer), to Latinizations such as kneeling at the consecration, seems a bit disingenuous to me. St. John is recounting a liturgical tradition that was common throughout all Christendom, and an apostolic tradition at that; that goes for the Assyrian Church of the East and the Armenian Apostolic Church, which were both already in existence in the 8th century. Despite the examples to the contrary that were seen at times in the early 20th century, it is a fact that the norm in the Latin (Roman) Catholic Church was to face towards the East during the Mass for centuries. Does anyone honestly put this liturgical (and apostolic) tradition on the same level as Latinizations such as kneelers in Byzantine Catholic churches?

We can look to earlier in the Church's history for proof that facing towards the East was a universal, and not specifically Eastern, tradition of worship if one really thinks the 8th century words of St. John pose a problem. St. Basil the Great, also declared a Doctor of the Church in the 16th century by Pope St. Pius V, said this in his treatise on the Holy Spirit, emphases mine:

"Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us in a mystery by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force. And these no one will gainsay—no one, at all events, who is even moderately versed in the institutions of the Church.

"For were we to attempt to reject such customs as have no written authority, on the ground that the importance they possess is small, we should unintentionally injure the Gospel in its very vitals; or, rather, should make our public definition a mere phrase and nothing more. For instance, to take the first and most general example, who is thence who has taught us in writing to sign with the sign of the cross those who have trusted in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ? What writing has taught us to turn to the East at the prayer? Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of the invocation at the displaying of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing? For we are not, as is well known, content with what the apostle or the Gospel has recorded, but both in preface and conclusion we add other words as being of great importance to the validity of the ministry, and these we derive from unwritten teaching."

Is he talking to just Eastern Catholics, or all Catholic Christians? Is the sign of the cross an Eastern tradition, or a universal tradition? If it's universal, then it is clear turning to the East is as well. But since St. Basil is also an Eastern Church Father, here's a couple words written by the great western Doctors of the Church. The Doctor of Grace, St. Augustine, said this:

"When we rise to pray, we turn East, where heaven begins. And we do this not because God is there, as if He had moved away from the other directions on earth..., but rather to help us remember to turn our mind towards a higher order, that is, to God."

St. Augustine's mentor, St. Ambrose of Milan said in his Treatise on the Mysteries:

"After this the Holy of holies was opened to you, you entered the sanctuary of regeneration; recall what you were asked, and remember what you answered... You entered, then, that you might discern your adversary, whom you were to renounce as it were to his face, then you turned to the east; for he who renounces the devil turns to Christ, and beholds Him face to face."

So are we really ready to say that the tradition of the entire assembly of God (priest and laity) facing ad orientem is reducible to that of a regional tradition? That it is not one received from the Apostles, meaning that is was given to the entire, Universal Church?

I don’t think that too many people are ready to say this. People can get hung up on only seeing the “backs and elbows” of the priest all they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that praying towards the East in one direction is an important part of our Christian identity. We can agree that it’s not essential for one to celebrate Mass ad orientem, as we all know it’s totally legitimate to say the Mass versus populum... but we have to realize that it is extremely significant that we face to the East during Mass, and is not a trivial matter that only theologians and liturgists quibble over. Why else would Cardinal Sarah, Benedict XVI, and others make the comments they have in recent years?

There’s an old saying that dates back to at least the 8^th century: “Lex orandi, lex credendi”. This translates to “The law of prayer is the law of faith”: the Church believes as she prays. Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition. Cardinal Sarah’s encouragement is just that; an encouragement to come to a deeper faith through the traditions of our ancestors who went before us in the faith. Instead of thinking the Church wants to impose a supposedly “outdated” and “impersonal” practice upon us again, we should consider that we can learn from these traditions, and understanding such things better, grow in holiness.