start celebrating Mass facing east this Advent

[Denise]

Cardinal Sarah asks priests to start celebrating Mass facing east this Advent


by Dan Hitchens

posted Tuesday, 5 Jul 2016


The Vatican's liturgy chief said priests should view the proposed change
as 'something good for the Church, something good for our people'

Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Vatican’s liturgy chief, has asked priests to
begin celebrating Mass ad orientem, that is, facing east rather than
towards the congregation.

The proposed reform is arguably the biggest liturgical announcement since
Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum gave greater freedom
for priests to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass.

Speaking at the Sacra Liturgia conference in London on Tuesday, the
Guinean cardinal, who is Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship,
addressed priests who were present, saying: “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”.

The cardinal continued: “I ask you to implement this practice wherever
possible.”

He said that “prudence” and catechesis would be necessary, but told
pastors to have “confidence that this is something good for the Church,
something good for our people”.

“Your own pastoral judgement will determine how and when this is possible,
but perhaps beginning this on the first Sunday of Advent this year, when
we attend ‘the Lord who will come’ and ‘who will not delay’.”

These words were met with prolonged applause in the conference hall.

Cardinal Sarah had spoken on previous occasions about the merits of ad
orientem worship, saying that from the Offertory onwards it was “essential
that the priest and faithful look together towards the east”.

But his specifying of the first Sunday of Advent – which falls this year
on November 27 – gives a new urgency to his calls for this form of
worship.

Speaking after Cardinal Sarah, Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon said
that, although he was “only one bishop of one diocese”, he would celebrate
Mass ad orientem at his cathedral, and would address a letter to his
diocese encouraging his priests to do the same.

In his talk, Cardinal Sarah also said that Pope Francis had asked him to
begin a study of “the reform of the reform”, that is of adapting the
liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council. The cardinal
said the study would seek “to enrich the two forms of the Roman rite”.

Cardinal Sarah said that much liturgical study had suggested that some
post-conciliar reforms “may have been put together according to the spirit
of the times” and “gone beyond” of the Fathers of Vatican II, in
Sacrosanctum Concilium, the constitution on the liturgy.

He said that some “very serious misinterpretations of the liturgy” had
crept in, thanks to an attitude to the liturgy which placed man rather
than God at the centre.

“The liturgy is not about you and I,” Cardinal Sarah told the conference.
“It is not where we celebrate our own identity or achievements or exalt or
promote our own culture and local religious customs. The liturgy is first
and foremost about God and what He has done for us.”

The Cardinal quoted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: “Forgetting about God is
the most imminent danger of our age.”

Cardinal Sarah emphasised a “hermeneutic of continuity”, saying that it
was necessary to implement Sacrosanctum Concilium fully: “The Fathers did
not intend a revolution, but an evolution.”

He made some specific observations, praising the Ordinariate of Our Lady
of Walsingham as an example of how the Church could be enriched by other
traditions.

In remarks which he did not have time to deliver, but which were later
published on Sacra Liturgia’s Facebook page, the cardinal also encouraged
kneeling at the consecration and for the reception of Communion. “Where
kneeling and genuflection have disappeared from the liturgy, they need to
be restored, in particular for our reception of our Blessed Lord in Holy
Communion.”

[Johnna]

Yay! I wonder how many parishes will.