Turning Toward the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical PrayerIntroduction by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) Turning towards the Lord presents an historical and theological argument for the traditional, common direction of liturgical prayer, known as "facing east", and is meant as a contribution to the contemporary debate about the Catholic liturgy. Lang, a member of the London Oratory, studies the direction of liturgical prayer from an historical, theological, and pastoral point of view. At a propitious moment, this book resumes a debate that, despite appearances to the contrary, has never really gone away, not even after the Second Vatican Council. Historical research has made the controversy less partisan, and among the faithful there is an increasing sense of the problems inherent in an arrangement that hardly shows the liturgy to be open to the things that are above and to the world to come. In this situation, Lang's delightfully objective and wholly unpolemical book is a valuable guide. Without claiming to offer major new insights, Lang carefully presents the results of recent research and provides the material necessary for making an informed judgment. It is from such historical evidence that the author elicits the theological answers that he proposes. |
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... Jewish custom of praying towards Jerusalem. Later his attitude towards Judaism changed, not least because his preaching met with no great success among Jews, and he adopted elements of the ancient Arabic tradition. In the year 624 ...
... Jews in the Diaspora prayed towards Jerusalem, or, more precisely, towards the presence of the transcendent God (shek- inah) in the Holy of Holies of the Temple. For instance, Daniel in Babylon 'went to his house where he had windows in ...
... Jews have expressed their eschato- logical hope for the coming of the Messiah, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the gathering of God's people from the Diaspora. The direction of prayer was thus inseparably bound up with the messianic ...
... Jews, when not within the Temple precincts, would also have turned towards the east or north-east, that is to say, towards the Holy of Holies—and so in the direction of the Mount of Olives.10 Heid rightly calls for caution in ...
... Jewish historian Josephus that in. 13G. Theißen, Social Reality and the Early Christians:Theology, Ethics and the World of the NewTestament, trans. M. Kohl ~Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992!, 94–114 ~'Jesus' Temple Prophecy ...