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. |
From inside the book
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... Mount of Olives and is aimed at the Temple (Mk 11:1 and 11; Mt 21:1 and 12; Lk 19:29 and 45), with the account of the cleansing of the Temple immediately following in Matthew and Luke. Moreover, Jesus' apocalyptic discourse about the ...
... Mount of Olives, while the eastward direction of prayer was retained and developed into a general principle. There is some disagreement about the interpretation of the sources for this local tradition of belief concerning the Second ...
... Mount of Olives (Zech. 14.4). (2) He obtained a colt and rode upon it into the city (Zech. 9.9). (3) The crowds carried branches as at the feast of Tabernacles (Zech. 14.16-19). (4) He went into the temple and drove out traders from it ...
... Mount of Olives was read in the primitive Christian community in Jerusalem before this time, it would have been understood as speaking about Christ's return. The explicit association between the Parousia and the Mount of Olives is ...
... Mount of Olives, where they expected the fulfilment of the signs they had predicted.14 For our argument, the most interesting of these prophets is the Egyptian who is also mentioned in Acts 21:38. He stirred up a revolt against the ...