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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Orientation in Liturgical Prayer Michael Lang. UWE MICHAEL LANG Turning towards the Lord Orientation in Liturgical Prayer IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO Cover art: Apse mosaic, depicting the Tree of Life Basilica.
Orientation in Liturgical Prayer Michael Lang. Cover art: Apse mosaic, depicting the Tree of Life Basilica of San Clemente, Rome Scala/Art Resource, New York Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum © 2009 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco All ...
... apse, or towards the Cross, so as to orient themselves inwardly towards the Lord. Fundamentally, this involved an interior event, conversion, the turning of our soul towards Jesus Christ and thus towards the living God, towards the true ...
... apse facing west. Here versus populum is to be looked upon merely as an explanatory appositive, namely in view of the immediately following directive that in this case at the Pax Domini the celebrant does not need to turn around (non ...
... apse of basilicas as well as in the private rooms of, for example, monks and solitaries.29 In this context, the direction of prayer in Islam is worthy of note. At first Muhammad followed the Jewish custom of praying towards Jerusalem ...