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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... entrance facing east and the 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 ...
... entrance into Jerusalem begins on the 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 ...
... entrance facing east turned presumably towards the doors, not towards the west wall.19 This would correspond to the basic sense of peopleintheancientworldthat,ifpossible,oneshouldsayone's prayerstowardstheopensky ...
... entrance, a conflict seems to have arisen between the veneration of Holy Scripture and the turning to- wards the doors for prayer. Eventually, the idea gained acceptance that the wall with the Torah shrine, and no longer the entrance ...
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