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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... synagogues, the corner with the receptacle for the Torah scrolls indicated the direction of prayer (qibla) towards ... synagogue of Dura-Europos from the first half of the third century Among Christians, it became a general custom to ...
... synagogue. Thus 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 ...
... synagogue with the entrance facing east turned presumably towards the doors, not towards the west wall.19 This would ... Synagogue and Church', HUCA 28 ~1957!: 181–203; A.R. Seager, 'The Architecture of the Dura and Sardis Synagogues ...
... Synagogues', in The Dura-Europos Synagogue: A Re-evaluation (1932– 1972), ed. J. Gutmann ~Missoula, Mont.: University of Montana, 1973!, 79– 116, and 'Ancient Synagogue Architecture:An Overview', in Ancient Synagogues: The State of ...
... synagogues, the corner with the receptacle for the Torah scrolls indicatedthedirectionofprayer~qibla!towardsJerusalem.The seven-armedmenorahandthesacrificeofIsaaccouldbedepicted above this Torah shrine, as in the great synagogue of Dura ...