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QUAERITUR: Your impressions of “ad orientem” worship
In another entry there is discussion of the reintroduction of ad orientem worship in a parish.
A priest made this comment:
it helped VERY much when laypeople actually gave me positive comments about attending Mass ad orientem.
I put to you a couple questions:
First, priests and lay people…. what was your impression of ad orientem worship when you encountered it for the first time?
Positive? Negative?
Certainly priests and lay people will have very different comments to make about this.
Let’s hear both.
Did you have problems with it? Preferences?
Second, if ad orientem worship has been introduced in your parish, how do you perceive others are adjusting to it?
Was there a fight? Did it go smoothly?
Down the line somewhere, I will give my impressions of ad orientem versus versus populum.
The only AO worship in the Albany Diocese is at the EF Mass. No one seems to have the gumption or ambition to do this.
This is troubling. What I mean to say is that the clergy in this diocese just don’t seem to care about the liturgy.
I would like to see it done. There should be a continuing challenge about what is normative for the OF Mass.
Comment by Sacristy_rat — 6 September 2008 @ 8:31 amI’m a lay person. My first response to AO was very positive. It put the emphasis on God, on the actual sacrifice of the mass, and it made the priest seem like a a fellow worshiper. On a more superficial note—it was also less awkward. It’s just weird to be praying the mass and looking at the priest, who is trying carefully not to make eye-contact for too long with any one parishioner. And AO makes the mass more about God and less about the “priest show.” (no offense, but most of our Churches look like stages—you can’t help but to see a VP priest as an actor).
Comment by mysticalrose — 6 September 2008 @ 8:37 amI grew up with it and was an altar server under the “A O” Mass for years. I have only been to one recently as there are none offered anywhere in this region. I hope and pray that at some point in the near future there will be.
Comment by Jerry — 6 September 2008 @ 8:39 amFirst time I encountered AO worship was in the EF that I currently attend. First few weeks, it was difficult to follow along in the Missal because I could not hear much of anything. Also with a rotating Priest every week it makes it more difficult to adjust due to the different tones of their voices. I did not give up though as I believe it is what the Church wants and is correct for us. I like the idea of the Priest leading souls and ultimately we have to trust them with our souls in Mass. I know some are audible prayers and some not, but it just makes it more difficult when you can not follow the Missal. I am still all for it (AO) and really do not agree when the Priest in the NO walk down off the altar and even up the aisle while speaking during Mass. Everyone’s eyes follow him and heads turn away from the altar. Now unfortunately, that many of us have experienced both it will be difficult to persuade people to support its’ re positioning once again. Never should have been done (AP). If we are going to go all the way to AO worship in the TLM and NO, I still think that small mics are necessary now, with the construction of many Churchs now inhibiting the “transfer” or “flow” of voice into the pews. It would help making AO more appealing to people. At least in the short term.
Comment by Mitchell — 6 September 2008 @ 8:48 amI was starting at a boarding school run by an order of priests in Southern California that had the ad orientem setup in their chapel. I was a high school freshman, the year was 1977. I was not shocked but came to appreciate it almost immediately. It just … made sense, somehow. A few years later when their permanent chapel was constructed, they were, as I recall, asked to turn the altar around.
To this day, they are one of the few strongholds of sanity in Southern California and are now planning a massive new abbey near San Juan Capistrano.
Comment by Ken — 6 September 2008 @ 8:49 amI don’t know if Fr. Z is looking for this kind of comment, but I see the question the other way round.
Ad orientem worship should not be seen as a novelty, even in churches which have not seen ad orientem worship for forty years.
The real novelty is celebrating versus populum.
What was, and still is, my impression of Mass celebrated versus populum ?
I was shocked and repulsed by this liturgical novelty. It seems to me to be expressing a revolutionary theology and ecclesiology. It was a break with many centuries of tradition. Suddenly, the present was divorced from the past. It was rootless.
On the other hand, celebration of the novus ordo ad orientem is traditional and maintains continuity with the Church’s past. The present and the future are both rooted in the past and cannot be divorced from it without losing something very real, very valuable. Therefore, as the Church rediscovers its past, and its rich spiritual heritage, the reintroduction of ad orientem worship is to be welcomed.
Comment by PeterHWright — 6 September 2008 @ 8:49 amI introduced ad orientem celebration in this parish, originally out of necessity. In the winter we abandon the Church on weekdays and use a weekday chapel set up in the parish room (too expensive to heat the Church). The numbers attending meant that it was necessary to say Mass ad orientem in the OF Mass as well as at the EF Mass. Class Masses in the school changed for a similar reason. There is so much clutter in a school classroom these days (computers, smart white-boards and projectors, etc.) that placing the altar (it’s on wheels to get around the school) against the wall made more space. When we moved back into the Church in the Spring I saw no reason to change back to face the people. I explained this to the people and there were no complaints.
Thus, in the parish things stand thus:
all EF Masses ad orientem
all OF weekday Masses in the Church, school, or weekday chapel ad orientem
OF Sunday Masses facing the people
This doesn’t seem to cause confusion, and it is where we are on the reform process.
Fr Steven Fisher
Comment by Fr Steven Fisher — 6 September 2008 @ 8:53 amRamsgate, Kent, UK
If we are all together with the priest who in the name of Christ is offering the ultimate worship and sacrifice to God, the Father in Heaven, should we not all be facing the same way – the way Christ ascended to the Father and from whence He shall come again at the end of time? It seems only proper and right to do so. Ad orientem is, to me, the only way to go.
Comment by Paul Haley — 6 September 2008 @ 8:54 amI’ve only seen AO once, but it seemed quite natural & I was not at all put off by it. Frankly, it made me think Joseph Campbell’s famous remark that VP/NO made the priest look like Julia Child was spot on. (For our non-American readers, Joseph Campbell was an American Transcendentalist who popularized Jungian myth theory.)
Comment by a catechist — 6 September 2008 @ 8:57 amMy first impression of ad orientem worship was that it really brought out the fact, by the symbolism of everyone facing the direction that we know our Lord will return from, that we are a pilgrim Church. The eschatalogical significance of the Eucharist is really emphasized.
Also, the priest’s personality vanishes—Christ really becomes the chief actor in the liturgy.
Comment by Sean — 6 September 2008 @ 8:58 amI’ve never been exposed to it. Not once.
Comment by Lucia — 6 September 2008 @ 9:01 amWhenever I say this, I normally upset pretty much everyone, but my experience of a.o. worship was completely… neutral. Not only did I neither love it or hate it, I simply didn’t find it made much difference to how I was praying at Mass at all.
I think it probably does help prevent some priests from getting overly chatty, but between well-done vp and ao, I literally have no preferences.
Comment by ABooth — 6 September 2008 @ 9:06 amI’ve never been to an AO Mass. But I’ve been to a few things like Vespers where the priest faced the altar and knelt with the people. It was cool.
Comment by Jacob — 6 September 2008 @ 9:12 amThe first time I went to a Mass ad orientem was almost 20 years ago, but I remember thinking what a relief it was not to feel that the priest was “performing” for us and that we had to “perform” back for him. I could just get down to the business of praying.
To use an analogy to cinema, when the camera is behind the actor or looking over his shoulder, we unconsciously identify with him and what he is doing. At Mass, in this posture, we can be much more phenomenologically aware of the union of “meum ac vestrum sacrificium.”
It’s a bit harder to unite yourself spiritually with the sacrificial action of somebody who is facing you at the time. Instead, you feel some admixture of a need to respond to the person who is looking at you.
Comment by Legisperitus — 6 September 2008 @ 9:29 amI was on AO Mass two times in my life (this summer in Moscow – on Sunday was regular parish TLM, on Monday – private Mass of FSSP priest).
Comment by ekurlowa — 6 September 2008 @ 9:32 amThis was wonderful, I felt, that something great was done. I particullary lost this feeling in my parish, because mostly I’m on the Mass “versus organo”. It can be very distracting.
I am a religious brother who is also beginning my studies for the priesthood, and I would like to say that the first time I encountered ad orientem was, in a certain sense, reading about priest saints, and specifically their spiritual understanding of the mass. I realized when I first encountered ad orientem in pictures and at mass that this is the mass that these saints who inspired me to the priesthood were talking about. The priestly spirituality of the mass just doesn’t really properly fit versus populum worship, at least not in any inspiring way. It has a disordered feel to it, whereas ad orientem just feels Divinely ordered.
Comment by A Brother — 6 September 2008 @ 9:42 amMy first experience with ad orientem worship was back in 1987 on my first trip