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Whence praying facing the East?
Blogged by James Preece on 10th February 2010
I've written so extensively about our new parish priest that most of you probably didn't even know we got one. In other words, I haven't written about him at all though all you really need to know is that his liturgical views are pretty standard (and you know how highly I regard standard liturgical practice in this country).
Something he has introduced recently that is very good is the practice of having the altar servers come around to our side of the altar during the Eucharistic prayer. Previously they used to kneel behind the priest so that we could watch them picking their noses or whatever, now they kneel (the feint of heart should look away now) with their backs to us!
The whole thing reminds me a bit of this...
Okay, so our priest is still on his side more like a science lecturer doing a demonstration than someone going up to the altar on our behalf, but I digress.
The fact is that the orientation has shifted, if only slightly. Where previously we saw a big rectangular altar front, we now see people kneeling. Facing East.
I was thinking about this when I stumbled on the following via the excellent LION & the CARDINAL blog.
St John of Damascus writes...
The eyewitnesses and ministers of the word not only handed down the law of the Church in writings, but also in certain unwritten traditions. For whence do we know the holy place of the skull? Whence the memorial of life? Does not a child learn it from his father without anything being written down? It is written that the Lord was crucified in the place of the skull and buried in a tomb, that Joseph had hewn in a rock; but that these are the places now venerated we know from unwritten tradition, and there are many other examples like this. What is the origin of threefold baptism, that is with three immersions? Whence praying facing the East? Whence veneration of the cross? Are they not from unwritten tradition? Therefore the divine apostle says, So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. Since many things have been handed down in unwritten form in the Church and preserved up to now, why do you split hairs over the images? Manichees composed the Gospel according to Thomas; are you now going to write the Gospel according to Leo? I do not accept any emperor who tyrannically snatches at the priesthood. Have emperors received the authority to bind and loose? ... I am not persuaded that the church should be constituted by imperial canons, but rather by patristic traditions, both written and unwritten. For just as the Gospel was proclaimed in all the world in written form, so in all the world it has been handed down in unwritten form that Christ the incarnate God should be depicted, and the saints, just as the cross is venerated and we stand to pray, facing the East.
[link]
St John of Damascus defends the practice of depicting Christ in works of art by appealing to the certainty with which people pray facing East.
How do we know we are allowed pictures of Jesus? The same way we know to pray facing East.
Oh wait, we don't pray facing East.
Oh wait, we don't have any pictures of Jesus either...
Yeah, Middlesbrough Diocese's brand new church. They spent one and a half million pounds (mostly borrowed money) and they couldn't afford to buy a proper Jesus for the cross behind the altar.
St John of Damascus was obviously wrong then...
