Canvas and self-portrait

The recent publication of the study ‘Turned to the Lord. The orientation of liturgical prayer’, written by Uwe Michael Lang, member of the congregation of the Oratory in London, has re-brought the question to the attention of liturgists and theologians. It was also discussed at the international conference on “The liturgical space and its orientation”, held at the monastery of Bose (Italy) in the early days of June: the fourth of a series of meetings aimed at examining the relation between liturgy and architecture, part of a project begun several years in collaboration with the national Office for cultural properties of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. The conference was the occasion to review the state of the debate, not only in the Catholic Church, but also in the Oriental and Reformed Churches. EAST AND WEST. “In late antiquity – explained the Jesuit ROBERT TAFT , honorary professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome – i.e. in the period between the Pax costantiniana (312/13 AD) and the Middle Ages, the domestic assembly in the time of the persecutions was transformed into a Christian edifice devised for worship. Some general features were more or less common to all primitive Christian basilicas both in the East and the West”. In particular: “The church was a place of assembly: not a temple that provided an abode for God, but the domus ecclesiae , a home for the Christian community. This latter was the living temple of God and replaced the temple of the Old Law”, moreover, “the building was normally aligned in such a way that the people prayed turned to the east; for the Word and the Sacrament separate spaces were provided; they were of equal monumentality and connected by an enclosed walkway, to facilitate passage from the one to the other”. “The barriers that separated these spaces from the rest of the nave – added Taft – served to keep the congregation in place: they had no function of concealment or particular symbolic significance”. Round about the third century, “when Christianity had already consolidated its own identity, distinct from Judaism, and no longer felt any need to oppose judaizing tendencies by insisting on discontinuity with the temple and priesthood of the Old Covenant, the sanctuary was gradually transformed in the Christian East into a sancta sanctorum surrounded by walls like that of the Temple of Jerusalem; it was not only enclosed but hidden”. IN OUR TIME. “Certain modern orthodox authors in the West – pointed out Taft – have criticised the iconostasis, saying it conceals the liturgy from the faithful, and some reformers have proposed that it be abolished”. But “no certain proofs exist that it was the enclosed sanctuary or iconostasis that created this distance between the people and the liturgy”, although it cannot be doubted that “the disappearance of the monumental ambo from the centre of the nave, the reduction of the popular processions in ritual circuits round the bema [Eastern equivalent of the sanctuary], and the withdrawal of the liturgical action within the fenced-off sanctuary, had a deleterious effect on popular participation”. As for orientation: “What is decisive is the fact of praying turned to the altar and to the iconographic images in the apse of the sanctuary, but the direction in which the altar is pointing seems to be a matter of indifference”. “As for the future – concluded Taft – anyone who has seen in television the historic journey of Pope John Paul II to Romania, will undoubtedly have noticed that the patriarchal Orthodox Divine Liturgy was celebrated versus populum” . TraNsmITTING ELOQUENT MessagES. “The Church of England – said RICHARD GILES , dean of the Episcopalian Cathedral of Philadelphia – operates, more that in other countries, in a cultural climate of indifference and hostility. Only 5% of the English participate in the liturgy”. A consequence of this is: “Liturgical adaptation has not only an aesthetic, but an evangelical character, to bring the Good News anew to a despairing but satiated world”. In this perspective. “A simple and sober style of beauty – opposed to the taste for the ‘picturesque’ that characterises the episcopalian church – is suited to the people of God that rediscovers its own origins and its own identity. Adjusting the spaces of a cult building becomes not only a source of joy and pride, but also a means of reinforcing community life and the condition for being able to extend the invitation to others to participate, in a missionary perspective”. That’s what happened, for example, with the reconstruction of the church of St. Thomas at Huddersfield in the UK, in one of the poorest areas of the diocese, scarred by the racial conflicts of the 1980s: “Developing the church’s vocation in a changing world – stressed Giles – also means educating people and ensuring that the cult building no longer impedes the hope of the community: that’s why it seemed right to give a less prominent character to the Christian symbols, in respect for a territory with a massive presence of immigrants”. At Mosley, again in the UK, the adaptation was aimed at “rescuing a church that was dying due to an unsuitable liturgical space. The community’s involvement occurred according to the spirit of participating in a new adventure of evangelization, as a way of overcoming immobility and resignation”. “For – concluded Giles – the liturgical space is the canvas on which the Church paints its self-portrait: it transmits eloquent messages on what we are and whence we come”.