December 17, 2007 marked the second anniversary of my standing at the altar ad orientem for the Liturgy of the Eucharist at the Monastery of the Glorious Cross, where I serve as chaplain. I prepared the change in Advent 2005 with an appropriate pastoral and mystagogical catechesis.
After two years of offering Holy Mass in this way, I can say that I never want to have to return to the versus populum position. I was obliged to celebrate versus populum in France and Italy recently, and it left me with a feeling of extreme inappropriateness. I suffered from what I can only describe as a lack of sacred pudeur, or modesty in the face of the Holy Mysteries. I felt viscerally, as it were, that there is something very wrong — theologically, spiritually, and anthropologically — with offering the Holy Sacrifice versus populum.
What are the advantages of standing at the altar ad orientem, as I have experienced them over the past two years? I can think of ten straight off:
1. Holy Mass is experienced as having a theocentric direction and focus.
2. The faithful are spared the tiresome clerocentrism that has so overtaken the celebration of Holy Mass in the past forty years.
3. It has once again become evident that the Eucharistic Prayer is addressed to the Father, by the priest, in the name of all.
4. The sacrificial character of the Mass is wonderfully expressed and affirmed.
5. Almost imperceptibly one discovers the rightness of praying silently at certain moments, of reciting certain parts of the Eucharistic Prayer softly, and of cantillating others.
6. It affords the priest celebrant the boon of a holy modesty.
7. I find myself more and more identified with Christ, Eternal High Priest and Hostia perpetua, in the liturgy of the heavenly sanctuary, beyond the veil, before the Face of the Father.
8. During the Eucharistic Prayer I am graced with a profound recollection.
9. The people have become more reverent in their demeanour.
10. The entire celebration of Holy Mass has gained in reverence, attention, and devotion.
His Excellency, the Bishop of the Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma has given
Father Mark a special mandate to live in adoration before the Most
Blessed Sacrament, in a spirit of thanksgiving and intercession, that he
might make reparation before the Eucharistic Face of Jesus for all his
brothers in Holy Orders. At the same time, he is available to the
priests and deacons of the Diocese for spiritual and sacramental
support in their pursuit of holiness.
