Ad orientem

Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220) says that, because Christians faced towards the east at prayer, some non-Christians thought they worshipped the sun.[5]

Clement of Alexandria ( c. 150 – c. 215) says: "Since the dawn is an image of the day of birth, and from that point the light which has shone forth at first from the darkness increases, there has also dawned on those involved in darkness a day of the knowledge of truth. In correspondence with the manner of the sun's rising, prayers are made looking towards the sunrise in the east."[6]

Origen (c. 185 – 253) says: "The fact that [...] of all the quarters of the heavens, the east is the only direction we turn to when we pour out prayer, the reasons for this, I think, are not easily discovered by anyone."[7]

Later on, Fathers of the Church such as John of Damascus advanced mystical reasons for the custom.[8]

The primitive Church had no knowledge of the origin of the practice. Origen says: "The reasons for this, I think, are not easily discovered by anyone."[7] Although the general custom among Jews was to pray towards the temple in Jerusalem, Clement of Alexandria, Origen's older contemporary, says that the custom of praying eastward was general even among non-Christians: "In correspondence with the manner of the sun's rising, prayers are made looking towards the sunrise in the east. Whence also the most ancient temples looked towards the west, that people might be taught to turn to the east when facing the images."[6]

Uwe Michael Lang cites Franz Joseph Dölger as showing that turning to the east, seen as the home of the gods, was customary among the Greeks and the Romans in prayer and was a sun-worship custom as far east as India.[9]

In 1971, Georg Kretschmar proposed a connection between the Christian custom of praying towards the east and a practice of the earliest Christians in Jerusalem of praying towards the Mount of Olives, to the east of the city, which they saw as the locus of key eschatological events and especially of the awaited Second Coming of Christ. In his view, the localization of the Second Coming on the Mount of Olives was abandoned after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, but the eastward direction of Christian prayer was retained and became general. Stefan Heid rejects his theory, but Lang holds that it is not without reasons to support it.[10]

Martin Wallraff held that at the time of the formation of Christianity Jews prayed as commonly towards the east as towards the Jerusalem temple, but Lang considers that the eastward posture was rare among Jews.[11] It was the practice, Paul F. Bradshaw says, of the Jewish sects of the Essenes and the Therapeutae, for whom "the eastward prayer had acquired an eschatological dimension, the 'fine bright day' for which the Therapeutae prayed being apparently the messianic age and the Essene prayer towards the sun 'as though beseeching him to rise' being a petition for the coming of the priestly Messiah."[12]

In the ninth century, Saint John of Damascus, a Doctor of the Church, wrote:[8]

It is not without reason or by chance that we worship towards the East. But seeing that we are composed of a visible and an invisible nature, that is to say, of a nature partly of spirit and partly of sense, we render also a twofold worship to the Creator; just as we sing both with our spirit and our bodily lips, and are baptized with both water and Spirit, and are united with the Lord in a twofold manner, being sharers in the Mysteries and in the grace of the Spirit. Since, therefore, God is spiritual light, and Christ is called in the Scriptures Sun of Righteousness and Dayspring, the East is the direction that must be assigned to His worship. For everything good must be assigned to Him from Whom every good thing arises. Indeed the divine David also says, Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth: O sing praises unto the Lord: to Him that rideth upon the Heavens of heavens towards the East. Moreover the Scripture also says, And God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed: and when he had transgressed His command He expelled him and made him to dwell over against the delights of Paradise, which clearly is the West. So, then, we worship God seeking and striving after our old fatherland. Moreover the tent of Moses had its veil and mercy seat towards the East. Also the tribe of Judah as the most precious pitched their camp on the East. Also in the celebrated temple of Solomon, the Gate of the Lord was placed eastward. Moreover Christ, when He hung on the Cross, had His face turned towards the West, and so we worship, striving after Him. And when He was received again into Heaven He was borne towards the East, and thus His apostles worship Him, and thus He will come again in the way in which they beheld Him going towards Heaven; as the Lord Himself said, As the lightning cometh out of the East and shineth even unto the West, so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be. So, then, in expectation of His coming we worship towards the East. But this tradition of the apostles is unwritten. For much that has been handed down to us by tradition is unwritten.[8]

Eastern Orthodox Christian pilgrims making prostrations at Golgotha in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem.

Timothy I, an eighth-century patriarch of the Church of the East declared:[13]

He [Christ] has taught us all the economy of the Christian religion: baptism, laws, ordinances, prayers, worship in the direction of the east, and the sacrifice that we offer. All these things He practiced in His person and taught us to practise ourselves.[13]

Moses Bar-Kepha, a ninth-century bishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church called praying towards the east one of the mysteries of the Church.[13]

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, described the eastward orientation as linked with the "cosmic sign of the rising sun which symbolizes the universality of God."[14] He also states in the same book (The Spirit of the Liturgy) that:

Despite all the variations in practice that have taken place far into the second millennium, one thing has remained clear for the whole of Christendom: praying toward the east is a tradition that goes back to the beginning. Moreover, it is a fundamental expression of the Christian synthesis of cosmos and history, of being rooted in the once-for-all events again.

Outside of Rome, it was an ancient custom for most churches to be built with the entrance at the west end and for priest and people to face eastward to the place of the rising sun.[15]

On the history of the custom of constructing many but not all churches in this way, see Orientation of churches.

Among the exceptions was the original Constantinian Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which had the altar in the west end.[16][17]

Members of the Pentecostal Apostolic Faith Mission continue to pray facing east, believing that it "is the direction from which Jesus Christ will come when he returns".[18]

It is common for members of Oriental Orthodox Churches to pray privately in their homes facing eastward; when a priest visits one's home, he usually asks where the east is before he leads a family in prayer.

Byzantine Orthodox also face east when praying.[19]

Catholic priest at an altar attached to a wall

The altar of the cathedral of Rome, at which popes have always celebrated Mass facing east and also facing the people

In early Christianity, the practice of praying towards the east did not result in uniformity in the orientation of the buildings in which Christians worshipped and did not mean that the priest necessarily faced away from the congregation, the meaning today commonly attached to the phrase ad orientem. The earliest churches in Rome had a façade to the east and an apse with the altar to the west; the priest celebrating Mass stood behind the altar, facing east and so towards the people.[22][23] According to Louis Bouyer, not only the priest but also the congregation faced east at prayer, a view strongly criticized on the grounds of the unlikelihood that, in churches where the altar was to the west, they would turn their backs on the altar (and the priest) at the celebration of the Eucharist. The view prevails therefore that the priest, facing east, would celebrate ad populum in some churches, in others not, in accordance with the churches' architecture.[24]

It was in the 8th or 9th century that the position whereby the priest faced the apse, not the people, when celebrating Mass was adopted in the basilicas of Rome.[25] This usage was introduced from the Frankish Empire and later became almost universal in the West.[26] However, the Tridentine Roman Missal continued to recognize the possibility of celebrating Mass "versus populum" (facing the people),[27] and in several churches in Rome, it was physically impossible, even before the twentieth-century liturgical reforms, for the priest to celebrate Mass facing away from the people because of the presence, immediately in front of the altar, of the "confession" (Latin: confessio), an area sunk below floor level to enable people to come close to the tomb of the saint buried beneath the altar.

Anglican Bishop Colin Buchanan writes that there "is reason to think that in the first millennium of the church in Western Europe, the president of the eucharist regularly faced across the eucharistic table toward the ecclesiastical west. Somewhere between the 10th and 12th centuries, a change occurred in which the table itself was moved to be fixed against the east wall, and the president stood before it, facing east, with his back to the people."[28] This change, according to Buchanan, "was possibly precipitated by the coming of tabernacles for reservation, which were ideally both to occupy a central position and also to be fixed to the east wall without the president turning his back to them."[28]

In 7th century England, it is said, Catholic churches were built so that on the very feast day of the saint in whose honor they were named, Mass could be offered on an altar while directly facing the rising sun.[29] However, various surveys of old English churches found no evidence of any such general practice.[30][31][32]

A Palm Sunday Low Mass celebrated ad orientem (not necessarily in the geographical sense) in 2009.

The present Roman Missal (revised in 1969 following the Second Vatican Council) does not forbid the ad orientem position of the priest saying Mass: its General Instruction only requires that in new or renovated churches the facing-the-people orientation be made possible: "The altar should be built separate from the wall, in such a way that it is possible to walk around it easily and that Mass can be celebrated at it facing the people, which is desirable wherever possible."[33] As in some ancient churches the ad orientem position was physically impossible, so today there are churches and chapels in which it is physically impossible for the priest to face the people throughout the Mass. A letter of 25 September 2000 from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments treats the phrase "which is desirable wherever possible" as referring to the requirement that altars be built separate from the wall, not to the celebration of Mass facing the people, while "it reaffirms that the position toward the assembly seems more convenient inasmuch as it makes communication easier ... without excluding, however, the other possibility."[34] This is also what is stated in the original text (in Latin) of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (2002), which reads, "Altare maius exstruatur a pariete seiunctum, ut facile circumiri et in eo celebratio versus populum peragi possit, quod expedit ubicumque possibile sit."[35] As quod is a neuter pronoun, it cannot refer back to the feminine celebratio [versus populum] and mean that celebration facing the people expedit ubicumque possible sit ("is desirable wherever possible"), but must refer to the entirety of the preceding phrase about building the altar separate from the wall so to facilitate walking around it and celebrating Mass at it while facing the people.

On 13 January 2008, Pope Benedict XVI publicly celebrated Mass in the Sistine Chapel at its altar, which is attached to the west wall.[36] He later celebrated Mass at the same altar in the Sistine Chapel annually for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. His celebration of Mass in the Pauline Chapel in the Apostolic Palace on 1 December 2009 was reported to be the first time he publicly celebrated Mass ad orientem on a freestanding altar.[37] In reality, earlier that year the chapel had been remodeled, with "the previous altar back in its place, although still a short distance from the tabernacle, restoring the celebration of all 'facing the Lord'."[38] On 15 April 2010 he again celebrated Mass in the same way in the same chapel and with the same group.[39] The practice of saying Mass at the altar attached to the west wall of the Sistine Chapel on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord was continued by Pope Francis, when he celebrated the feast for the first time as Supreme Pontiff on 12 January 2014. Although neither before nor after the 20th-century revision of the Roman Rite did liturgical norms impose either orientation, the distinction became so linked with traditionalist discussion that it was considered journalistically worthy of remark that Pope Francis celebrated Mass ad orientem [40] at an altar at which only this orientation was possible.[41]

In a conference in London on 5 July 2016, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, encouraged priests to adopt the ad orientem position from the first Sunday in Advent at the end of that year. However, the Vatican soon clarified that this was a personal view of the cardinal and that no official directives would be issued to change the prevailing practice of celebrating versus populum.[42]

An ad orientem altar in an Anglican cathedral

With the English Reformation, the Church of England directed that the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist be celebrated at a communion table placed lengthwise in the chancel or in the body of the church, with the priest standing on the north side of the holy table, facing south. Turning to the east continued to be observed at certain points of the Anglican liturgy, including the saying of the Gloria Patri, Gloria in excelsis Deo and ecumenical creeds in that direction.[43] Archbishop Laud, under direction from Charles I of England, encouraged a return to the use of the altar at the east end, but in obedience to the rubric in the Book of Common Prayer the priest stood at the north end of the altar. In the middle of the 19th century, the Oxford Movement gave rise to a return to the eastward-facing position, and use of the versus populum position appeared in the second half of the 20th century.[44]

However, over "the course of the last forty years or so, a great many of those altars have either been removed and pulled out away from the wall or replaced by the kind of freestanding table-like altar", in "response to the popular sentiment that the priest ought not turn his back to the people during the service; the perception was that this represented an insult to the laity and their centrality in worship. Thus developed today’s widespread practice in which the clergy stand behind the altar facing the people."[45]