“Ratzinger [Benedict XVI] notes in his
Spirit of the Liturgy that in Christian sacred architecture, which both
continues and transforms synagogue architecture, the Torah shrine has its
equivalent in the altar at the east wall or in the apse, thus being the place
where the sacrifice of Christ, the Word incarnate, becomes present in the
liturgy of the Mass”.
Uwe
Michael Lang
That quotation is to be found in Uwe Michael Lang’s book, Louis Bouyer and Church Architecture: Resourcing Benedict XVI's The
Spirit of the Liturgy (Vol. 19, The Institute for Sacred Architecture),
written (2011) when Benedict XVI was still pope. Lang writes: http://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/louis_bouyer_and_church_architecture/
….
The present Holy Father’s
thought on liturgy and church architecture was considerably influenced by Louis
Bouyer (1913-2004), a convert from Lutheranism, priest of the French Oratory (a
religious congregation founded by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle in the seventeenth
century and distinct from the Oratory of St. Philip Neri) and protagonist of
the liturgical movement in France.
…. Bouyer has left an enormous
oeuvre extending not only to the study of the sacred liturgy but to other
fields of theology and spirituality. Although he taught for several years in
American universities and many of his books were published in English, Bouyer’s
passing away on October 22, 2004 at the age of ninety-one seemed to have gone
largely unnoticed in the Anglophone world. ….
....
Joseph Ratzinger and Louis
Bouyer were friends who held each other’s work in high esteem. Both were called
to the International Theological Commission when it was instituted by Pope Paul
VI in 1969. Bouyer recalls the working sessions of the Commission in his
unpublished memoirs, and comments especially on Ratzinger’s clarity of vision,
vast knowledge, intellectual courage, incisive judgment, and gentle sense of
humour. In his remarkable book-length interview of 1979, entitled Le Métier de
Théologien (The Craft of the Theologian), which has unfortunately not yet been
published in English, Bouyer praises the appointment of the outstanding
theologian Joseph Ratzinger as Archbishop of Munich. …. Cardinal Ratzinger, in
his turn, in a contribution published originally in 2002, recalls the founding
of the international theological review Communio Initiated by a group of
friends, Communio including the noted theologians Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von
Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, and Jorge Medina Estévez, who later became the
Cardinal-Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments. ….
In The Spirit of the Liturgy,
the present Pope’s debt to Bouyer is especially evident in the chapters “Sacred
Places – The Significance of the Church Building” and “The Altar and the
Direction of Liturgical Prayer”, where the French theologian is cited
throughout. …. In the short bibliography, Bouyer’s book Liturgy and Architecture
features prominently. This work was published originally in English in 1967 by
the University of Notre Dame Press; its German translation, used by
then-Cardinal Ratzinger, appeared as late as 1993. The theme of orientation in
liturgical prayer occupied the theologian Joseph Ratzinger as early as 1966, at
the height of the post-conciliar liturgical reform … his first significant
contribution to the debate dates from the late 1978 and was included in the
important volume The Feast of Faith, published in German in 1981. …. However,
it appears to have been the work of his friend Bouyer that led Ratzinger to a
more profound approach to the subject as is reflected in The Spirit of the
Liturgy.
Jewish origins of Christian
worship
One of the characteristics of
Pope Benedict’s theology of the liturgy is his emphasis on the Jewish roots of
Christian worship, which he considers a manifestation of the essential unity of
Old and New Testament, a subject to which he repeatedly calls attention. ….
Bouyer pursues this methodology in his monograph Eucharist, where he argues
that the form of the Church’s liturgy must be understood as emerging from a
Jewish ritual context. ….
In Liturgy and Architecture,
Bouyer explores the Jewish background to early church architecture, especially
with regard to the “sacred direction” taken in divine worship. He notes that
Jews in the Diaspora prayed towards Jerusalem or, more precisely, towards the
presence of the transcendent God (shekinah) in the Holy of Holies of the
Temple. Even after the destruction of the Temple the prevailing custom of
turning towards Jerusalem for prayer was kept in the liturgy of the synagogue.
Thus Jews have expressed their eschatological hope for the coming of the
Messiah, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the gathering of God’s people from
the Diaspora. The direction of prayer was thus inseparably bound up with the messianic
expectation of Israel. ….
Bouyer observes that this
direction of prayer towards the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem gave
Jewish synagogue worship a quasi-sacramental quality that went beyond the mere
proclamation of the word. This sacred direction was highlighted by the later
development of the Torah shrine, where the scrolls of the Holy Scripture are
solemnly kept. The Torah shrine thus becomes a sign of God’s presence among his
people, keeping alive the memory of his ineffable presence in the Holy of
Holies of the Temple. Ratzinger notes in his Spirit of the Liturgy that in
Christian sacred architecture, which both continues and transforms synagogue
architecture, the Torah shrine has its equivalent in the altar at the east wall
or in the apse, thus being the place where the sacrifice of Christ, the Word
incarnate, becomes present in the liturgy of the Mass. ….
Syrian Churches
….
Bouyer’s Liturgy and
Architecture made available to a wider public in the 1960’s current research on
early Christian sacred architecture in the Near East. ….The oldest surviving
Syrian churches, dating from the fourth century onwards, mostly follow the model
of the basilica, similar to contemporary synagogues, with the difference,
however, that they were in general built with their apse facing towards the
east. In churches where some clue remains as to the position of the altar, it
appears to have been placed only a little forward from the east wall or
directly before it. The orientation of church and altar thus corresponds to the
universally accepted principle of facing east in prayer and expresses the
eschatological hope of the early Christians for the second coming of Christ as
the Sun of righteousness. The bema, a raised platform in the middle of the
building, was taken over from the synagogue, where it served as the place for
the reading of Holy Scripture and the recitation of prayers. The bishop would
sit with his clergy on the west side of the bema in the nave facing towards the
apse. The psalmody and readings that form part of the liturgy of the Word are
conducted from the bema. The clergy then proceed eastward to the altar for the
liturgy of the Eucharist. …. Bouyer’s theory that the “Syrian arrangement” with
the bema in the nave was also the original layout of Byzantine churches has met
with a very mixed reception among scholars.– What is widely agreed, however, is
that the celebrant would have stood in front of the altar, facing east with the
congregation for the Eucharistic liturgy.
Roman Basilicas
Early Roman churches,
especially those with an oriented entrance, such as the Lateran Basilica or
Saint Peter’s in the Vatican (which is unique in many ways), present questions
regarding their liturgical use that are still being debated by scholars. According
to Bouyer the whole assembly, the bishop or priest celebrant who stood behind
the altar as well as the people in the nave would turn towards the east and
hence towards the doors during the Eucharistic prayer. …. The doors may have
been left open so that the light of the rising sun, the symbol of the risen
Christ and his second coming in glory, flooded into the nave. The assembly
would have formed a semicircle that opened to the east, with the celebrating
priest as its apex. In the context of religious practice in the ancient world,
this liturgical gesture does not appear as extraordinary as it might seem
today. It was the general custom in antiquity to pray towards the open sky,
which meant that in a closed room one would turn to an open door or an open window
for prayer, a custom that is well attested by Jewish and Christian sources. ….
Against this background it would seem quite possible that for the Eucharistic
prayer the faithful, along with the celebrant, turned towards the eastern
entrance.
The practice of priest and
people facing each other arose when the profound symbolism of facing east was
no longer understood and the faithful no longer turned eastward for the
Eucharistic prayer. This happened especially in those basilicas where the altar
was moved from the middle of the nave to the apse.
….
Another line of argument can
be pursued if we start from the observation that facing east was accompanied by
looking upwards, namely towards the eastern sky which was considered the place
of Paradise and the scene of Christ’s second coming. The lifting up of hearts
for the canon, in response to the admonition “Sursum corda,” included the
bodily gestures of standing upright, raising one’s arms and looking heavenward.
It is no mere accident that in many basilicas (only) the apse and triumphal
arch were decorated with magnificent mosaics; their iconographic programmes are
often related to the Eucharist that is celebrated underneath. These mosaics may
well have served to direct the attention of the assembly whose eyes were raised
up during the Eucharistic prayer. Even the priest at the altar prayed with
outstretched, raised arms and no further ritual gestures. Where the altar was
placed at the entrance of the apse or in the central nave, the celebrant
standing in front of it could easily have looked up towards the apse. With
splendid mosaics representing the celestial world, the apse may have indicated
the “liturgical east” and hence the focus of prayer. …. This theory has the
distinct advantage that it accounts better for the correlation between liturgy,
art, and architecture than that of Bouyer, which must accommodate a discrepancy
between the sacred rites and the space created for them. Pope Benedict alludes
to this theory in the beautiful comments he made on orientation in liturgical
prayer in his homily during the Easter Vigil 2008. ….
Even if we assume that priest
and people were facing one another in early Christian basilicas with an
eastward entrance, we can exclude any visual contact at least for the canon,
since all prayed with arms raised, looking upwards. At any rate, there was not
much to see at the altar, since ritual gestures, such as signs of the cross,
altar kisses, genuflections, and the elevation of the Eucharistic species, were
only added later. …. Bouyer is certainly correct in saying that the Mass
“facing the people,” in the modern sense, was unknown to Christian antiquity,
and that it would be anachronistic to see the Eucharistic liturgy in the early
Roman basilicas as its prototype.
Bouyer acclaims Byzantine
church architecture as a genuine development of the early Christian basilica:
those elements that were not appropriate for the celebration of the liturgy
were either changed or removed, so that a new type of building came into being.
A major achievement was the formation of a particular iconography that stood in
close connection with the sacred mysteries celebrated in the liturgy and gave
them a visible artistic form. Church architecture in the West, on the other
hand, was more strongly indebted to the basilican structure. Significantly, the
rich decoration of the east wall and dome in Byzantine churches has its
counterpart in the Ottonian and Romanesque wall-paintings and, even further
developed, in the sumptuous altar compositions of the late Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and the Baroque, which display themes intimately related to the
Eucharist and so give a foretaste of the eternal glory given to the faithful in
the sacrifice of the Mass. ….
The Liturgical Movement and
Mass “facing the people”
Drawing on his own experience,
Bouyer relates that the pioneers of the Liturgical Movement in the twentieth
century had two chief motives for promoting the celebration of Mass versus
populum. First, they wanted the Word of God to be proclaimed towards the
people. According to the rubrics for Low Mass, the priest had to read the Epistle
and the Gospel from the book resting on the altar. Thus the only option was to
celebrate the whole Mass “facing the people,” as was provided for by the Missal
of St Pius V … to cover the particular arrangement of the major Roman
basilicas. The instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Rites Inter Oecumenici
of September 26, 1964 allowed the reading of the Epistle and Gospel from a
pulpit or ambo, so that the first incentive for Mass facing the people was met.
There was, however, another reason motivating many exponents of the Liturgical
Movement to press for this change, namely, the intention to reclaim the
perception of the Holy Eucharist as a sacred banquet, which was deemed to be
eclipsed by the strong emphasis on its sacrificial character. The celebration
of Mass facing the people was seen as an adequate way of recovering this loss.
….
Bouyer notes in retrospect a
tendency to conceive of the Eucharist as a meal in contrast to a sacrifice,
which he calls a fabricated dualism that has no warrant in the liturgical
tradition. …. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “The Mass is at
the same time, and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice
of the cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord’s
body and blood,” … and these two aspects cannot be isolated from each other.
According to Bouyer, our situation today is very different from that of the
first half of the twentieth century, since the meal aspect of the Eucharist has
become common property, and it is its sacrificial character that needs to be
recovered. ….
Pastoral experience confirms
this analysis, because the understanding of the Mass as both the sacrifice of
Christ and the sacrifice of the Church has diminished considerably, if not faded
away among the faithful….. Therefore it is a legitimate question to ask whether
the stress on the meal aspect of the Eucharist that complemented the celebrant
priest’s turning towards the people has been overdone and has failed to
proclaim the Eucharist as “a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands).”
…. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist must find an adequate expression
in the actual rite. Since the third century, the Eucharist has been named
“prosphora,” “anaphora,” and “oblation,” terms that articulate the idea of
“bringing to,” “presenting,” and thus of a movement towards God.
Conclusion
Bouyer painted with a broad
brush and his interpretation of historical data is sometimes questionable or
even untenable. Moreover, he was inclined to express his theological positions
sharply, and his taste for polemics made him at times overstate the good case
he had. Like other important theologians of the years before the Second Vatican
Council, he had an ambiguous relationship to post-Tridentine Catholicism and
was not entirely free of an iconoclastic attitude. …. Later, he deplored some
post-conciliar developments especially in the liturgy and in religious life,
and again expressed this in the strongest possible terms. ….
Needless to say, Benedict XVI
does not share Bouyer’s attitude, as is evident from his appreciation of sound
and legitimate developments in post-Tridentine liturgy, sacred architecture,
art, and music. It should also be noted that Joseph Ratzinger does not take up
the later, more experimental chapters of Liturgy and Architecture, where new
schematic models of church buildings are presented. Despite its limitations,
however, Bouyer’s book remains an important work, and it is perhaps its
greatest merit that it introduced a wider audience to the significance of early
Syrian church architecture. Louis Bouyer was one of the first to raise
questions that seemed deeply outmoded then, but have now become matters of
intense liturgical and theological debate. ….
[End of quote]
According to the following post: https://ldsguy2catholic.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/jesus-and-the-jewish-roots-of-the-eucharist/
“It is clear to me, and many others, that Catholic and
Orthodox churches, cathedrals, basilicas, etc not only carry on architecture
and practices related to the Jewish synagogue, but also architecture and rites
associated with the temple”.
Here follows a part of that post:
… when I read the works of … scholar Margaret Barker … I actually became
more convinced of the ancient Israelite temple origins and connections of the Catholic
and Orthodox liturgical rites and church architecture. For more
on that from Barker, I highly suggest reading her Temple
Themes in Christian Worship. Her website also has various papers
she’s written on related matters.
Catholic and Orthodox readers may be interested
in: Our
Great High Priest: The Church as the New Temple, Temple and
Liturgy, The Holy
Anointing Oil, Belonging
in the Temple, and Temple
Roots of the Liturgy, if you don’t read all of the articles (there are a
lot!). It is clear to me, and many others, that Catholic and Orthodox
churches, cathedrals, basilicas, etc not only carry on architecture and
practices related to the Jewish synagogue, but also architecture and rites
associated with the temple. Eastern Catholics and Orthodox even refer to
their churches as “temples”.
One practice that relates to the temple quite
explicitly is the Eucharist, the consecrated bread and wine. Catholics and
Orthodox believe that their church buildings are sacred ground. Each
church is regarded as a literal House of God, where His presence literally
dwells. This is typified in the Eucharist, which is reserved in a
tabernacle. Catholics and Orthodox believe that during the liturgical
rites of the church, we join with the Heavenly angels, as well as the deceased
saints, in worshipping God.
They worship God in the Heavenly liturgy (as we
see in Revelation. For more on that, please see Dr. Scott Hahn’s popular
book The
Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth). In the church, Heaven and
Earth join together, and we are in the presence of God, clearly tying to the
Old Testament temples.
One book that is relevant to this topic, and which
I highly recommend, is Jesus
and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper,
by Dr. Brant Pitre (Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary, PhD
in New Testament and Ancient Judaism from University of Notre Dame). Quite
often, Evangelical Protestants, as well as Mormons, who do not share the belief
in the Real
Presence of Christ in the Eucharist with the most ancient Christian
churches (i.e. Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, etc), attempt to
demonstrate that it is not only contra-Biblical, but is not found anciently,
and goes against the Jewish context that Christianity developed in. Dr.
Pitre not only demonstrates that this is false (and countless Catholic/Orthodox
apologists and scholars have demonstrated not only its ancient origins, but how
it comports with the Biblical record as well, for centuries), but connects the
Eucharist to three ancient Jewish practices:
1. The Passover
2. The Manna
I highly recommend this book to all Catholics,
Orthodox, and LDS [Latter Day Saints] readers interested in understanding how
the belief in the Real Presence not only is Biblical, but is tied quite
significantly to ancient Jewish beliefs and practices, including temple practices,
and that it was not invented centuries after Christ, after corruption by Greek
philosophy, as some LDS and Evangelical apologists would have us believe.
Here is some information about the book:
In recent years, Christians everywhere are
rediscovering the Jewish roots of their faith. Every year at Easter time, many
believers now celebrate Passover meals (known as Seders) seeking to understand
exactly what happened at Jesus’ final Passover, the night before he was
crucified.
Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist shines fresh light on the Last Supper by looking at it through Jewish eyes.
Using his in-depth knowledge of the Bible and
ancient Judaism, Dr. Brant Pitre answers questions such as:
What was the Passover like at the time of Jesus?
What were the Jewish hopes for the Messiah? What was Jesus’ purpose in instituting
the Eucharist during the feast of Passover? And, most important of all, what
did Jesus mean when he said, “This is my body… This is my blood”?
To answer these questions, Pitre explores ancient
Jewish beliefs about the Passover of the Messiah, the miraculous Manna from
heaven, and the mysterious Bread of the Presence. As he shows, these three
keys—the Passover, the Manna, and the Bread of the Presence—have the power to
unlock the original meaning of the Eucharistic words of Jesus. Along the way,
Pitre also explains how Jesus united the Last Supper to his death on Good
Friday and his Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Inspiring and informative, Jesus and the Jewish
Roots of the Eucharist is a groundbreaking work that is sure to illuminate one
of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith: the mystery of Jesus’
presence in “the breaking of the bread.”
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