It was in 1966 that I began to think that if the world didn't come to an end soon, I should try to jump off. I was a very sensitive youth and the nice new eucharistic liturgy which the then Church of the Province of New Zealand treated us to in that year could only inspire in me the very darkest of thoughts. Of course, being a member of the cathedral choir didn't help. We were there for the music after all, and we (along with the organ built by Henry Willis III) were the only reason anyone came to the services, a fact plainly obvious to us, if to nobody else. So how dare they muck about with our libretto and all the beautiful music which had been written using it.
And insult was heaped upon insult. At Evensong we were conmanded to sing the ferial responses while Byrd, Tomkins, and Smith of Durham were forbidden. And you know why, don't you? Congregational Participation - that's why. Even if the slowly vanishing inhabitants of the pews were demonstrating by their quiet departures their lack of enthusiasm for this particular turn of events, liturgical participation was becoming the fashion of the hour. And as the years went by it took a grip upon those of a scholarly and clerical bent which entirely bemused many others who thought that the purpose of church-going was the worship of God.
But no, it would seem its purpose is not so much the worship of God as to realise and proclaim our identity as the people of God. And liturgy's great task is to demonstrate this fashionable fact both to ourselves and to those who are cowering outside the Church in fear of hearty greetings, intense eye contact and a name tag.
When I describe it as fashionable I am being quite serious. Fashion is as powerful a thing in the liturgical departments of theological faculties as it is among the couturiers of Paris, although the academics involved would no doubt hotly deny it.
Let us consider for a moment the Liturgical Movement. In most of Catholic Europe in the nineteenth century worshippers had been using the Roman mass promulgated by Pope Pius V in 1570 as a result of the tridentine reform and largely unaltered thereafter. However, in the intervening years historical research had marched on, patristic texts of the liturgy had been rediscovered, and the Middle Ages had come back into fashion with all things gothick trumping the baroque style of much of the liturgical practice at the time.
And then they discovered the fourth century! The century in which the Emperor Constantine had set the Church free, and in which, in various newly-acquired imperial basilicas, the great liturgies of east and west emerged from the catacombs and flourished in the clear light of day. This became for many priests and liturgists in modern times both the golden age of liturgical development and the gold standard for the liturgy of the future - just as soon as they could get their hands on the old one.
Now, surprisingly enough, I do not deny that change was necessary. Where Rome is concerned, a touch of the vernacular and the dropping the Last Gospel seem to me like good ideas, while the Communion Office of 1662 really needed to be put back together like Humpty Dumpty. But it's the underlying ideology of 'The Family Meal of the People of God' which really concerns me, and the changes that have come about in its implementation. I suspect those holy liturgists Basil the Great and John Chrysostom (to name but two) would have been horrified.
In what sense is the Eucharist a meal? It's certainly not like any sort of meal to which we are accustomed in daily life. At what other meal do the diners stand in rows facing one side of a table which they don't even touch, and which has behind it the host (or hostess!) got up in a variation of fourth century garb and making rather strange ritual gestures. Although people do sometimes sing at meals - especially when drunk - it's not all that common, and there is no chance of getting drunk on a sip of vino sacro just as there is very little chance of being adequately nourished by a small round wafer.
From long before the Church emerged from the catacombs the Eucharist was understood to be a sacrifice, indeed the sacrifice of the Christian religion and the God-given form of the worship of Christians. Furthermore, at the consecration the bread and wine become Christ himself, in a manner which we cannot even begin to understand. And as he is the victim as well as the priest of the sacrifice it is upon him that we feed. The Last Supper may have started as the equivalent of the annual Lodge dinner, but it ended as a profound mystery which was (and is) something else altogether. Hence the removal of the agape meal at a very early stage of the Church's liturgical history.
It is true that Aquinas says that the ultimate purpose of the Eucharist is the unity of the mystical Body of Christ. But I am sure that he does not mean by that anything other than the fact that because we are joined to Christ, we are joined to others in him. All too often, it seems to me, we go for the easy option, one which we can explain and justify both to ourselves and to outsiders as well - fellowship and community. It's just the thing for looking relevant in today's world. Everybody can see the point of fellowship and community - especially if it's not too religious.
Rugby clubs exist to play football. They don't exist for reasons of fellowship and community, or even for the excessive consumption of alcohol. If they did they would soon cease to exist altogether. It is in participating in something beyond ourselves that we find both fufilment and fellowship - and the desire to enjoy one another's company in the rest of life. I'm sure if you asked the All Blacks they would say the same, even if they had to think about it for a while.
So what's wrong with ad orientem then?
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