The holy Eucharist completes Christian initiation. Those who have been raised to the dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism and configured more deeply to Christ by Confirmation participate with the whole community in the Lord's own sacrifice by means of the Eucharist.
At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet 'in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1322 & 1323
The Question of Orientation when Offering Holy Mass
Our Pastor, Father Capoverdi, seeks to lead us in prayer and worship of God. As such, he can often be found offering the Holy Mass "ad orientem" ("Toward the east"). The following is an excerpt from George Weigel's book Evangelical Catholicism (permission to use requested):
"And that [the fact that the Eucharistic ordering rightly orders all our earthly loves and loyalties toward the Kingdom to come and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb] is why Evangelical Catholicism takes seriously the possibility of returning to the ancient orientation of the Church’s liturgical prayer during the Liturgy of the Eucharist at Mass. There, both priest-celebrant and congregation pray in the same direction: toward the Christ who will return in glory and draw his Body, the Church, into the heavenly Jerusalem.
"The issue here is not so much one of the priest celebrating Mass “facing the people” or “facing the altar” as it is one of the biblically and theologically correct orientation of the Church’s liturgical prayer for everyone. Thus attempts to derail this discussion by dismissing the orientation question as a project of anti–Vatican II reactionaries eager for the priest to “turn his back to the people” should be dismissed for the distraction they are. The crucial point, as Uwe Michael Lang has written, is that “the Mass is a common act of worship where priest and people together, representing the pilgrim Church, reach out for the transcendent God.”
"And as we have seen, this is in fact one of the primary aims of the Eucharistic liturgy: it is meant to point “Christian existence toward Christ coming in glory.” Has that aim been frustrated in what sometimes seems the “closed circle” of an orientation in which priest and people face each other across a free-standing altar? Some would suggest that it has. That loss can lead, in turn, to what Father Lang calls an “eschatological deficit” in the liturgy—a deficient sense of liturgical prayer as our privileged participation in the heavenly liturgy, which anticipates Christ’s coming in glory. The “eschatological deficit” in the celebration of the sacred liturgy leads in turn to a kerygmatic deficit (the liturgy is less the encounter with the truth of Christ the Lord than it ought to be), and that kerygmatic deficit leads to an evangelical deficit (the liturgy does not inspire the people of the Church to become the agents of the Church’s “mission they have been baptized to be). Thus this “eschatological deficit” suggests that the common orientation of the Liturgy of the Eucharist since Vatican II comes up short on the two criteria of authentic Catholic reform: the criterion of truth and the criterion of mission.
"As Father Lang demonstrates, the common orientation of priest and people toward Christ, returning in glory, is deeply rooted in the origins of Christianity. Then, it was a “matter of course” for Christians to turn in prayer toward the rising sun—an orientation that directed the Church’s attention to Christ, the light of the world; an orientation that embodied the Church’s hope for the Lord’s return and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God in its fullness. In addition to this eschatological or Kingdom-meaning of priest-and-people looking together toward the returning Lord, the common orientation of the entire worshipping community during the Liturgy of the Eucharist also symbolized “the journey of the pilgrim people of God towards the future.” Thus two further questions: Does the now conventional, but hardly traditional, priest-facing-people-over-the-altar orientation contribute, however unintentionally, to a loss of the congregation’s self-awareness as God’s people on pilgrimage through history toward the fulfillment of God’s promises? Has the typical postconciliar orientation of the Liturgy of the Eucharist seriously attenuated the Church’s sense of the priest-celebrant leading God’s people “in a [common] ‘movement toward the Lord,’ who is ‘the rising sun of history’”? Thus an evangelical Catholic reform of the liturgy will give serious consideration to a recovery of the classic orientation of Christian prayer during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. During the Liturgy of the Word, priest and people would still face each other—an orientation appropriate for listening and for preaching. Then, in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the entire congregation, including the celebrant, would turn toward the Lord: both priest and people would, in other words, turn as one toward the altar as the celebrant prayed the Eucharistic Prayer, all facing together toward Christ, whose coming in glory is anticipated in his Eucharistic Presence, which the worshipping community receives in the consecrated bread and wine of holy communion.
"The liturgy can be reverently celebrated with priest and people facing each other during the Liturgy of the Eucharist; that is not in question. The question Evangelical Catholicism is pressing is a deeper one: Would a recovery of the Church’s ancient practice of a common orientation of priest and people during the Liturgy of the Eucharist make such reverent celebrations more likely, while helping the Church recover the Kingdom aspect of its Eucharistic life, thus reconnecting the Eucharist to Christian truth, proclamation, and witness?
A change in orientation cannot (and must not) be achieved by fiat, for most Catholics are wholly unaware of the reasons behind the ancient orientation of the Church’s prayer during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which has never been explained to them. Thus priests will need to prepare their congregations carefully for change through extensive liturgical catechesis, best undertaken at the homily during Sunday Mass for a considerable period of time. When a return to the ancient orientation during the Liturgy of the Eucharist is properly introduced, experience shows that it is almost invariably well received.”