Monday, March 24, 2008

B-16's Holy Saturday Sermon: Look East!!

Fr. Z printed all of it.

Here's the part which Klaus Gamber could have written:

In the early Church there was a custom whereby the Bishop or the priest, after the homily, would cry out to the faithful: "Conversi ad Dominum" – turn now towards the Lord. This meant in the first place that they would turn towards the East, towards the rising sun, the sign of Christ returning, whom we go to meet when we celebrate the Eucharist. Where this was not possible, for some reason, they would at least turn towards [the liturgical East] the image of Christ in the apse, or towards the Cross, so as to orient themselves inwardly towards the Lord.

Fundamentally, this involved an interior event; conversion, the turning of our soul towards Jesus Christ and thus towards the living God, towards the true light. Linked with this, then, was the other exclamation that still today, before the Eucharistic Prayer, is addressed to the community of the faithful: "Sursum corda" – "Lift up your hearts", high above the tangled web of our concerns, desires, anxieties and thoughtlessness – "Lift up your hearts, your inner selves!"

For you LitWonkTwitterers--how, exactly, can you remain wedded to the "versus populum" foolishness perpetrated by "Bugsy" Bugnini?

---outside of simply choosing to ignore the substance of the symbol?

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