eastward facing

By Bryan Owen When I was newly ordained, my bishop appointed me to serve in a parish with an altar against the wall. I was...

In the the April 28, 1968, issue of The Living Church, Fr. Francis W. Read considered "experiments" with facing the people during the Eucharist.

I have followed Covenant’s dueling blog posts about the ad orientem debate, since we have the issue before us in the parish I am serving: St Luke's in Catskill, New York. In most refitted liturgical spaces, the message of iconoclasm and abandonment is unavoidable. Over the years I have come to find this visual message a poignant embarrassment.

The Eucharist is only a meal because it is first and most fundamentally a sacrifice.

I could not have imagined a day when celebrating the Eucharist facing “liturgical east” would be considered cutting edge, nouveau, très chic.