Celebrating the Mass Ad Orientem Together We face toward the Lord
Friday – 8 AM Mass Pope Benedict encourages us that if we examine a brief explanation of ad orientem or ad Deum worship we will understand that prayer and worship “toward the East” (ad orientem, oriented prayer) “is, first and foremost, a simple expression of looking to Christ as the meeting place between God and man. It expresses the basic Christological form of our prayer. Praying toward the east means going to meet the coming of Christ. The liturgy, turned toward the East, effects entry, so to speak, into the procession of history toward the future, the New Heaven and the New Earth, which we encounter in Christ.”