Facing The Father

What is it?

At some Masses (not all), Father Jim will join us in facing the Father (the tabernacle and the crucifix - The Liturgical East), during the Eucharistic prayer when addressing God the Father, at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. When addressing the congregation (the readings, the homily, the prayers of the Faithful, etc), nothing will change (he will be facing us, as usual).

What Masses?

  • Fridays at daily Mass (8am)

  • Sundays, 10am Mass (only this Mass).

Why are we doing this?

“Over the past years the Lord has been leading me to pay greater attention to the sacrificial character of the Mass, and lead the parish in this direction.

In facing the Lord, along with you, I will be uniting myself more intimately with you in lifting our gaze to God together, as we offer this sacrifice up to the Father. While my direction may seem different at first, I am confident that it will allow us to enter more deeply into the prayers of the Mass, grow our relationship with the Holy Trinity by assisting us in understanding who we are addressing with each prayer, and help us focus more intently on the mystery of Christ’s Real Presence – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – in the Most Holy Eucharist. ”
— Father Jim Crisman

The greatest prayer we can offer is the prayer Jesus made to the Father on our behalf while he offered himself on the cross. His death offers us life, his life. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist we are made present to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and the grace of his sacrifice is given to us.

The Mass as a Community Meal of Thanksgiving

The offering of Jesus on the Cross, which he prefigured at the Last Supper, is the very thing that prepares us to partake of the fruits of his victory over sin and death when we celebrate the wedding feast of the Lamb in heaven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that the Mass is, “The Lord’s Supper, because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his disciples on the eve of his Passion and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem” (CCC, 1329).

The Mass as a Sacrifice

At the same time, Jesus’s prayer was an act of sacrifice to the Father on our behalf, mirroring yet completing and perfecting the sacrifices of old that established God’s covenants with his people (recall the sacrificing of the lambs at the first passover in Egypt). The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the Mass is, “The Holy Sacrifice, because it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Church’s offering. The terms holy sacrifice of the Mass, ‘sacrifice of praise,’ spiritual sacrifice, pure and holy sacrifice are also used, since it completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant” (CCC, 1330)


Both / And

We are a people that hold many theological positions that are “both/and” in nature:

  • Jesus is both fully God and fully man.

  • God is both transcendent and immanent.

  • God is both merciful and just.

  • We can know God both through faith and reason.

  • The Church is both a divine mystery and a human institution.

  • Human nature is both good (made in the image of God) and sinful (in need of forgiveness).

  • The Eucharist is both a sacrifice and a community meal of thanksgiving.

Common Concerns

“Let me address some common concerns: 

This is not a Tridentine Mass  also known as Extraordinary form of the Mass, or the Traditional Latin Mass) here at SFA. I am not trained to celebrate a Tridentine Mass, or plan to be trained. Additionally, I do not hear the Lord calling us in that direction.

I am not turning my back on you, but instead I will be facing God with you and praying with you, leading you in prayer, and offering sacrifice with you.

This is not a rejection of Vatican II or of the directives of Pope Francis. In fact, facing the Father during the Eucharistic prayer is perfectly in line with the documents of Vatican II and the rubrics set forth by Rome for celebrating Mass. 

By establishing this I am NOT saying that we’ve been doing things wrong until now. This is not an attempt to fix something broken, but instead an invitation into the riches available for us in celebrating the Mass.”
— Father Jim Crisman

Other Common Objections

Objection:  Surely the first Christians didn’t pray like this.

Response:  At best, we try to reconstruct what the early Church may (but given limitations, may not!) have done.  By the way, the idea that we should only model what we do after the early Church was given a name-antiquarianism-and was condemned by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical ‘Mediator Dei’.  As Catholics, we see development within the Church’s history, inspired by the Holy Spirit, as as welcome gift.  As it is, we do know for a fact that Mass ‘versus Deum’/facing God together became the norm very early in our history and remained the norm until about 1970 (before in many places, after in others, including here). 

Objection:  Shouldn’t the priest turn toward the people even a little bit? 

Response: Absolutely, and I will!  When addressing the congregation (the readings, the homily, the prayers of the Faithful, etc), nothing will change. The change will only occur during the Eucharistic Prayer. To be more specific, even with this ancient form of praying the Mass, the priest is instructed by the Roman Missal to face the people for the following (the rubrics actually assume the priest is not facing the people and instructs him to turn around at certain parts):  1) the beginning of Mass with the initial greeting of the people, 2) for the Liturgy of the Word, 3) the prayer after the offertory, ‘pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours…’, 4) ‘the Lord be with you…’ 5) ‘the peace of the Lord be with you always’, 5) ‘behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world…’, 6) the final blessing.

Objection:  The priest says, ‘take this all of you and eat of it…’; this sounds like he’s talking to the people, so why does he not face them for this part of the Mass?

Response:  The priest is repeating the words of Christ at the Last Supper, but the prayer itself, as is the entirety of the Eucharistic Prayer, is addressed to God the Father.  ‘On the day before he was to suffer, he took bread in his holy and venerable hands, and with eyes raised to heaven, to you, O God, his almighty Father, giving you thanks, he said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples, saying:  take this, all of you, and eat of it…’  If we let ourselves focus on the references to God as the addressee of the Eucharistic Prayer, we may be overwhelmed by just how many there are! 

 

Objection:  I don’t like it.

Response:  That’s OK.  You don’t have to like everything in the Church to be faithful and obedient.  The important thing is to keep the focus on being committed and intentional disciples of Jesus and receiving the entirety of the Church’s tradition with humility and openness.  The only truly toxic thing here would be to sow seeds of division, discord, anger, and the like.  Further, as many parents know well, whether one likes something or not is not the best indicator of whether that something is truly good and beneficial (most of us grow up not liking vegetables, for instance!)

Resources

Below is a list of readings that reflect further on this topic: