The Hill of the Crosses, near Šiauliai in northern Lithuania, is one of the most moving places of pilgrimage anywhere. For here the indomitable Catholic faith of the Lithuanian people survived first the Russification policies of the 19th-century tsars, and then the totalitarian atheism of the Soviet empire.
The Soviet empire razed the hill three times and burned the crosses, placed there as votive thanks or seeking God’s merciful help, simple expressions of the faith of the people. In the night the crosses would return, demonstrating Lithuania’s fidelity to God and to confound the communist usurpers whose presence polluted the land.
At the end of the Soviet occupation there were an estimated 50,000 crosses – mostly crucifixes, actually – on this hill in the middle of a vast empty field. Today, 25 years later, there are some 100,000, and pilgrims from all over the world come to honour the witness of Lithuanian Catholics and, one hopes, to confound those lingering few communists who are not yet enduring their eternal punishment.
It is a good place to think about the minor furore caused by Cardinal Robert Sarah’s suggestion that it is time to offer the Ordinary Form of the Holy Mass ad orientem. The cardinal’s remarks – in strict continuity with the pre-papal and papal orientation, shall we say, of Benedict XVI, were a major step towards authentic liturgical reform. The response from Cardinal Vincent Nichols – bestirred to a heretofore unknown intensity of liturgical supervision – and the Vatican press office will not greatly impede Cardinal Sarah. He asked that his London address containing the appeal be released in full – in English and French – after he was allegedly carpeted by the Holy Father.
In 1979, when Sarah, then 34, was named by St John Paul as Archbishop of Conakry – becoming the youngest bishop in the world – he was on the assassination list of the Guinean regime. Much later, when called to Rome, he won a bruising battle with Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga over the strengthening of the Catholic identity of Caritas Internationalis, one of the more important reforms of Benedict’s papacy. Sarah doesn’t frighten easily.
On the issue of ad orientem worship, Cardinal Sarah has history, theology, ecumenism – ad orientem is more congenial to our Orthodox sister churches – and even the rubrics of the Novus Ordo missal on his side. The versus populum posture has some plausible, though debatable, pastoral advantages and, above all, the momentum of the status quo. That momentum is formidable, as became evident at the Hill of the Crosses.
After his historic visit here in 1993, which made the Hill of the Crosses famous all over the world, John Paul found himself the following week on a pastoral visit to the Franciscan shrine of La Verna, where il Poverello received the stigmata. No doubt struck by the spiritual unity of the crosses and the stigmata, John Paul asked the Franciscans of La Verna to build a friary near the Hill of the Crosses, so that pilgrims would have a place to offer the Holy Mass, make retreats and receive pastoral care. Hence I visited the friars to offer Mass.
The chapel, whose stained-glass windows tell the story of the life of St Francis and the Franciscans in Lithuania, was intended to have a large stained-glass window in the angular apse. During construction it became obvious that a clear window was better, looking directly out upon the Hill of the Crosses.
The genial sacristan set up for a private Mass, as I was accompanied only by a seminarian. He set up for Mass versus populum, even though there was no populum to be versus. Simple force of habit; liturgical inertia that prevents facing the very Hill of Crosses that one has come to venerate.
That force of habit is most evident in the liturgical practice of bishops, who celebrate private Masses frequently, and religious houses of priests, where often no lay people at all are present. The vast majority of such Masses are offered versus nihil, the bishop or priests looking out upon empty pews – or no pews at all – while keeping the crucifix and tabernacle behind them. Clerics who often celebrate versus nihil have fallen into a liturgical rut that requires something of a jarring blow to get out of. The controversy over Cardinal Sarah’s appeal is just that.
The sacristan, when I suggested ad orientem – in this case, literally ad crucem – readily agreed. I have had the experience before. Perhaps the loveliest church in Jerusalem is Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives, commemorating Jesus weeping over the holy city. The altar in the church is placed so that its central axis is aligned directly not with the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic shrine that dominates the skyline, but with the Holy Sepulchre beyond – ad crucem. It is bizarre to offer Mass there versus populum, with one’s back to the principal shrine in the Christian world. The experience of Dominus Flevit prepared me for the Hill of the Crosses.
The lesson? Even where it makes no spiritual, let alone liturgical sense, the inertia of versus populum bogs down reform unthinkingly. Cardinal Sarah, following Benedict XVI, who wrote but did not speak on the matter, is now forcing some thinking to begin.
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