ABOUNA ROBERT MATHEUS: ORIENTATION DURING LITURGICAL CELEBRATIONIntroduction1Since the liturgical reform which followed the second Vatican council, the place of the celebrant at the altarduring the Eucharistic celebration has become a root of discord. The celebration facing the people was graduallyintroduced, and has become today, in the Latin rite, almost exclusively the rule2". The new orientation wasintroduced in Catholic cercles in youth movements in Germany. Its leaders, from their observation that in ancientRoman basilicas the altar was facing the people, thought that such was the early Christian tradition. Someliturgists thought that Christ Himself faced the apostled during the Last Supper, and that in the ancient Churchthe celebrant during the eucharistic celebration faced the people3. In this, these liturgists committed an historicalerror. They wanted to restore the original tradition of the ancient Church of the Apostles and the Fathers. Onlylater they gave a theological foundation to this new orientation of the celebration: we have to restitute to theeucharistic celebration its character of a meal, which was forgotten by an overstressing of its sacrificial aspect.But in the ancient documents we find nowhere the celebration facing the people mentioned. At the contrary, at avery early stage, it was considered as essential that priest and people turn together towards the Lord. Thisorientation towards the East was a part of the eschatological theology and spirituality of the early Church.To prove this assertion, we will show in the first part of this study, that in the beginning age of the Church, both,priest and people, turned towards the Lord, basing ourselves on archeological evidences of the first fivecenturies4. In a second part, we analyse the theological value of these historical elements. We will try to find outwhy, during the eucharistic celebration, priest and people turned to the same direction: was this commonorientation due to a pratical necessit...