The phrase came back to me recently when I read of another Jesuit, Pope Francis, who spoke about finding "new languages for handing on the gospel".

But this is not an easy task.

The pope - and the fact that it is clear to anyone who looks around at the age profile on any gathering in the developed world - is clear that we need a new language.

Each generation, in a rapidly changing world, is like a new continent. We have to learn the new language - and such learning is always difficult.

I often tell young theological students that learning the language of a new generation is harder than learning all the parts of the Greek verb, but they think I am exaggerating.

Sadly, many like to imagine that they do not need to learn a new language but simply need to shout out louder in the old language. It is an easy mistake: more noise equals more communication.

Going backwards

This was brought home to me this week when I saw numerous diocesan websites (mostly in the United States) where the bishops believe having both presider and people facing in the same direction during the Eucharistic Prayer - the pattern before the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) - is the way forward.

This shows a deep misunderstanding of Vatican II, as well as a replacement with nostalgia of the challenge of learning new languages to proclaim the gospel.

As we draw closer to the 60th anniversary of the start of the Council, it is worth revisiting this fundamental physical change in the liturgy to see how well it has been "received" in the theological sense of being understood as part of the teaching of the Church.

Is it about communications?

The new shape of the liturgical arena, the president (presider) facing the rest of the assembly, was presented at the time and is still most often presented today in terms of communications.

The president could now be seen and heard (we forget that the Eucharistic Prayer was, until the reform, in silence, while most of the rest of the prayers, such as the Orate Fratres, were said in a voice that could be heard only a few meters away), and this was perceived as a welcome development because it fostered understanding and comprehension (which it does).

This, in turn, was expected to lead to a deeper appreciation of the Eucharist - as it has, to an extent that is not often acknowledged.

Since everyone could now see, there was consequent emphasis on everyone being able to see: so clear sight-lines - again a valuable element in communication such as one would have in any other arena where the focus is on an individual and his words and actions (and other things being equal: a good thing) - was desired in every church building.

This was often difficult when long, narrow buildings were being adapted to the reformed liturgy, or in buildings with transepts, ambulatories or side aisles where pillars became the great blockages to the re-orderers' aims.

Solutions varied from moving the community's table forward so as to be free of such obstructions to vision, to roping off areas where there was no view of the president, to mirrors, or even CCTV screens. In every case, the rationale was presented by analogy with an auditorium or theatre.

Lastly, it was often suggested at the time - though I cannot locate this in print - that being able to see what was happening would destroy the false mystique that equated the actions of the priest with "hocus pocus", "priestcraft", and pseudo-reverence.

Again, the rational for the change was presented in terms of interpersonal or group communication.

And I suspect critics of the reform are now quietly rubbing their hands for appeals to such values as communications' theory is precisely the kind of "utilitarian", "pragmatic", "anthropocentric" and "ethical" values they assert have corrupted the true values of the liturgy.

However, this emphasis on being able to see the priest made him and his role in the liturgy central to the whole event. And this dynamic (one actor with an audience) is actually a hangover from the eucharistic spirituality that Vatican II set out to challenge.

More than good communications

But did those who implemented the reform in parishes sell it short? Was it simply a matter of communications?

Perhaps it was something far more fundamental. Indeed, was it so fundamental an aspect of the reform that neither they nor their congregations could take on-board the rationale of the shift in one move? Therefore, they "explained it" by simplification - and in the process traduced it?

I believe that this is exactly what happened: in well-intentioned attempts to communicate "the changes" in the liturgy, they opted to use "communication" as the rationale for the new physical arrangements.

And once that road was embarked upon, then every arrangement had to be explained in a similar fashion: it must be seen by all, all the time.

The ecclesiastical jumble

The result is, primarily, a lack of awareness of the deeper demands of the reforms that led to the change in orientation, and, accidentally, the creation of sanctuary areas that are scenes of clutter resembling ecclesiastical suppliers' showrooms.

We have the altar, the chair (and maybe a few extras for others who want to be close to the action or an old sedilia for servers), a lectern in front of the chair (sometimes), an ambo (often squeezed up beside the altar, a baptismal font (usually of minimal proportions but still prominent and distracting), a Paschal Candle, a tabernacle, a cross, with often another one on the altar and yet another processional cross, and a couple of tables just to hold odds and ends.

This does not include the extra jumble needed for children's Masses, nor the Christmas arrangements when there is a crib in front of the altar with a little star-shaped electric light and a Christmas Tree.

Nor does it mention the need to get musicians into a close-to-the-centre location, organ consoles, or additional points with microphones for music directors.

And we should not forget the various flags, banners, posters and "symbols" that are located there; nor, of course, the apparatus for taking up the collection that clutter around the Table of the Lord.

Meanwhile, all this is still explained by the need "to communicate", despite the fact that what we all see is a classic case of information overload!

The ancient basilican arrangement

So why did Vatican II want the president facing others in the assembly and every building to have the ancient basilican arrangement?

The fundamental rationale of the reform was the renewed awareness of the early and patristic understanding of the assembly as gathered around the Table of the Lord.

The Eucharist is many things, but in its fundamental form, it is a meal of eating and drinking, a banquet, a sacrum convivium. And its visible focus is the visible focus of a meal: a table.

We may interpret that table theologically as an altar - the table is "our altar" as distinct from the altar in the Jerusalem temple or the many altars found in ordinary homes of non-Jews in antiquity - but it is, in its own reality, first and last, a table.

Our vocation is to the table: "And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God" (Lk 13,29)

The Lord gathers us at his table: there we discover his presence and bless the Father.

The table is at once in unity with our own tables - for a table is a reality of the ordinary world - and in union with the table of the heavenly banquet.

The table transcends the dichotomy, which is a false dichotomy for Christians, of the sacred and the profane: the domestic is the locus of the sacred.

The Lord has come to our table, we gather at his.

We can interpret the table in many ways. Interpreting it as "an altar" has been the most common, but our eucharistic thinking must start with what it is.

This use of the word "table" did, of course, produce allergic reactions to Catholics of an older generation.

Protestants had the "holy table" or brought out a table for a "communion service". We Catholics had "an altar" - and the physical object in a church-building was never referred to by any other name: it was an altar, and altars were for sacrifice!

Sadly, we assumed we knew what sacrifice meant: usually we just borrowed a pagan notion of something that could be seen as a down payment to the gods. In this, we traduced the Eucharist.

On this pre-Vatican II mensa, the four vestigial legs of the table - now only decoration - are identified by arrows.

Despite the confusion over what we were thinking about when we used the words "altar" and "sacrifice", we still referred to "the mensa" in many of the rubrics.

More importantly, the shape never took on that of either an Old Testament nor a pagan altar; and it was expected that a vestigial four legs (just like the table I am writing upon) should appear as four columns or pilasters on the front of 'the altar.'

The problem with tables

There is only one problem with tables: you cannot just use them in any old way, they create their own space for us as dining animals!

Let us imagine the smallest possible table gathering: two people meeting for a cup of coffee in a café.

Unless they are not focused on their own meeting - i.e. they want to watch a TV or computer screen rather than talk to one another - they will take up positions opposite one another across the table.

The table creates a common space, a space of eating and talking, and of sharing a common reality in a way that cannot take place when people sit side-by-side at a bar.

If you are alone it is as easy to sit at a bar and eat, drink, read the paper or play with your phone as at table (and you do not risk having a stranger sit opposite you).

But if two people go to drink instant coffee or have a magnificent meal together, then they will face one another. We watch each other eating, and around the table, we become a community - however transient - and not just two individuals.

This is also a space of deep communication between us as people: we can share our thoughts with our food, we can pick up all the richness of facial expression, tone, body language - and really communicate.

This is the communication we long for as human beings, not "the communications" of the media or of communications' theory that is better described as information transfer.

The table is an intimate place. Yet, curiously, it is also a public space, a place of respect for one another (hence "table manners") and a place where our humanity and our relations with other humans are enhanced.

The importance of the table is written as deep in our humanity as anything else. It is studied by behavioural scientists, anthropologists, and psychologists. But it suffices here to remind ourselves of the references to tables in the psalms (e.g.: Ps 23,5; 79,19; or 123,3) or the gospels (e.g.: Mt 8,11; 9,10; 15,27; 26,7; 26,20).

The table is at the heart of our humanity, and, consequently, at the heart of our liturgy.

But what of a table with more than two people? The fundamental logic continues:

We arrange ourselves around the table and create roughly equal spaces between each other.

This continues until we have used up all the space around the table. And then, traditionally, we extend the table into the longer form we find at banquets, in refectories and mess halls, and even in domestic dining rooms where the table "pulls out" for those occasions when we have extra guests.

Our common table

The Eucharist is our common table as Christians and our sacred table as guests of the Lord. It was to re-establish this fundamental table-logic that stood behind the changes of Vatican II.

The move in the president's direction was not that "he could face the people" in serried ranks of pews, nor be visible as a science teacher's bench must be visible to her class, nor as a lecturer on a podium - but so that if he stood at the Lord's Table, everyone else could arrange themselves around that table as human beings do.

But is this not simply impossible? How does one put hundreds of people at a packed Sunday Mass around a table? People need to be in pews, which means that only the president can be at the table!

Well, first, the shift in the position of the table has been done in most buildings in a minimal way. It was just "pulled out from the wall", rather than made the centre of a space for the assembled banqueting community.

Second, in many places, it has been found possible to create a long table in an otherwise uncluttered space and arrange well over a hundred people to stand around it such that all could see they were gathered around the Lord's Table.

And third, the Eucharist is a human-sized event. Gatherings of over a hundred should be considered very exceptional, as, indeed, they were for most of Christian history.

However, it is important to note just how deeply set this reality of "being around the table" is within our tradition.

First of all, in the directions for gathering at meals, which come from Jewish sources contemporaneous with the earliest Christian meals, we find that when the guests assembled, they had a cup of wine ("the first cup") and each said the blessing individually.

Then they went to the table and there was another cup ("the second cup") and now one person blessed for all. The reason for the shift is explicitly spelt out: only when they were at table were they a community, and so only then could one bless for all.

Now think again about the Last Supper, the other meals of Jesus, the blessing of the cup in 1 Corinthians, or the ritual instructions for the community meals in the Didache.

Second, consider the words of the traditional Roman Eucharistic Prayer ("the Roman Canon" = Eucharistic Prayer I in the reformed rite):

Memento, Domine,

famulorum famularumque tuarum

et omnium circumstantium, …

A literal rendering (still too daring for the supposedly literalist translation of 2011 sought by Pope Benedict) supposes the "sanctuary" arrangement that existed when the text was created but which would find little favour with that prayer's greatest modern enthusiasts:

Remember, O Lord,

your male servants and your female servants,

indeed all who are standing around...

Could it be that the venerable Roman Canon assumes that the community, both men and women, are standing around the Table of the Lord?

And third, we have from the late patristic and early medieval periods directions for how the broken parts of the loaf are to be arranged on the paten, and these often assume that the arrangement around the paten's rim reflects the people around the table.

A secular import?

So, once again, table gathering is not a new "secular" or imported idea as many of the opponents of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council argue. Rather, it is a return to the depths of our own tradition.

If we start thinking about the reformed, Vatican II orientation not as "priest facing people" or "people looking at priest", but as the whole community gathered around an actual table we have the following:

• a more authentic expression of the Eucharist;
• a deeper appreciation of the many prayers of the liturgy that suppose this physical arrangement;
• an awareness that the Eucharist is the action of the whole community; and
• a help in seeing the links between this central liturgy and the rest of our lives.

We also see how shallow has been our taking up of the reforms of Vatican II over the last half-century.

There is a basic theological truth at stake here: the Lord has come to our table, we gather, as a priestly people, at his.

A fuller renewal, with a deeper appreciation of its inherent logic, is going to mean more shifting around in buildings, a gradual exposure of the ideas so that people feel comfortable with them and see why we are abandoning the "theatre-and-stage" arrangements.

We should note that it will run into cultural problems in that many modern households do not eat together at a table at home and so lack a basic human experience upon which grace might build the community of the Lord's Table.

But both the present arrangements of the expert being visible at his bench, and pre-reformed notion of only one person at the table - in effect not facing the same way as the people but turning his back on them and keeping them away from the table behind him and railings - is fundamentally flawed as being neither true to Christian tradition nor human nature.

The table is our destiny.

When Jesus heard him, he marvelled, and said to those who followed him, "Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven"' (Mt 8,10-11).

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).

In some places parish life - and celebrations in church buildings are returning to a kind of normality.

Many, especially presbyters, are pleased: the familiar is returning. But we settle back into our familiar ways, we should take stock.

A new normal might be much more in keeping with the gospel than the old and familiar.

Sacred - Profane

Most religions make a very clear distinction - running right through the cosmos - between the holy and the plain, between the sacred and the profane, and between religion and mundane, the ordinary.

One is wonderful, the other is ‘just there': the every day that is just ‘thrown there.'

The religious has a character of permanence and solemnity, the world about us is tatty even if it is where we work and live.

This distinction is not the same as a moral dualism - a world of good and evil at war such as Manichees lived within and which has infiltrated Christianity from time to time - but is more akin to the way we treat clothes: there is ordinary everyday working clothes which might be smart and practical, and then there are our special clothes - our glad rags, ‘best suit,' or formal wear (which you hope you can still fit into) - that comes out for special occasions.

The ancient religions of Greece and Rome - focussed on the city - are perhaps the best expressions of this distinction.

For them, the temples represented the holy and the temple precincts were marked off from the ordinary.

With them was the area where the priests functioned: they worked inside the holy area on behalf of ‘the great unwashed.'

The gods were to be appeased, their help and protection sought: their benign smile was needed for the happiness of the city. This divine benefit required the service of the people in terms of sacrifices.

A Hellenistic altar found during the excavations at Banias [Caesarea Philippi] - this is from a wealthy household and has a basin to hold libations offered to the gods

This relationship was summed up in three words: do ut des (‘I give to you in order that you give to me') and the priests (there are various words in Latin such as sacerdotes and pontifices) acted as ‘go-betweens.'

Into this world came Christianity with a very different vision - a vision far more radical than most of the converts to Christianity at the time seem to have realised.

The God of all

For Christians the whole of the cosmos - every last bit of it from the Sun, Moon and stars to the stones one stubs one's toe on - was the handiwork of God.

God had created in freedom, and was infinitely more than the creation.

The shock of this was captured in the mid-second century by Hermas in a little amusing tag that would pull up any pagan short: the Christians believed that ‘God created everything out of nothing' (creatio ex nihilo). All, ALL, depends on God's will and love.

All is ordinary in comparison with God - only God is Holy - or, put another way, the whole creation is a sacred space because it is God's handiwork.

… and climate change?

That is why, for example, when Pope Francis talks about the ecological crisis he is engaging in a religious topic.

This may cause great annoyance of the Climate Change Deniers who do not see this as any of his business - but it his business and the business of everyone (Jew, Christian, and Muslim) who proclaim that God is not one more being in the universe, but the ineffable cause of all being.

… and liturgy?

This also means that wherever I am I can be as close to God as anywhere else - the creation is our temple. This was expressed by John thus:

"Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. … But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (Jn 4:21-4).

Wherever a human being is, there God is present and there that person can be present to God.

The divine love extends to each person, so each person is able, and had the dignity, to stand there in God's presence and offer worship.

Hence, we stand when, through Jesus the Christ, we all intercede for the world in the Prayer of the Faithful.

We can all, not just a specially selected few, enter the divine presence.

This is what saying ‘we are a priestly people' means.

It is also the reason why the early Christians never referred to their leaders as sacerdotes (priests) but as presbuteroi (elders).

By the time Christians started to use the word sacerdotes for presiders at the Eucharist, they were already thinking in the pagan way of a ‘chosen someone' who worked on their behalf in the ‘sacred area.'

Christians had by then forgotten the cry of Irenaeus: ‘Christian be aware of your dignity' and that there is only one chosen one, one priest in the New Law: Jesus.

He is ‘great high priest over the house of God' (Heb 10:21), and we all ‘are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people' (1 Pet 2:9) who pray through him.

A community's table in a traditional formal arrangement - just because something does not mean it is ideal.

And if all the creation comes from God, and all depends on him, then trading with God is blasphemous, and the attitude of love to love is that of gratefulness.

We are to be grateful people, we are to recall what God has done for us in the creation and in the Christ - and return thanks thought our High priest - hence the name of our great assembly is ‘the thanksgiving': the Eucharist.

That we gave it another name by accident, ‘the Mass,' is a warning of just how easily we made it into one more act of service on the pagan model. Sadly, many still do not even appreciate (as when a parish priest uses it on a notice board) how it is a symptom of forgetfulness!

‘Neither sacred gardens nor altars'

At the end of the second century an apologist for Christianity, Menucius Felix, who was all too aware of the difference between the pagan and Christian visions made this his great cry.

The great Christian act of praise and thanks took place at a table: it was a shared meal of the community at which the Christ is among us.

We do not need to go to a special place; our thanksgiving takes place in the ordinary world of tables and chairs in our everyday life.

It is at every meal that we are called to make eucharist happen.

Then having being thankful alone or in families, we can appreciate our gathering as a larger family, sisters and brothers in the Lord, who celebrate the great meal of thankfulness.

Even the plainest, most utilitarian table can become a Christian sacred space if the baptized gather around it, and in union with the Christ, offer than to our heavenly Father.

We have just come through a weird fifteen months: no real gathering to stand around the Lord's table and to share his loaf and his cup with our sisters and brothers.

But if we have not being eucharistic at our own table, and seen thanksgiving as a fundamental feature of our lives - thankful for our lives, our health, our loved ones, our neighbours, all who care for the sick, those who make life liveable - then we just might miss the fundamental Christian vision.

God is here, the risen one is among us in our lives, and it is from out of the ordinariness of our lives that, through, with, and in Jesus that we must act eucharistically.

The Christian ‘new normal' is that we can engage in the fundamental expression of our attitude to God - thankfulness - at our shared tables.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, emeritus professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK) and director of the Centre of Applied Theology, UK.
• He is an organising contributor to the online conversation Flashes of Insight and his latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians.

Two meters apart! No bunching up! Signs on seats where we may sit. Tape on other seats making them off-limits. Signs on doors giving the maximum number that may enter — always a lot fewer than the originally intended number.

It is all such a hassle, and many sigh for the time when we can get back to normal!

But should we? Was the old normal that good?

It may be familiar — and that is always comforting in a stressful time — but was it well thought out? Was it ever really fit for the purpose of our liturgical gathering?

Was the old normal fit for purpose?

Look at this picture of the old normal.

It is typical of the vast majority of Catholic church buildings the world over.

Seats, set out in row after row, with the intention that those sitting there can see the special area — marked off in various ways — known prior to Vatican II (but still referred to by many) as 'the sanctuary.'

It is built around the notion that the priest says Mass, and the laity attends Mass — a basic division that was replicated in any number of ways in Catholic liturgy for centuries.

The priest was the focus, the congregation just happened to be there.

The priest's part took place in the holy space, the laity in the ordinary space of the church.

The cleric prayed in Latin and it was the Church's official prayer; the laity prayed in various 'vernaculars' (a derogatory term equivalent to 'patois' which literally means 'the speech of the servants') their individual private prayers.

The clergy belonged in their special space where they could move and act; the laity could just stand, kneel or sit in a bench.

The two parts of the church building — separate by rails — corresponded to the two parts of the Church separated by Holy Orders.

Such buildings' arrangements are an expression in wood and stone of clericalism.

It was this two-tier model of liturgy that Vatican II sought to change by reminding us that the liturgy is the work of the whole community of the baptised.

We, all of us whatever our special tasks, celebrate the liturgy because it is the service of God by his whole People. But in the years after Vatican II, few got the message.

The altar table was pulled out from the back wall (or a small table placed in front as in this picture) but the two-part building remained, more or less intact - as, indeed, did clericalism.

But surely this is the best way for all to see?

Now look at this diagram:

This is a seating plan for a theatre, but it could be a church because it has the exact same special arrangement.

Indeed, now with the pandemic, many churches have adopted just such seating plans to show you where you can, and cannot, sit.

This arrangement is perfect if you (along with many other individuals) all want to watch a performance by the actors on stage — but is that what we are when we assemble for the Eucharist?

If I am a member of an audience, then I want to see without interruption and my focus is on the stage, and there is a barrier — what actors call 'the fourth wall' — between me, a consumer of the play/film / performance, and the production.

But in the liturgy I am part of the production, we are all in it together, we are all actors in the Christ as his sisters and brothers in baptism.

The very fact that most church buildings have seating arrangements which exactly parallel theatres illustrates that the old normal was/is anything but ideal.

Just as we are celebrants rather than consumers when we assemble liturgically, so we should think of ourselves as actors on the stage rather than the audience in the stalls.

Called to his supper

So what should it be like?

The starting point is to note that in our liturgy we experience anew being present at the Lord Jesus' table: he has called us friends (Jn 15:15) and as such we can sit at the table with him.

This sitting at table anticipates being seated at the heavenly banquet 'many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven' (Mat 8:11).

The table — the banquet — and having a place at the banquet table is a basic liturgical motif that most Catholics simply do not know from their experience (despite hearing references to it at every eucharistic assembly).

Look at any table set out to welcome people. The table forms the centrepiece and the guests sit around it.

Watch people in any restaurant. They will face each other across the table, and if more come to sit down they will locate themselves between those already there.

Here we have a basic liturgical shape that is built out of the nature of what we are doing when we assemble, rather than one just picked from a common form — the ancient theatre — and imposed on the Lord's Supper.

This is the eucharistic shape of space, not the familiar shape of most of our current buildings.

Creating a new space

Does it matter? It matters for several reasons.

First, if we are to experience anew the promises of Jesus — which is the meaning of 'remember' — then we have to have an adequate location for those experiences. A gathering around the table, when remembered, means we gather around a table!

Second, during COVID-19 many have asked if 'going to Mass made much difference?'

This can only be answered by offering a new, renewed, experience: only when I know what I am taking a part in can it really make sense to me.

If I feel it is 'just an event I attend,' then there is little reason why we should not simply have it as a performance we tune into on a computer.

And third, we use the language about sitting at the table, gathered to the Supper, and being around the Lord's table — but if this does not happen, we experience cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance relating to any matter tends to precede rejection of something as being either irrelevant or false.

But perhaps there is an even more pressing reason for moving to a whole new layout of a table and people sitting and standing in a circle around the table.

It is part of the battle against the clericalism that is deforming Catholic Church.

We have a look at this picture of the chapel of the Presbyterian College at McGill university in Montreal.

Many western churches have taken on board in recent decades the notion, from Vatican II, that the eucharist is the centre and summit of the Christian life — and we can see this expressed in the way this chapel is arranged.

But look also at the fact that each person, a baptised sister or brother, each has the same chair in this assembly. All are around the table, but all are equal in dignity, each has a place, and the Lord's table is the focal point.

The table is the centre and each must respect everyone else as fellow pilgrims.

Perhaps we have something to learn from this picture.

If we critique clericalism in our ecclesiology, then we must express that critique in our furniture and spatial arrangements.

It is mere words to reject clericalism if the basic experience of our worship — our experience of the space around us — simply reinforces it.

We need to experience anew the Lord's invitation to come and sit at the table, not experience anew the clericalism that Pope Francis says we must reject.

Changing the furniture would fix the problem, but the furniture must be changed if we are to fix the problem.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, emeritus professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK) and director of the Centre of Applied Theology, UK. His latest award-winning book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).