Tomorrow, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Pope Benedict will be celebrating Mass in the Sistine Chapel and afterwards baptizing some babies, as has been the custom.
The news has come down that for Mass, the original altar built in and for the Chapel will be utilized.
And you know what that means….

This year, the wooden platform on which an altar was placed for the occasion will not be set up, but the actual altar of the Sistine Chapel will be used.“A decision was made to celebrate on the ancient altar to avoid altering he beauty and harmony of this architectural jewel – the Vatican note explains – preserving its structure, in a celebratory viewpoint, and making use of a possibility foreseen by liturgical legislation. This means that, at some moments, the Pope will be with his back turned to the faithful and facing the Cross, thus guiding the demeanor and the disposition of the entire assembly”

We’ve talked about ad orientem or what have you quite a bit around here in the past, and just a reminder before succumbing to the vapors: the posture of the celebrant facing the same way as the people during the liturgical action is not just a Catholic thing. It is, of course, an Orthodox thing, it is an Anglican thing, and at times it is even a Lutheran thing. A thread I ran on the old blog – almost exactly a year ago! –  took in observations from all over the Christian map on that score. It’s pretty interesting.
One comment from that thread:

In the Episcopal diocese of Fort Worth (“Episcopal” for at least the next few months, at any rate!) I do not know a single priest who does NOT advocate ad orientem placement of altars. Last year we returned the altar in our Lady chapel to ad orientem at St Vincent’s Cathedral, and the dean is presently investigating how expensive it will be to reconfigure the sanctuary of the main church to ad orientem. My guess is that half or more of the parishes in our diocese have restored ad orientem to at least one of their altars in the last five years. Among traditionalist Anglo-Catholics there has been a strong movement toward return to ad orientem since the mid-1990’s (thanks in part to then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s writings on the subject).

Nice nod to ecumenism from B16, don’t you think?
From Benedict’s homily on this occasion last year:

However, we must now meditate on the words in the Second Reading of this liturgy where St Paul tells us: “He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” (Ti 3: 5).
A washing of regeneration: Baptism is not only a word, it is not only something spiritual but also implies matter. All the realities of the earth are involved. Baptism does not only concern the soul. Human spirituality invests the totality of the person, body and soul. God’s action in Jesus Christ is an action of universal efficacy. Christ took flesh and this continues in the sacraments in which matter is taken on and becomes part of the divine action.
We can now ask precisely why water should be the sign of this totality. Water is the element of fertility. Without water there is no life. Thus, in all the great religions water is seen as the symbol of motherhood, of fruitfulness. For the Church Fathers, water became the symbol of the maternal womb of the Church.

Tertullian, a Church writer of the second and third centuries, said something surprising. He said: “Never is Christ without water”. By these words, Tertullian meant that Christ is never without the Church. In Baptism we are adopted by the Heavenly Father, but in this family that he establishes there is also a mother, Mother Church. Man cannot have God as Father, the ancient Christian writers were already saying, unless he has the Church as mother.
We perceive in a new way that Christianity is not merely an individual, spiritual reality, a simple subjective decision that I take, but something real and concrete, we could also say something material. Adoption as children of God, of the Trinitarian God, is at the same time being accepted into the family of the Church, it is admission as brothers and sisters into the great family of Christians. And only if, as children of God, we are integrated as brothers and sisters into the reality of the Church can we say “Our Father”, to our Heavenly Father. This prayer always implies the “we” of God’s family.
Now, however, let us return to the Gospel in which John the Baptist says: “I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming… he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Lk 3: 16).

We have seen water; but now the question is unavoidable: of what does the fire that St John the Baptist referred to consist? To see this reality of the fire, present in Baptism with water, we must note that John’s baptism was a human gesture, an act of penance, a human impulse for God, to ask the forgiveness of sins and the chance to begin a new life. It was only a human desire, a step towards God with their own effort.
Now this is not enough. The distance would be too great. In Jesus Christ we see that God comes to meet us. In Christian Baptism, instituted by Christ, we do not only act with the desire to be cleansed through the prayer to obtain forgiveness.
In Baptism God himself acts, Jesus acts through the Holy Spirit. In Christian Baptism the fire of the Holy Spirit is present. God acts, not only us. God is present here today. He takes on your children and makes them his own.
But naturally, God does not act in a magical way. He acts only with our freedom. We cannot renounce our freedom. God challenges our freedom, invites us to cooperate with the fire of the Holy Spirit. These two things must go together. Baptism will remain throughout life a gift of God, who has set his seal on our souls. But it will then be our cooperation, the availability of our freedom to say that “yes” which makes divine action effective.