This monumental liturgical work, comprising fifteen volumes, was the life-long labor of Benedictine Abbot Dom Guranger. Written with the heart of a seraphic contemplative, the holy abbot takes the reader on a daily spiritual pilgrimage through the liturgies of both the East and the West as he immerses the soul into the very life of the ecclesia orans et adorans (the church praying and adoring). The author achieves this by providing daily entries corresponding to the yearly cycle of the Church s worship in both her divine seasonal feasts and those of her saints. Each day begins with a rich and provocative meditation on the mystery of faith to be celebrated together with the ecclesial history of the same; this is followed by excerpts from the Roman Missal s Mass of the day (complete with Propers, i.e., Introits, Collects, Offertory prayers, etc ) as well a host of exquisite hymns from the divine office which are coupled with varied and sundry sequences garnered from other ancient Catholic rites.
The temporal and geographical universality of the Church is thusly honored; and the oneness of faith amply manifested in light of the axiomatic criterion: Lex orandi est lex credendi (the law of praying is the law of believing). If the essence of the Holy Mass is God, the Incarnate Victim, offering Himself to God, then the liturgy of the Mass is man, in union with Jesus Christ (per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso), offering God to God. Truly, here is a priceless treasure awaiting your holy exploitation. Such was the strategy employed by the father of Saint Threse of Lisieux who made it a daily routine in the Martin home to read to his five daughters from these very volumes.
This new edition from Loreto replaces the hardcover set we published in the year AD 2000 in honor of the Jubilee Year of Faith proclaimed by the Holy Father. There are still a few miscellaneous volumes of that hardcover set available, but no complete sets are left. Loreto has spent hundreds of hours repairing broken text in the original publication which was first printed in the United States in the 1940's. At the time of its first publication here the original English text from the original Dublin/London edition was somewhat expurgated in order to pacify some Americanist elements here in the US. Loreto has consulted the original English and French editions and we have added in to these volumes all that was deleted from the original Solesmes texts. Thus you have here the complete text as it was intended to be published in a handy and easily readable format.
This is a book to be read and studied for a lifetime. Even a once through reading will immeasureably increase your knowledge and love of the history and true liturgical life of the Church. We also highly recommend the companion to this set, Explanation of the Holy Mass.
You may also order individual volumes of any of the 15 books in his set.
