The Holy Mass Eucharistic Sacrafice and the Roman Liturgy / Rev Herbert Lucas SJ

The Holy Mass, by Fr. Lucas, is a historical treatise on the Roman Rite which is meant for the average reader that does not have a lot of study on the subject. It was first published in 1914 in two volumes and is now republished containing both volumes in one book.

Father Lucas says in his preface: “The attempt to write yet another book about the Mass while for English speaking Catholics Dr Fortescue’s work on the Roman Liturgy holds the field may be deemed perchance both presumptuous and inopportune.”

Father Lucas’ first volume is more popular than the second which deals (chapters x -xiii) in a rather erudite fashion with the difficult question of the development of the Roman Canon. Father Lucas while admitting that the scholar need not be deterred from investigating the structure of the Roman Canon out of a mistaken feeling of reverence, still thinks that he can vindicate for the Roman Canon a more or less perfect organic unity. He does not agree with those writers Baumstark Buchwald and Drews who imagine that they see in it a kind of patchwork of which the chief portions are thought to have somehow got out of their right place. Fr. Lucas uses textual analysis of the Latin in comparison with ancient texts to demonstrate that the Canon was composed as one text, in union with many venerable authors. In many ways, Lucas’ text becomes a nice counter-weight to Fortescue’s overly modern approach to the liturgy, because it gives more reverence to the tradition. It is also succinct and brief.

This book will give you a greater understanding of the parts of the Holy Mass which in turn will lead to a deepening of devotion.