The Liturgical Year - Vol. XI Time After Pentecost - Book Two

The Liturgical Year #11

by Prosper Guéranger

Volume XI - Time After Pentecost Book Two. This monumental liturgical work, comprising fifteen volumes, was the life-long labor of Benedictine Abbot Dom Guéranger. 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 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 Therese 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 wass first prnted 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 the full 15 volume set.

532 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2013

About the author

Dom Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger, Servant of God, was a Benedictine priest, abbot of Solesmes Abbey (which he founded in the disused priory of Solesmes) and founder of the French Benedictine Congregation (now the Solesmes Congregation). Dom Guéranger was the author of The Liturgical Year, which covers every day of the Catholic Church's Liturgical Cycle in 15 volumes. He was well regarded by Pope Pius IX, and was a proponent of the dogmas of papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception. Dom Guéranger is credited with reviving the Benedictine Order in France, and revitalizing the Tridentine Mass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper...

Reviews

[booklady · Rating 4 out of 5]

August 20, 2023: Moving to Reference shelf as I have not read this consistently and do not want to count this against my total books read in 2023, though what I have read was amazing!

Although I cannot follow the Sunday liturgical readings in these, I love the opening explanations of each season. Even this 'Time after Pentecost' as it is called here, is given its own mystery and grace, where Christ is 'formed in us'. Here the object which holy Church has in view for the liturgical year is to lead the Christian soul to union with Christ and this by the Holy Ghost (Spirit).

'To this end is directed all the that aggregate of rites and prayers which we have hitherto explained: they are not a mere commemoration of the mysteries achieved for our salvation by the divine goodness, but they bring with them the graces corresponding to each of those mysteries; that thus we may come, as the Apostle expresses it, to the age of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13) ... As we have elsewhere explained, our sharing in the mysteries of Christ, which are celebrated in the Liturgical Year, produces in the Christian what is called, in Mystic Theology, the Illuminative Life, in which the soul gains continually more and more of the light of the Incarnate Word, who, by his examples and teachings, renovates each one of her faculties, and imparts to her the habit of seeing all things from God’s point of view. This is a preparation which disposes her for union with God, not merely in an imperfect manner, and one that is more or less inconstant, but in an intimate and permanent way, which is called the Unitive Life.'

Have you EVER heard THAT about Ordinary Time? Me either. 😟