The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Volume II

This is the second of Gihr’s two volumes, and it is the one that goes through the Mass itself. Volume I settles what the sacrifice is. This volume begins with the sign of the cross at the foot of the altar and ends with the last Gospel, taking every prayer and ceremony in turn. Each prayer is printed in Latin with the English beside it, and then Gihr explains it, the history first and the meaning after, with a word at the end about what the prayer asks of the one who says it.

The explanations are the reason to own the book. Gihr tells you why the Kyrie is the one prayer still said in Greek, why the Creed came into the Roman Mass in 1014 as a coronation gift to an emperor, why the priest stops turning to face the people from the Preface until Communion, why the Canon is said in a voice only he can hear, and why “this excellent chalice” in the words of Consecration does not mean the chalice in his hands. The sources sit in the notes, more than eleven hundred of them, drawn from the Fathers and the medieval commentators on the Mass, with the decrees of the Congregation of Rites where the rubrics need them. An eight-page bibliography closes the volume.

Gihr wrote with the priest in view and speaks to him directly, about his hands and about the state of his heart as he goes up the altar steps. A layman who wants to know what is happening at the altar, and why, gets the whole of it here, at whatever depth he cares to read.