E SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

96
WITHIN THE ACTION.
over the Communicantes alone, seems to be that on five
great feasts of the year, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter,
Ascension, and Pentecost, an addition is made to the
Communicantcs bearing on the feast of the day. Thus
changed, the prayer is found in the Missal after the
Preface, and bears the title,
" Within the Action," to
show that it ought to be inserted in the Canon.
Originally the title was found only in the Communicantts
for the five feasts referred to, and then it passed to the
Comimmicantes said in the Canon. That prayer runs thus :
Communicating with and honouring in the first
place the memory of the glorious and ever Virgin
Mary. These words, Communicating and honouring
are not to be considered as distinct from the foregoing,
but as a continuation of the preceding prayer. The
sense is, according to Suarez,
"
pay their vows to Thee
the living and true God, communicating with Thy
saints to whom they are so closely united, whose
intercession they invoke while venerating their
memory." (Suanz in in. Disp. 83, Sect. 2. 2. 7.)
In the Canon, mentioned by name, are the Blessed
Virgin, twelve Apostles, twelve Martyrs, then all the
Saints in general.
Mary, called glorious, an epithet which the
Church is fond of applying to our Lady as she gives
more glory to God than Angels and Saints together,
ever Virgin, the Catholic doctrine is that Mary was
a Virgin in Conception, in Birth, and after the Birth of
her Son. Her name is fittingly introduced in the Mass
as she gave us the Body that suffered and died on the
Cross and of His Death, Mass is the re-presentation
and commemoration. Nobis datus, nobis natus, sings
the Church, ex intacta Virgine,
us from a spotless Virgin,"
"
given to us, born to