E SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
of the Church s big heart in the sublimest act of
worship which earth offers to Heaven. No words can
possibly exaggerate the beauty of these prayers
or the
reverent tenderness they display for the sacred Majesty
of God. Every feeling of the heart finds adequate
expression in her supplications as she mourns and
rejoices, thanks, beseeches and invokes her Spouse.
These prayers are recommended by every consideration
that excites devotion. As the prayers of the Church they
are in matters of faith divinely preserved from error,
and they teach us how to pray as no other prayers can.
They bear the consecration of age.
The Canon, as we
read it to-day, is almost unchanged since the beginning
of the seventh century, 604, when St. Gregory the Great
died. For 1,300 years, then, virgins and martyrs and
confessors, the needy and the weary and the heavily
laden, the penitent sinner, the innocent child, the
monarch in his palace, the prisoner under sentence of
death have found all the heart longs for in the very same
words which we say to-day in hearing Mass. Why are
these prayers so little used by the Catholic laity ? Why
is the popular manual preferred to the Missal ? Why
are the prayers of a man dearer than the prayers of
the Church ? The only answer is that the Ordinary of
the Mass is not known and studied, and therefore is not
appreciated and loved as it deserves. The prayers of
Mass demand and abundantly repay the same study
which a diligent student gives to his classical author or
to some splendid passage in Shakespeare, Dante, or