Guéranger shows the Latin Mass blazing with meaning—every gesture, prayer, and silence a doorway into divine worship. A short book with immense depth. The spiritual vision of Dom Prosper Guéranger culminated in the primacy and centrality of the sacred liturgy, the opus Dei or work of God. He writes, “The liturgy is the highest and the holiest expression of the thought and intelligence of the Church, simply because it is carried out by the Church in direct communication with God, in confession, in prayer, and praise.” The Traditional Latin Mass Explained, a succinct and sublime presentation of the prayers and ceremonies of the Latin Mass, is the perfect complement to his magnum opus, The Liturgical Year. This short work delivers a surprisingly complete exposition of the theology and spirituality of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by way of commentary on the texts and gestures of the Tridentine Rite. In this way, beyond its author’s original intention, this gem of a book is capable of revealing to us anew the treasure we have always possessed in this magnificent liturgy, the tragedy of its near extinction in the period after the Second Vatican Council, and the immense blessing of its gradual return across the Catholic world. Consequently, as time goes on, we shall have not less but more and more reason to take up again the writings of Dom Guéranger, discovering in him, not a relic of the nineteenth century, but a prophet of the twenty-first.
