DAILY ROMAN MISSAL, 7th Edition

Review

SECTION ONE The Roman Missal is the Church's master text of public prayer — the book that governs every celebration of the Mass and structures the daily prayer of priests, deacons, and the faithful across the liturgical year. This edition, published through EWTN Religious Catalogue in a black bonded-leather binding with ribbon markers, collects in one volume the Order of Mass, the Proper of Seasons, the Proper of Saints, the Common of Saints, and the complete set of Eucharistic Prayers. It is designed for daily use: durable enough to survive years of handling, formatted for easy navigation during worship. The intended reader is the practicing Catholic who wants more than a pew missalette — someone who intends to follow the Mass text closely, pray the collects, and track the Church's calendar from Advent through Ordinary Time. For that reader, having the full Latin-English Missal at hand transforms passive attendance into active participation in the liturgy as the Church intends it. SECTION TWO - **Created**: The Roman Missal affirms the unity of body and soul in every dimension of its structure. The Mass is not a purely interior act; it demands posture, voice, gesture, and presence. The Gloria, the Kyrie, the Sanctus — these are acts of the whole person, not merely the mind. Aquinas argues in the Summa II-II that the virtue of religion is expressed through external acts precisely because the body belongs to the person, not merely to appearances. The Missal trains both. - **Fallen**: The penitential rite at the opening of every Mass — the Confiteor, the Kyrie, the options for sprinkling with blessed water — addresses the fallen condition directly. The faithful are not assumed to arrive whole. The structure of the Mass begins with acknowledged brokenness before it moves to the Gloria. The Eucharistic Prayers carry explicit intercession for the dead, for sinners, and for those who have wandered — a liturgical acknowledgment that concupiscence and mortality are not aberrations but the ordinary condition of the people who assemble. - **Redeemed**: The Missal is above all a text of transformation. The Eucharistic Prayer III names the offering of the Mass as the means by which the Church is 'gathered from the ends of the earth' into the one body of Christ. The post-communion prayers orient the faithful outward: grace received at the altar is to be carried into ordinary life. The liturgical year itself enacts the Redeemed state — moving the faithful through the Paschal Mystery annually, not as repetition but as deepening participation.[^3] - **Justice (worship and adoration)**: The Missal is the primary school of the virtue of religion as Aquinas defines it: the stable disposition to render God the worship that is his due. Sustained use of the text builds that disposition through repetition, not sentiment. The collects, in particular, train precise theological speech — asking God for what is real, in language the Church has refined over centuries. - **Prudence (memory)**: The liturgical calendar embedded in the Missal's structure — saints' days, feasts, solemnities, feria — functions as a form of ecclesial memory. Regular use of the sanctoral cycle places the individual within a community of witnesses stretching back to the apostolic age, forming the reader's practical wisdom through contact with exemplars rather than abstract principles. SECTION THREE John Paul II's[^1] *Ecclesia de Eucharistia* argues that the Mass makes present, not merely commemorates, the sacrifice of Calvary, with the priest offering the same Christ who offered himself on the Cross — and the Missal's Eucharistic Prayers are the precise texts through which that theological claim becomes liturgical reality.[^1] The Second Vatican Council's[^2] *Lumen Gentium* cites the *Missale Romanum* directly in its footnotes, linking the Gloria in excelsis to the scriptural annunciation of holiness and identifying the Missal as the Church's documentary spine for her teaching on the universal call to holiness.[^2] The Aparecida document's repeated return to the Paschal Mystery as the center of missionary discipleship[^3] assumes that the faithful have been formed by the Mass texts the Missal carries — without that formation, the Aparecida vision of a Church that goes outward remains abstract. ## References [^1]: John Paul II. (2003). *Ecclesia de Eucharistia* [Encyclical letter]. Vatican. Citing Pius XII, *Mediator Dei* (1947): 'it is only the manner of offering that is different.' [^2]: Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. (1964). *Lumen Gentium* [Dogmatic constitution on the Church]. Vatican. Chapter V, fn. 1: *Missale Romanum*, Gloria in excelsis. [^3]: CELAM. (2007). *Aparecida: V General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops* [Final document]. CELAM. §§17, 27, 99b, 143, 250-253, 549 (Paschal Mystery references).

✓ Strengths

• ✓Provides the complete text of the Mass according to the Roman Rite, giving Catholics direct access to the Church's primary act of public worship in a single portable reference.
• ✓Includes the full Liturgy of the Hours, the Divine Office, sanctoral and seasonal propers, and the Lectionary — forming an integrated text that trains the reader in the Church's own rhythm of prayer across the liturgical year.
• ✓The Roman Canon and the other Eucharistic Prayers make explicit the sacrificial and memorial character of the Mass, forming the reader in the theology of the Paschal Mystery rather than leaving it implicit.
• ✓Daily use of the Missal builds the virtue of religion (cultus) as Aquinas describes it in the Summa II-II — the habitual disposition to render God what is due, expressed through ordered acts of adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and propitiation.
• ✓The black bonded-leather binding and ribbon markers signal a devotional artifact intended for long-term daily use, supporting the formation of stable liturgical habits rather than occasional reference.

⚠ Considerations

• ⚠The Missal presupposes significant catechetical background; readers without formation in the structure of the Mass or the liturgical calendar may find the text difficult to navigate without supplementary instruction.