The Holy Mass

The Holy Mass, by Fr. Lucas, is a historical treatise on the Roman Rite which is meant for the average reader that does not have a lot of study on the subject. It was first published in 1914 in two volumes and is now republished containing both volumes in one book. Father Lucas' first volume is more popular than the second which deals in a rather erudite fashion with the difficult question of the development of the Roman Canon. Father Lucas while admitting that the scholar need not be deterred from investigating the structure of the Roman Canon out of a mistaken feeling of reverence, still thinks that he can vindicate for the Roman Canon a more or less perfect organic unity. He does not agree with those writers who imagine that there is in it a kind of patchwork. Fr. Lucas uses textual analysis of the Latin in comparison with ancient texts to demonstrate that the Canon was composed as one text, in union with many venerable authors.