The Liturgy of the Church (New Reprint)

by Dom Virgil Michel, OSB | Foreword by Dom Alcuin Reid

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About the Author
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Originally published in 1937. This Arouca Press edition is a new reprint.

Dom Virgil Michel’s book gives a complete expository survey of the liturgy of the Church as viewed by one of the leaders of the liturgical movement. The liturgy, he believes, is something more than a collection of formal regulations and ceremonies; it is the very core of the spiritual life and activity of the Church. The present book contains chapters describing the special significance of important liturgical periods in the Church year; it covers the theological implications of the rites and ceremonies described, and it includes explanations of liturgical elements like the Divine Office and the Sacramentals. This volume may well be considered as one of the first major results of the great liturgical revival.
Dom Virgil Michel (1890–1938) taught philosophy in the college department of St. John’s University after the completion of his postgraduate studies at Catholic University. He was, for a number of years, deeply interested in the liturgical movement, and while studying at Rome and at Louvain he sought out all the centers of the liturgical revival among Catholics. He is the author of Christian Social Reconstruction, My Sacrifice and Yours, and co-author of The Christ Life Series in Religion. He was editor of the important periodical, Orate Fratres.
The period between the two world wars was especially productive for the educational efforts of the Liturgical Movement, most notably in France, Germany, the Low Countries, and—thanks in large part to Dom Virgil Michel—the United States. Many books were published with the aim of bringing people to a greater appreciation of the Sacred Liturgy in general and the Roman Rite in particular: some explaining its fundamental principles and various aspects, others dealing with its origins and historical development, still others bringing out the wealth of meaning and spiritual sustenance contained in its prayers, ceremonies, feasts and seasons. The Liturgy of the Church, the last book to come from Dom Michel’s fruitful pen during his lifetime, is a first-rate exposition of the worship and sacramental life of the Roman Church as then in use, deserving a place alongside Dom Gaspar Lefebvre’s earlier monumental study, Catholic Liturgy. Arouca Press has done well to reprint this treatise at a time when more and more Catholics are discovering the richness of their liturgical heritage. —Fr. Thomas Kocik, KHS, author of Singing His Song: A Short Introduction to the Liturgical Movement

Virgil Michel is an eloquent and insightful guide to the time-tested grandeur and subtle poetry of the Roman Rite. It was precisely the Church's liturgy in its traditional form that inspired his fervent commitment to ongoing education for the sake of a deeper participation in divine worship. He is thus an exemplary figure of the healthy phase of the Liturgical Movement, prior to its radicalization at the hands of progressive iconoclasts. After decades of draining experimentation and crippling amnesia, a new Liturgical Movement has been born that is at last capable of benefiting from unjustly forgotten works like this one. —Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski, author of The Once and Future Roman Rite: Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after Seventy Years of Exile