Praying the Mass

I am working on the second volume of the Praying the Mass series, which is subtitled The Prayers of the Priest.  The second volume will be considerably thicker (i.e. longer) than the first volume, simply because the priest says more than the congregation does, and because I cover all four major Eucharistic Prayers.

The first chapter, "Preparing for Prayer," is about the vestments and the vesting prayers.  These prayers were part of the Roman Missal until the the 1960's.  I do not know exactly when they were dropped from the Missal, but they disappeared sometime between 1962 and 1969.  Despite their absence, I suspect (or at least hope) that some priests who celebrate the Ordinary Form of the Mass still pray them.  In fact, the recently published Compendium Eucharisticum ("Compendium of the Eucharist") will include the vesting prayers, so perhaps that will lead to their wider use.

Here is a series of posts, from the second volume The Prayers of the Priest, about the vestments and the prayers which accompany them:

• Preparing for Prayer
• Vestments
• Vesting Prayers
• Washing the Hands
• Amice
• Alb
• Cincture
• Stole
• Chasuble
• Dalmatic