9781644135945

The Light of the World
receptivity to the Church’s liturgical tradition — that which nourished countless saints and mystics
throughout her history — may be found informing Dom Baur’s meditations in Light of the
World no less than it did those of Dom Guéranger, and with equally inspirational effect. Rather
than modify or attenuate the splendor of the Catholic ritual and doctrinal heritage, Dom Baur’s
aim in Light of the World is to help us enter into it, like a grand cathedral, and make it our own:
The present work is intended to increase the reader’s acquaintance with the feasts of
the Church and with her teaching as found in the missal, so that these may become
a fruitful background for mental prayer, and a help and protection for Christian life.
The doctrine and inspiration of the Mass and of the Mass formulas are inexhaustible.
Just a few years after his death, Dom Baur’s brilliant liturgical meditations had the misfortune
of being lost under a sweeping tide of liturgical innovation, as the close of the Second Vatican
Council saw Light of the World pass out of print and almost completely out of knowledge in
the English-speaking world. We are grateful to restore the original edition of this title to circulation,
in the kind of typesetting and binding merited by so worthy a work. Excepting a few
corrections to the citations and typography, no alterations have been made to the body text
from the original.
In turning these pages, the reader will find himself in the hands of a true spiritual master; one
who balances dogmatic precision with pastoral sensitivity, practical wisdom, and spiritual insight
that soars to the sublime. We hope and pray that Dom Baur’s profound erudition and years of
instructing others in the things of God may now serve thousands more in this new printing of his
work, and that the divine radiance manifest in the Roman Rite may continue to spread abroad.
“The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” ( Jn 1:5).
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