published in English in November, the New Sunday Missal is the first based upon the new lectionary, which had the chief attraction of including greater choice of readings for saints' days.
The missal includes all the propers for Sundays, Holy Days, Solemnities, Ash Wednesday and the Sacred Triduum. It does not have all the Lenten Masses.
It also features commentaries on the liturgical seasons, the Evangelists and the order of Mass by Fr Ernest Sands of Upholland. Among the additional prayers are thoughts for each Mass and prayers for private use in preparing and giving thanks for Mass.
The missal has the useful feature of containing the order of Mass in the middle so that the book can be held open comfortably with one hand, while the other is being used for making the Sign of the Cross or hauling a recalcitrant infant from under the bench.
Prayer book publishers are expected to keep their prices low, but for a book of more than 1,000 pages, this is pretty good value.
It is a pity, that, as with the new lectionary, no edition is available in the Revised Standard Version of the readings. The superiority of one translation over another is not conclusively clear, and there are priests who use the RSV version in the Mass, which the people will be unable to follow with this missal.
The New Sunday Missal is adorned with black and white drawings by Guillem RamosPoqui. Cardinal Hume says in his foreword: "I hope those who use this missal will find in it a rich treasury of prayer. May it help them to celebrate the liturgy more fervently and so come into closer contact with the death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus
Christ." Robert Byrne