Magnificat is the name of a Catholic magazine and prayer guide that has been published fourteen times a year since December, 1998. The format is tiny, and has gotten even tinier over the years. Each issue is about four hundred pages, printed on the very fine paper traditionally used in Bibles; the end product is smaller than a drugstore paperback and maybe a third the thickness.
Each month's issue contains the entire Catholic liturgy for that month. In the very centre of the book -- taking up about a dozen pages, edged in red so they can be thumbed-to easily -- the reader can find the ordinaries, which is to say the parts of the Mass that stay the same each day. Cradle Catholics will probably know all of these by heart, having spoken or sung them at least once a week all their lives, but the presence of the ordinaries on these pages is handy for people who are less familiar with them -- recent converts, travellers to foreign countries, interested outsiders, wandering anthropologists, and so on. Some famous cathedrals have free copies of Magnificat available at the door so that tourists can follow the ceremony; this seems to be more common in Europe than in the Americas, where the day's mass is more often given out on a photocopied sheet.
The bulk of the rest of each issue is taken up with the propers, which is to say the parts of the Mass that change from day to day. Catholic ritual follows the flow of the liturgical year, which in turn is an abstraction of Christ's life (birth-ministry-death-resurrection), which in yet another turn is a distillation of what Christians call "salvation history," which is to say the grand plan that God has for the world.
Different prayers, psalms, and Biblical readings are therefore considered appropriate for different liturgical seasons: Lent, for example, is a penitential season, which calls for more solemn readings (and, in many churches, the absence of the joyful Gloria); meanwhile, Christmastide is a time of livelier material that makes frequent reference to light and new beginnings.
Furthermore, each day in the Catholic calendar is dedicated to one or more saints, who may be mentioned within the day's service. The saints who appear in the Bible itself usually have a reading specifically dedicated to them. Magnificat supplies some information on major saints, but information on quirkier, less famous, or more local saints needs to be found elsewhere.
Even the priest isn't expected to have all this stuff memorized, which is why he has a great big fat book up there with him. For the Catholic who wants to pray at home (most Catholics are not expected to attend Mass every day), or for the monk who follows the Liturgy of the Hours, or for the ritual junkie like me, Magnificat contains all the same information that the priest uses, arranged chronologically.
There are a few elements of the Mass that cannot be printed in Magnificat because they change from parish to parish. For instance, there is a body of hymns that is associated with each liturgical season, but which specific hymn is sung in a specific church on a specific day will be decided by the administration of that parish. Again, cradle Catholics will probably have learned all the most popular hymns over the course of the years, since they are used over and over again in various combinations. But the outsider will need to rely on a hymnal if she doesn't know the lyrics. (Since most Catholic hymns contain at least thirty million verses, a hymnal can sometimes be handy for cradle Catholics too.)
Also, each sermon is written by the celebrant for that day's Mass, and (in theory, anyway) will contain fresh material each day. To this the priest will often add local news -- invitations to church events, announcements about parishioners who are getting married, requests for prayers for the ill, and so on.
Finally, the whole point of the Mass -- the consumption of the bread and wine that Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ -- cannot be reproduced in any book. So Magnificat is a guide to the ritual -- a screenplay if you will -- but not a replacement for it.
Magnificat contains a few elements that are not directly relevant to the day's ritual obligations. For example, each issue has a reproduction of a classical Christian painting with some edifying commentary about it. There is also an editorial and a small printed calendar. The layout is quite lovely; even a non-Catholic can appreciate how much information is contained in each magazine, and how clearly and intuitively that information is arranged.
Magnificat is understandably more expensive than the average monthly magazine: as of this writing, a subscription in the U.S. comes to about $40.00 per year.
For the French seminarian in wire-framed glasses. I'll find you yet.