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What I will remember most is that I knelt side by side with my daughter during the consecration. I will remember reciting the Creed in my fidgety three-year-old son’s ear as I held him.
Chant does certain things exceedingly well that modern culture eschews. It stops time. It simultaneously quiets the soul and directs our attention to God . . . these things are abhorred by modern culture.
True freedom does not rise from the capacity to fulfill all desires. Freedom is captivity, followed by battle, followed by faith, followed by wisdom and compassion as seen through the eyes of love. Of this struggle, true liberation is born.
In President Kennedy’s inaugural address, he said,“…the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”
I have not even begun to speak of music at liturgy, music worthy of praising the God who loves us to the point of death on a cross. Where will this understanding lead us in our sacred music? Interesting things happen in our lives when we worship God.
The St. Paul Choir School is now looking for talented third grade boys to apply and audition for entry in September of 2013. Director, John Robinson states,“The daily round of sung liturgy provides the perfect training ground for young singers.”
“A real tradition is not the relic of a past that is irretrievably gone; it is a living force that animates and informs the present” –Igor Stravinsky
If there is any one section of “Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship” to become very familiar with, it is this one, and for rather intriguing reasons.
The Mass is a sung prayer and our greatest prayer. As such, it is not our goal to “make” something happen in liturgy. Only God can do that. Any role we have is God’s gift of grace to us. The sooner we understand that, the better we will fulfill our ministry and mission.
The priorities of what we should sing at mass are full of surprises for some. I hope in the end that the greater “surprise” will be in how our prayer is formed by what we sing. I hope this will be the most pleasant surprise of all.
Seminarian Ryan G. Duns, writes, “…it’s not about me putting on a show, about making something happen. My Jesuit training and my musical training converge: I think I’ll be my best when I am noticed least, when I can get out of the way so that those who approach the Lord’s Table are treated, not to a dose of Duns, but to an encounter with the Risen One…”
VENI, SANCTE SPIRITUS, the Sequence for Pentecost Sunday is one of the great jewels of the Roman Rite. The text alone is a treasure—short, simple, profound, and transcendent.
Church musicians carry “battle scars” of the profession. We can all tell “war stories.” But Thomas à Kempis writes in “The Imitation of Christ,” “…the measure of every man’s virtue is best revealed in time of adversity—adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.”
Is the cantor the “leader of song”? It may be surprising that there are a few answers to this question, but it leads towards one ideal.
In Boston we send up our sighs, our mourning, and our weeping in this valley of tears. Great suffering compels us to move towards Christ, and Christ in turn embraces us lovingly in his comforting embrace. Therefore, the sacred liturgy is essential at the time, more than ever.
