Music Notes for January 15

       “Here I Am, Lord” is one of those songs which came into their own in the 80s and which are now part of the repertoire frequently chosen for funerals.  Apparently the song carries some emotional weight for those who sang it when it was “new wine,” since, if the Lord calling in the night is symbolic of death, then death becomes a vocation!  The song is actually based on today’s story of God calling the young Samuel, and on Psalm 40.

      Perhaps as we consider once more our response to Jesus’ strategic question, “What are you looking for?” and his coy invitation to “Come and see,” we might also imagine how Martin Luther King, Jr. responded to the call in the night. His birthday falls on Sunday this year, as did Christmas and the solemnities of Mary and Epiphany. He was a talented, scholarly young preacher in Montgomery in 1954 who could have led a comfortable life by simply delivering eloquent sermons and not rocking the boat.  But the bus boycott needed a leader.  To heighten our awareness of the events of the late 50s and early 60s, it may be helpful to read the book The Help, or to watch the DVD.                      

       Psalm 40 is the prayer of someone suffering a crisis of faith. We might imagine Dr. King praying this psalm in the days when it seemed the legal system was immoveable and his house was bombed.  Since the lectionary only appoints selected verses to be sung at worship, one should read the entire psalm from the Bible to experience its drama. Verses 10 and 11 read: “I announced your justice in the vast assembly . . . Your justice I kept not hid within my heart . . . I have made no secret of your kindness and your truth . . .” So the theme of justice which began in the psalms of Advent continues into the Epiphany season. Robert Christian, of Catholic University, has elaborated on Dr. King’s notion of justice in an essay, “Dr. King and Catholic Social Teaching,” available on the website of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, http://catholicsinalliance.org.  He emphasized the importance of community if human beings were to realize their full potential. As members of the body of the risen Christ, the sin of any one member harms the rest of the body, as our I Corinthians passage points out. This is especially true if one person treats another unjustly. The corollary is that we must respect life in all its forms.

       Music this weekend includes spirituals, “This Little Light of Mine” in a beautiful setting not often heard, “I Told Jesus It Would Be All Right If He Changed My Name,” from the gospel story, and “Hush! Hush! Somebody’s Callin’ My Name,” the theme of listening which will reappear for the next few weeks. “Spirit of God Within Me” is an elaboration on St. Paul’s image of the temple of the Holy Spirit, as is Matt Maher’s contemporary song, “Just Like You.”  “The Summons” has, in the last 25 years, become the classic musical meditation on the implications of listening to Jesus’ overtures.

MUSIC NOTES FOR CHRISTMAS AND EPIPHANY

       In one of his best-known sermons, Howard Thurman wrote: “When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.” The message of justice which we heard proclaimed in the scripture and psalms of Advent continues into the liturgies of Christmas in Psalms 96, 97 and 98: “The Lord has made salvation known, his justice revealed to all.” The same theme is taken up in Psalm 72 for Epiphany: “He shall rescue the poor when they cry out, and the afflicted when they have no one to help them. He shall have pity on the lowly and the poor.”

       From Mary’s point of view, the entire story was “the mystery hidden for many ages” which we heard about on the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Romans 16:25). The puzzle emerged piece by piece in her life and her son’s, beginning with Gabriel’s appearance, the visit to Elizabeth, the journey to Bethlehem and the events surround-ing Jesus’ birth. Then the prophecies of Simeon and Anna, the hurried escape into Egypt and eventual return to Nazareth, family life as “the child grew in size and strength, filled with wisdom,” the visit to the temple in Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve, and the wedding feast at Cana. 

      The gospel passage for January 1 tells us that Mary “treasured all these things and reflected on them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Of this passage, Elizabeth O’Connor writes, in The Eighth Day of Creation: “Every child’s life gives forth hints and signs of the way he is to go. The parent that knows how to meditate stores these hints and signs away and ponders over them.  We are to treasure the intimations of the future that the life of every child gives to us so that, instead of unconsciously putting blocks in his way, we help him to fulfill his destiny. This is not an easy way to follow. Instead of telling our children what they should do and become, we must be humble before their wisdom, believing that in them and not in us is the secret that they need to discover.” As church, it is our mission to “listen for the signs and hints in other lives in the very same way that we listen to them in our own,” as we explore the mystery of our own baptism during the Epiphany season.

MUSIC NOTES FOR DECEMBER 11

Every year, the challenge of the third Sunday of Advent is to rejoice. Such is the exhortation of today’s entrance antiphon, which we sing as a traditional round, and of the letter to the Thessalonians. As in last week’s scripture, joy springs from a commitment to justice: lifting up the poor, healing the depressed, liberating hostages, ministering to the imprisoned, assuring all that God has not abandoned them. We might even sum it all up as “making spirits bright,” but for the fact that that phrase has been co-opted for commercial ends. All of this arises from a hearty sense of joy in God, rejoicing that runs deep in the soul. Today’s psalm, the Magnificat, applies as much to the mission of John the Baptist as to Mary, and the same is true of the passage from Isaiah. His picture of one “clothed in a robe of salvation, wrapped in a mantle of justice, adorned . . . , bedecked . . .,” evokes the image of Mary as she appeared at Guadalupe, and we celebrate that feast on Monday. We will sing the blue-sheet “Song to Our lady of Guadalupe” as we did for the holy day last week. Also repeated will be “Canticle of the Turning,” based on the Magnificat, and at 10:00 “Days of Elijah,” with its references to today’s gospel. And again, we go out of church to the Baptist’s cry, “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord.”

       The deep joy described by Paul and Isaiah stand in counterpoint to the frenetic partying and compulsive shopping that sneak up on us in the run-up to Christmas. Real joy requires us to slow down ands take the time to be in touch with what see and hear: the sight of a cardinal or a bluejay in the backyard. Besides prayer and thanksgiving, Paul advises us to have a keen ear for prophecy, to test everything, to discern the good from the bad. We must take care not to stifle the spirit, and that implies giving worship the time it needs, especially with our revised liturgy, not rushing through the prayers or songs, paying attention, listening closely. In contrast to the instant gratification of the commercial Christmas, Advent demands waiting, patience and time. We are given “time-outs” during this busy season, like the holy day last week, and Monday’s feast of Guadalupe. These are heaven-sent opportunities to “smell the roses” — or to “wake up and smell the coffee,” as the case may be!

       We need to appreciate what a precious gift time is. Someone attributed to Thomas Merton the saying: “Life and time are our only real possessions.” Death is no respecter of seasons. My father’s cousin was a Trappist monk at Our Lady of the Genesee Abbey. Br. Henry died on December 1, “a good day to die,” said the abbot in his eulogy. He baked Monk’s Bread, kept the bees that provided the honey, and, true to his roots, if not to Trappist spirituality, collected stuff. As Christmas approaches, some of our families will lose a loved one. The antidote to our loss, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of our joy is the bottomless generosity of our parishioners, who manage to provide the requests from two Giving Trees and bags and bags of groceries for local food pantries.

MUSIC NOTES FOR DECEMBER 4

        Isaiah evokes a God of comfort against the rugged landscape of mountains, valleys and deserts. He concludes with the comforting image of a shepherd.  John the Baptist, on the other hand, brings not tidings of comfort and joy, but of reform.  Matthew and Luke recount his stern upbraiding of those who came to seek baptism from him. Comfort and conversion are the two sides of the religion coin. In his epistle, Peter preaches a fire-and-brimstone sermon with the world turned upside down, presaging a “new heavens and new earth . . . where the justice of God will reside.” Such is the theme of “Canticle of the Turning,” our offertory hymn, which is patterned after the Magnificat, next week’s psalm response.  Justice is very much the Advent theme this year, personified in John the Baptist and in Mary.

       We enter and leave worship with John’s mantra, “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord,” in James Moore’s setting, with verses from today’s Isaiah passage. The same thought is echoed in “Days of Elijah,” our 10:00 offertory, which cites some of the prophets we will hear about on our way to Christmas. Psalm 85 recalls Pope Paul VI’s dictum: “If you want peace, work for justice.” Our communion song “Like A Shepherd,” is also drawn from Isaiah.

MUSIC NOTES FOR NOVEMBER 20

       The feast of Christ the King is the climax of the church year, but also a bridge to Advent. The image of the shepherd-king will appear in next week’s Psalm 80, which we also sang on October 2, invoked by a people in exile whose vineyard has been destroyed. (Recall that today’s 23^rd Psalm was also our response on October 9.)  We all long for leaders who will shepherd us, leading by example and healing what is not whole. The key, as we have heard for the last three weeks, is to be alert for the return of the King, for he lives and moves among us even now. The sheep have recognized the person of Christ in those dispossessed; the goats have not. As we have seen these last weeks, walls must fall to bring about the kingdom. St. Paul lays out the scenario: Christ is raised first, then those who are faithful to him; and then every earthly concept of nationality and government will crumble. Finally, when death is destroyed, God will be all in all.

      The promise of the resurrection is well-conveyed in the hymn “We Will Rise Again,” with verses drawn from Isaiah.  Resurrection is also the theme of “Soon and Very Soon.” Our communion processional again this week will be “When We Eat This Bread”, this time with verses from “Shepherd Me, O God.” The African hymn “Jesu, Jesu,” which we also sing on Holy Thursday, reminds us where we find Christ. “You Are My All In All” expands on the concluding thought of our epistle. The closing hymn at the organ Masses, “The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns” is set to the early American hymn tune Morning Song and is a meditation on the King of kings whom we worship both in the fullness of time and in Bethlehem. At 10:00 we go out to a medley of spirituals, “Ride On, King Jesus” and “In That Great Gettin’-Up Morning.”

MUSIC NOTES FOR NOVEMBER 13

The wedding feast continues. Today’s first reading and psalm are often used at weddings. This time, Wisdom appears in the guise of a housewife who is busy about building up her family. The worthy wife is a mirror-image of all of us, as are the servants of the gospel story, who are to be productive as we wait for the master’s return. We hope to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” This is the text of “My Reward,” which we also sang last week. The theme of loving service is reflected in the 18th-century hymn text “Love consecrates the humblest act,” from which come the verses for this week’s communion processional. We will gather and go out to “City of God,” a musical meditation on light which at this time of year is growing scarcer as the days grow shorter. St. Paul pep-talks the Thessalonians: “We are sons of the morning! We are daughters of day!” Just as the bridegroom arrived at an unexpected hour in last week’s gospel, St. Paul warns the Thessalonians that the reign of God may surprise us like a thief in the night or like labor pains. Our artificial attempts at peace and security fall far short of the master’s requirements. In her book The Eighth Day of Creation, Elizabeth O’Connor meditates in depth on the parable of the talents as an exercise in community building. Those who are willing to take a risk are rewarded with the joy of creativity. But our sympathy is with the servant who, out of fear, takes the reasonable and prudent course and buries his money. How could the master be so unfeeling as to cast him out of the house? And yet, if we have not been invited use our creativity for the building-up of the household, we too will feel as if we are on the outside looking in, frustrated and angry. How much of this frustration fuels the “Occupy America” demonstrations?  What is the resonance for someone who has worked for years developing certain skills and talents, and now is told they are obsolete or useless, in particular veterans returning from combat? How important is it for the church to be a place where, in the words of the hymn “Come, Host of Heaven’s

High Dwelling Place

,” “the loser may find his worth, the stranger find a friend, the hopeless find their faith, and aimless find an end”?

         Our offertory hymn, “America the Beautiful,” doubles as a recognition of the blessings of the harvest and the sacrifices of those who defend our country.

MUSIC NOTES FOR NOVEMBER 6

This weekend’s scripture anticipates the Advent theme of watchful waiting and preparation.  St. Paul reminds us to keep our eye on the prize, for this is the reward for all our work. Those who seek Wisdom will be busy, like Gerard Manley Hopkins’ peace-dove, who “comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, he comes to brood and sit.” The bridesmaids of the gospel story had time to brood and sit, as long as their lamps were full of oil. Certainly, those who suddenly find themselves jobless in this economy will need to take stock. What oil will keep our lamps burning till the king arrives — faith? hope? charity? wisdom? works? prayer? Whatever fuels them, our lamps will have to be lit to recognize the bridegroom if he appears unexpectedly in the dark.

       The traditional November commemoration of saints and souls will be expressed in our communion processional for the next 3 weeks. The refrain, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup,” is one of the memorial acclamations (now to be called “the mystery of faith”) from the revised missal and the one very similar to what we currently use. The verses this week echo St. Paul’s theme in Lucien Deiss’ familiar setting of 2 Timothy from the 60s, “Keep In Mind.” At 10:00, the verses reflect our Christian work: Jean Anthony Greif’s “We Are the Light of the World,” also written in the 60s. The first reading is reflected in “Eye Has Not Seen” (“teach us the wisdom of God”) and “Jesu, Joy of Our Desiring” (“holy wisdom, love most bright”). Certainly wisdom is all things bright and beautiful, brightening up the skies in our darkest night, and this is the text for “Song of Hope,” from the Robbie Seay Band. Another praise song, “My Reward,” is based on the texts from Matthew 25 which we will hear this week and next. We honor the saints as those who have brought wisdom to power, and so we begin the organ Masses with “For All the Saints.”

MUSIC NOTES FOR OCTOBER 30

Our liturgy begins with a solemn pronouncement to priests, which we have adapted to the classic praise song “Awesome God.” The musical question, “What Does the Lord Require” strikes a similar stentorian note. With Election Day only a week away, it would not be amiss to apply Malachi’s warnings as well to public servants, who more and more seem to be caught up with the trappings of office and the arrogance of ideology rather than discerning the real needs of those they are supposed to serve. St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians that he’s “Been So Busy” working on their behalf that he “ain’t got time to die.” This metaphor for selfless busy-ness and work is from a classic spiritual, quoted by Grayson Brown in his setting. Paul’s description of his gentle example as that of a nursing mother picks up an image from our Psalm 131. We will sing Lucien Deiss’ setting from the early days of English liturgy, “My soul is longing for your peace.”

      Other hymns are meditations on the theme of humility. “I Come With Joy, A Child of God,” to the early-American tune Land of Rest, sings: “As Christ breaks bread and bids us share, each proud division ends. The love that made us, makes us one, and strangers now are friends.” “Jesu, Jesu,” set to a melody from Ghana, and Richard Gilliard’s “The Servant Song” are both hymns we sing on Holy Thursday. “Lord, When You Came to the Seashore,” translated from the poem by Basque Fr. Cesáreo Gabaráin (1936–1991), is a conversation between God and a simple, open heart. We go out to Shaker wisdom in the hymn “Simple Gifts,” which reminds us that if we “come down where we ought to be,” bowing, bending and turning are the movements of a dance rather than gestures of subservience. At 10:00 the choir sings “In the Hands of God,” by the Christian band The Newsboys, and we conclude with “We Will Serve the Lord,” by Rory Cooney, a parish musician in Illinois.(www.rorycooney.com)

MUSIC NOTES FOR OCTOBER 23

     Today’s Exodus reading is a stern reminder to a world grappling with immigration law, the plight of refugees, the challenges of diversity, and paralysis of government when it comes to moving beyond mere law enforcement to legislating justice. The obvious question is, who are the aliens? (or the alienated.) And then: “Remember when you were aliens.” Here is yet another exhortation to see the world and humanity as the One who created them does. Though borders are often delineated by geography, such as rivers or mountains, they are still human inventions, accidents of history, which may not respect the reality of what’s on the ground. Remember Robert Frost’s poem. “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/ What I was walling in or walling out,/ And to whom I was like to give offense./ Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,/ That wants it down.” Presumably walls will have to fall as we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves, and by that means to love God with our all-in-all.

     The Thessalonians’ vibrant faith was to move Christianity beyond its borders to neighboring Mediterranean peoples. The gospel’s offer of life to the full (John 10:10) on this Respect Life Sunday is expressed in the hymn “Abundant Life,” with text by Ruth Duck, a prominent contemporary hymnist.  Her text echoes the Exodus warnings about the plight of aliens, widows, orphans, and the poor. These same concerns are found in “The Cry of the Poor,” which is a setting of Psalm 34. The gospel call to love of God and neighbor is carried out in two hymns from Iona Abbey, “I’ll Love the Lord” (in dialogue form) and “The Love of God Comes Close,” a call to move beyond walls and barriers to reach those who are alienated. At 10:00 the choir will sing “Shelter,” recorded by the praise band Jars of Clay, with its chant, “In the shelter of each other, we will live, we will live.” The 11:30 choir will sing Dave Brubeck’s setting of today’s Psalm 18, “All My Hope.”

Music Notes - 18 September 2011

       “Seek the Lord while he may found; call on him while he is near.” When is the opportune time to seek the Lord? When is he near?  Psalm 145 tells us, “The Lord is near to all who call on him,” so the Lord is certainly “near” in prayer and worship. But is he closer in times of stress, when our security blankets have been pulled out from under us, or our assumptions are challenged, or we’re up against a wall, or at a “teachable moment”? Our meditation hymn, by John Bell of Iona Abbey, goes:

    The peace of God comes close to those caught in the storm,
       foregoing lives of ease to ease the lives forlorn. . . .
    The joy of God comes close where faith encounters fears,
       where heights and depths of life are found through smiles and tears. . . .
    The grace of God comes close to those whose grace is spent,
       when hearts are tired or sore, and hope is bruised and bent. . . .
    The Son of God comes close where people praise his name,
       where bread and wine are blest and shared as when he came.
    The Son of God is here to stay, embracing those who walk his way.

Our passage from Isaiah mirrors last week’s psalm (103), challenging us to love creation as God who created it, and that thought is carried out in Psalm 145 as well. In the gospel, Jesus ups the ante: while we might conceivably manage to forgive a horrific wrong (last week), the thought of someone working an hour and getting the same eternal wage as one who toiled for a lifetime is just not “right and just.”  Too often we try to play God.  We need to let God be God, minding our own spiritual business, keeping busy as Paul says, for whom “Christ means life.” We might imagine Paul singing the spiritual, “Been so busy praising my Jesus, I ain’t got time to die.” He could also sing along with Mighty to Save: “I give my life to follow/ everything I believe in; now I surrender.” The compassion, mercy and kindness mentioned in this song are also the themes of Isaiah and the psalmist. These same ideas are also found in O Bless the Lord, My Soul, a paraphrase of Psalm 103 written by Isaac Watts in 1719, and Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven. During the summer, we heard passages from Romans 8, and we will sing Grayson Brown’s setting of If God Is For Us. Finally, God’s forgiveness is reason for a Song for Hope: “All things new, I can start again; Creator God, calling me Your friend. . . .”

- Glenn Hufnagel

Music Notes - 11 September

MUSIC NOTES FOR SEPT. 11

       The author of our Sirach reading this weekend had a keen understanding of the human heart. Something in us loves to feel sorry for ourselves, to nurse a grudge, to nurture revenge.  The anniversary of 9/11 looms large, but it ought not to obscure our memory of equally horrific events. In 1995, our own Timothy McVeigh, veteran of the first Gulf War and disgruntled by the events at Waco, bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City and was executed on June 11, 2001. Before and since, the genocides at Srebernica and in Rwanda, sectarian massacres in Sudan and India, repeated incidents of terrorism, and the helplessness of the international community to address them. Closer to home, aggressive driving fuels road rage, or a perceived “diss” is an excuse to get even. How to break the vicious circle of hurt?  Sirach, our psalmist and St. Paul suggest that we let go of our own hurt and turn outward toward others, and further, that we strive for a God’s-eye view of the situation.

       In writing his Rule, St. Benedict “sketched out a blueprint for world peace.” Joan Chittister describes Benedictine peace as “the presence of a lifestyle that makes war unacceptable and violence unnecessary. . . . The armies of the world simply demonstrate the war that is going on in our own souls, the restlessness of the enemy within us. . . .” Benedict’s plan is well-expressed in the prayer of St. Francis, “Make Me A Channel of Your Peace,” and in the song “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” The mission is carried further in Michael Joncas’ setting of John 15, “No Greater Love,” with its exhortation to “lay down your life for a friend.” “Be Still, My Soul,” set to Sibelius’ Finlandia theme, is a powerful affirmation that God is still in charge. Our meditation mantra is Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s affirmation, “Goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death.”

       Music at 10:00 begins with an invitation to let Jesus come in for a visit, “Somebody’s Knockin’ At Your Door.” The communion song is based on the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” continuing, “to go from here and share this love you gave to me.” Mass concludes with “Blessed Be Your Name,” an assurance that God is with us both in adundance and want, in sunshine and in suffering.

-Glenn Hufnagel

Hope in an Increasingly Faithless Culture

Hope in an Increasingly Faithless Culture

We’ve all heard the statistics. People (and youth in particular) are leaving the Church at alarming rates. It seems like the message of Christ’s saving power is either falling on deaf ears or teenagers feel that Confirmation is a graduation from the faith. I have struggled with the fact that at an ordinary Sunday Mass at St. Benedict, there is an unbalance in the age pool of people regularly attending. And even then, the youth aren’t the only ones to blame as I’m sure that if all the adults who claim they are Catholic really showed up, there would be standing room only (think Christmas and Easter).

            Many people have hypothesized about the reasoning for youth leaving the Church and others have spent time pondering ways of bringing youth back. I am unable to, at this point in time, express any consequential statement on either of those ends. Rather, this blog post is one of reassurance that in fact not all hope is lost.

I am not proposing that the statistics lie. I am not living on a cloud of naivety that says that there has not been a change in youth attendance in the Eucharist over the past fifty years. I am writing though, to state that I don’t think the Church is going to disappear anytime soon. There are still enough of us out here that will never, ever reject our faith and turn away from our Savior.

This August, World Youth Day was attended by approximately two million youth from around the globe, making this youth day in Madrid, Spain the third most highly attended. In November the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis will have about 25,000 youth in attendance. And even closer to home, this year’s Buffalo Youth Convention welcomed 720 teens to the Adams Mark Hotel in February. I was in attendance at that Convention and can say that it truly was hope-inspiring for the future of our Church… the teenagers present were excited to be there.  

As I write this blog post, I have just returned from an event on my college campus as part of the Crusade for Christ. “Cru” as it is better known around here, is a student-run organization that is exactly what it sounds like… a group of students that speaks of Christ’s presence through their words and actions. It is interdenominational, meaning that it supports a belief in Christ that is not necessarily pigeonholed into a particular sect or denomination. Tonight, we all met in the Student Activities Center (an old gymnasium from the ‘40s) and had an evening with food, music, and prayer. The attendance was remarkable. For a fairly small college (roughly 3100 undergraduates) we packed the gym and upper balcony. Midway through the event, a minister (I am not certain as to what denomination he is) spoke quite eloquently to all of us about the goodness of God. Following this “sermon” we all stood together and sang some spiritual songs led by a quite talented Christian-rock band. That experience of uniting together in prayer-song filled me with hope.

As I sat in this meeting I began to think about the fact that maybe things aren’t as bad for our Catholic Church after all. Despite large quantities of people moving away, there are still so many that are faithful. Granted, not everyone at the “Cru” meeting is Catholic but all Christians are united in common faith and maybe one day we can all be united in one Church. As a side note January 18-25, 2012 will be the week of prayer for Christian unity! As I joined in the songs and the prayer and allowed myself to be open to the Spirit, I began to think that the future of our Church isn’t so bleak after all.

Last Sunday, my first Sunday here at school, I attended the Mass hosted by the Newman Center on campus and was very impressed. I went not expecting many people to be there but I was quite surprised. The youth are out there! Once students get to college, no one is forcing them to go to Mass, especially if they are away from home. Students have the opportunity to just sleep in on a Sunday morning if they so choose and no one need ever know. Yet, students come. They are moved by the Holy Spirit and convinced that receiving the Eucharist is essential to our existence; our Catholic Mass was filled with students. And I did notice that everyone sang the hymns that were lead by the music ministers. Perhaps the reason many youth and young adults don’t sing in most home churches is because they take their cue of silence from the older generations around them!

As a closing thought I’d like to mention that my hope in the future of our faith is coming from a lot of external sources… my campus Newman Center, the Crusade for Christ, the Buffalo Youth Convention, the National Catholic Youth Convention, and World Youth Day.

Yet some may be asking, “What about St. Benedict?” I think that our beloved parish will very soon be making the list of places that instill hope for the future. This summer, our parish hired Mr. Matt Smith as Director of Youth Ministry and Religious Education. Through youth programs, Religious Ed. classes, and the Generations of Faith program I imagine that many exciting things will come from him and his staff. In addition, Mrs. Jennifer Scalisi has been hired to be the 6^th-8^th Grade Religion teacher in the school. Hopefully, that program will encourage youth to stay active as well. Finally, as we speak, an action plan is being put into place by the parish in order to build “Evangelism through Technology,” an initiative that very well could make our parish one of the most youth-friendly and technologically advanced parishes in the diocese. I’m sure that details will be more forthcoming in the months to come!

To put it simply, I am very excited. I am excited for our Church as a whole. I am excited for our diocese. I am excited for St. Benedict Parish. While evangelization is something that each and every one of us needs to value, I don’t think we necessarily need to look at it as an uphill battle. God will provide!

God, we pray
for youth who are searching for your love. Help them find you. “For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”  Matthew 7:8

-David Croglio

Stewards of the Mysteries of God

We began this essay last summer (in the archives for August 2010 and November 2010) with a consideration of mystery as manifested in the Trinity. This year’s unusually-long pre-Lenten season presented us with St. Paul’s reflections on “God’s secret plan.” On the feast of the Epiphany, we heard a reading from Ephesians 3, in which Paul discovers that the mystery of Christ is that all people of whatever origin share equally in the promise of salvation.

This mystery is obviously still working itself out today. Does it open our eyes to the gifts that every race, culture and language bring to our worship? And we worshipers are “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4). We wait as God “brings to light what is hidden in darkness,” because “God’s folly is wiser than all of us, and his weakness more powerful.” God demands time: there are no instant answers. Sr. Joan Chittister writes: “So mystery, the notion that something wonderful can happen at any time if we will only allow space for it, takes us into a whole new awareness of the immanence of God in time. God comes, we learn now, when we least expect it. Maybe most likely of all when we least expect it.” Can God surprise us during worship? Can we freely give him the time and space to? Or do we hold worship prisoner to our preconceived notions of how long worship should be? Or what Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter are all about? Do we need to keep liturgy on a leash, lest it lead someplace we haven’t been before?

So we come to another celebration of the Trinity, our gateway into the parables of the kingdom as recounted in Matthew’s gospel. In Matthew 13, Jesus quotes Psalm 78: “I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.” He uses imagery to appeal directly to our imagination and get around our hard-hearted obstinacy and left-brain cynicism. Alluding to Isaiah, Jesus says of his audience that they “hardly hear with their ears,” they “close their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn back to God, and be healed” (Isaiah 6:9). In the words of Psalm 95, which we will hear on September 4: “If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.” Worship in Spirit and in truth requires unstopped ears, open eyes and an eager heart. Attentive listening trumps “seeing is believing.” As Thomas Aquinas wrote of the Blessed Sacrament in the hymn Adoro te devote, “Sight, touch and taste are each deceived; the ear alone most safely is believed.” Perhaps Aquinas was conscious of his namesake apostle when he wrote those words. Faith is more a matter of listening than reading.

What does it mean to be “stewards of the mysteries of God”? James exhorts us: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1: 22) We enflesh the Word by our action, in our worship and in the world. Recall that one sense of mysterion was sacramentum, the outward sign of an inner reality. As the doers of liturgy, we will have an opportunity to grow when changes to the text of the Mass take effect this Advent. We might see this opportunity, to use another parable (Luke 13), as a fig tree being cultivated in an effort to stimulate it to bear fruit. Practically speaking, the changes to the sung refrain of the Gloria and Holy, Holy are minor. The verses of the Gloria are structured differently from what we have become accustomed to, so these will require more attention on the part of the choir and cantors, and from the congregation when the Gloria is recited. There is some debate among liturgists over whether it will be easier to use a familiar musical setting which has been revised, or a setting which has been expressly composed for the new text. We will begin practicing a new memorial acclamation in November. On occasions when worshippers from many communities may be present, such as funerals and weddings, the music will need to be familiar and as intuitive as possible. A call-and-response form of the memorial acclamation might be the most natural approach to this situation.

A greater challenge is presented by the vision of liturgy laid out in Sing to the Lord, the American bishops’ document on music in worship, and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), which is the preface to the Missal. These documents place great importance on the singing of the dialogues, particularly before the Preface (“The Lord be with you . . . ”); the penitential rite, which Deacon Bill often does; and the opening and closing prayers. The new Missal also emphasizes singing the Lord’s Prayer. This places the ball squarely in our court. How much energy and time are we willing to invest to lend a sense of mystery to our worship? Undoubtedly part of the attraction of the Tridentine rite (sometimes called “extraordinary form”) is the chanted prayers and responses. There is no reason that these sung dialogues cannot be part of our regular worship. It certainly takes no more time to sing them than to recite them. It just takes that little push of energy to elevate a spoken acclamation to a sung one. Again, it’s a matter of attitude: are we always looking for the easy way out, the short form, “liturgy-express”?

The GIRM has this to say about our stewardship of the mysteries of God: “In the celebration of Mass the faithful form a holy people, a people whom God has made his own, a royal priesthood, so that they may give thanks to God and offer the spotless Victim not only through the hands of the priest but also together with him, and so that they may learn to offer themselves. They should, moreover, endeavor to make this clear by their deep religious sense and their charity toward brothers and sisters who participate with them in the same celebration. Thus, they are to shun any appearance of individualism or division, keeping before their eyes that they have only one Father in heaven and accordingly are all brothers and sisters to each other. Indeed, they form one body, whether by hearing the word of God, or by joining in the prayers and the singing, or above all by the common offering of sacrifice and by a common partaking at the Lord’s table. This unity is beautifully apparent from the gestures and postures observed in common by the faithful. The faithful, moreover, should not refuse to serve the People of God gladly whenever they are asked to perform some particular ministry or function in the celebration.”

Our stewardship might be seen in terms of the parables of the sower and the seed growing by itself. The energy and time we invest now are the seeds of the church of the future. Our children will reap the harvest of what we sow today (John 4: 37–38). And, once the crop has been planted, the fate of the harvest is in God’s hands (Mark 4: 26–29). We have no way of knowing if the seed has landed on good soil, on the rocks, among the thorns or will become food for the birds. Time will tell, the ultimate mystery. One of the lessons of life is the wisdom of letting go. When children grow up, parents must allow them to find their own way. When relatives or friends become old and die, we must let go of them. When we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it is time to let go of “stuff” and have a garage sale. The same lesson applies to music. “Sons of God” and “Here We Are,” so meaningful when Mass was first celebrated in English, were supplanted by the scripture-based music of the 70s. The music of Weston Priory seemed fresh and reminded many of the experiences they had at retreats in Vermont, but the texts did not age well (“All I Ask of You”) and often did not respect the natural rhythm of English (“Bread That Was Sown”). Composers like Joe Wise, Ray Repp, Jack Miffleton, Carey Landry, and Tom Conry all had their moment, and many of the songs we hold precious today may no longer adequately express the faith of the mid-21st century.

One approach to music claims it doesn’t matter what we sing as long as we sing. Another theory is that whatever we sing should connect with the themes of the readings for that day. The former usually leads to singing “what we know” and the latter demands time spent with the scripture to discern what God’s message for this parish is today. That message evolves over time, and taking it home in music demands growth. Everyone who has taken biology knows that whatever isn’t growing is dead. In Bob Dylan’s words, “If you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.” We can never rest on our laurels. There is no end to the search for the pearl of great price, the field with the hidden treasure, sorting out the treasure from the trash or weeding out the garden (Matthew 13). As long as we have the leaven of the Spirit, the dough keeps rising and the bread is fresh.

Glenn Hufnagel

*****

this is the third part of an essay

see Part I

see Part II