“Peter therefore was kept in prison. But prayer was made without ceasing by the Church unto God for him.” (Acts 12:5)
On this Feast of St. Peter in Chains
Are our Homilists “actively participating?”
Well, someone has to ask this question now and again occasionally. Being long of tooth and a born curmudgeon, I’ll take the blowback. But I don’t expect much to actually come my way in this life, at least.
To be brutally frank, I’m done, exhausted with, recoil from even reading or hearing this clumsy phrase, “active participation.” Expiating it in Latin ain’t any better, just sayin’.
I’ve never suffered from this malaise personally since crossing the Tiber over four decades ago. I don’t carry a bag of angry cats that, when I walk through the doors of a church, I display as a reason not to take up my responsibility as a worshipper. If in a foreign parish and someone announces a hymn or ordinary setting is to be sung now, I sing it. What else am I supposed to do? I chose to come to church, to worship, in the manner prescribed and fully because I like God, quite a bit actually, and love Him as Christ and enjoy the Spirit’s breath expelled that becomes both text and song in that most sublime of arts.
I noticed young Mr. Yanke’s article published today just before this one, I also saw it on Fr. Keye’s FB entry, so this Fr. Gismondi’s interview must be quite something. I’ll get around to it. Or maybe not.
Because, I’ve disavowed my own personal culpability for other folks’ bag of cats that keep them from full engagement in the greatest act, or drama that we humans can re-create that provides us with true succor and hope in this despairing world.
Besides, if a groaner/moaner about the sorry state of “singing in church” want’s to point a bony finger of indignation towards THE responsible party, I direct them toward the guy in the alb and chasuble. If the celebrant upon at the “presider’s” chair cannot or won’t manage to intone the “In Nomine Patris….” or any other orations as he is virtually disciplined to do in Musicam Sacram, well, I’d be surprised if the entrance hymn sung prior to that moment was lustily taken up by the congregation. (And have all of us who frequent here also had the recurrent thought “Thank God for the choir, bless their hearts” for taking up that slack, such as they are!”?) Because the equation of that mandated wisdom from 1967 (!) is pure simplicity in action, a physics truism even- for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction!
If Father, OTOH, chooses to lead and no matter how humbly or magnificently he chants his proper portions, and the response he receives is the chirping of crickets, Father should grab the processional cross and clear the temple of the rabble who are there for “other” purposes, lock the doors (keeping a server or two) and sing a private Mass honorably.
And, at long last, to the point of the title of this little rant, John I, 1. “In the beginning there was the WORD…..” The homily remains almost a sacrosanct vestigial remnant of a time when people actually had something to say to one another. Whether it was in antiquity with Cicero or St. Paul, St. Francis or Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards or John Adams, or in our lifetimes with names like Churchill, King Jr., Sheen, Ghandi, and their ilk, the act of one inspired soul’s words crafted with conviction and purpose to remind large gatherings of other souls’ to listen, to savor, to digest and to transform themselves through those noble thoughts bravely spoken seems to have all but disappeared from our ambos and pulpits.
From what I know of the historical Jesus, he wasn’t a song and dance sort of guy. He didn’t attract crowds of listeners like Cagney in a top hat crooning “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.” In the current cycle of Gospel readings we are reminded again and again of the unimaginable power of the story, the parable, the spoken word from a sage to the masses.
So, if we musicians must fret about something as it seems we must always, let us worry about how we can gently and firmly remind our clerical brothers that we choose our repertoire for a reason, we rehearse it thoroughly for a reason, we literally pray that it be taken up or listened to with intent that is pure and unabated by banality or poor improvisation and padding.
Just as every Sanctus sung is literally prefaced with the anamnesis that we are conjoined with choirs of angels IN THAT VERY MOMENT, every homilist ought to re-approach the ambo after the gospel reading as if he is to give the Sermon on the Mount.
Are You Actually Participating at Mass?
As many of you are acutely aware, one of the difficulties often faced by the reform of the reform is the common understanding of active participation. The cries of “active participation” are often made to musicians and pastors who advocate and work for a return of more sacred things to the Mass, such as the increasing use of Latin, from both the loft and the sanctuary.
I recently saw this video shared on social media, and found the caller’s view quite similar to the views held by many people. I think Father Gismondi does a great job of explaining the situation more fully, in particular, the distinction between active participation and actual participation.
All Are Welcome–Including God?
In many quarters, particularly in my own special area of hymnody, mighty efforts have often been expended to horizontalize the Mass.
Full, conscious, active participation is undeniably a goal of the Vatican II reform of the Mass, as articulated in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. But has this “participation” always been rightly understood? It seems unlikely, not least of all because this participation has taken so many different forms over the years, as one fashion has replaced another successively.
In my youth, “participation” meant folk songs, Beatles hymns, and even the Broadway stylings of Fiddler on the Roof and Godspell. Participation meant that the popular culture was absorbed into the Liturgy.
Since then, “participation” has variously meant little children posting felt sheep on dioramas of the Good Shepherd as preparation for First Confession, banners in general, crumbly leavened loaves, offertory processions that have included endless sheaves of wheat and all manner of symbols of workaday life, songs that talk about how “the market strife” shows the presence of Jesus, and, let’s face it, “hymns” that are no more than progressive political protest songs.
What participation really means–and has meant since the days of the early Church–is not the liturgical expression of secularity. It is not about absorbing pop culture into the Liturgy.
Participation means, rather, that we are brought up into the life of God through divine activity.
In order for this activity, which is totally beyond our power to initiate, to happen, we need to do one thing: cooperate. And cooperation with God at its bare minimum means leaving room for God.
And that is the question. In our I’m-ok-you’re-ok, clapping, casual songfests in-the-round, is there room for God to maneuver? And in fact is there plenty-good-room? God can squeeze in, sure, and God is everywhere, and God can break in, and does, to the hardest of hearts. And God is present in many ways, pre-eminently Sacramentally and those who are disposed may receive Him.
But what would Mass look and sound like if we were to make His ways straight, the highways level and the rough places plain, and not only for ourselves, but for our congregations?
Magnificat Monday: Guerrero
A return to the Renaissance for this week’s Monday Magnificat: here is the Magnificat Primi Toni by Francisco Guerrero:
Scores are available at the tomasluisdevictoria.org site.
“Certainly as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another.”
Ordinarily the chants of the Mass ought to be sung, whether in the Ordinary or the Extraordinary Form.
On those occasions when hymns are sung at Mass–and let’s be honest, we all do it–how do we choose among the hundreds of thousands of hymns available?
Pope Benedict XVI addressed this question in his post-synodal Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, paragraph 42:
In the ars celebrandi,liturgical song has a pre-eminent place. Saint Augustine rightly says in a famous sermon that “the new man sings a new song. Singing is an expression of joy and, if we consider the matter, an expression of love.” The People of God assembled for the liturgy sings the praises of God. In the course of her two-thousand-year history, the Church has created, and still creates, music and songs which represent a rich patrimony of faith and love. This heritage must not be lost. Certainly as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another. Generic improvisation or the introduction of musical genres which fail to respect the meaning of the liturgy should be avoided. As an element of the liturgy, song should be well integrated into the overall celebration. Consequently everything — texts, music, execution — ought to correspond to the meaning of the mystery being celebrated, the structure of the rite and the liturgical seasons. Finally, while respecting various styles and different and highly praiseworthy traditions, I desire, in accordance with the request advanced by the Synod Fathers, that Gregorian chant be suitably esteemed and employed as the chant proper to the Roman liturgy.
Some would say that the best examples of hymns are those that imitate the proper texts themselves.
Others might say that the best hymns for Mass are the rich patrimony of office hymns.
The problem with these two ideals are that they leave out most of the hymns that are actually sung in the best English-speaking music programs in the Church–another kind of ideal, and also compelling: the exemplars of our own time. Hymns like Praise to the Lord, Holy God (a versification of the great hymn Te Deum), Holy Holy Holy, and Come Down O Love Divine are neither office hymns nor textually nor musically close to the proper texts. Does this mean they are unsuited for liturgy, or are they part of the patrimony?
“The Catholic Spiritual Life” by Dr Eric Johnston
Delighted to run across a wonderful blog by an old friend and classmate, Dr. Eric Johnston, a seminary professor living with his large family in Newark.
The Catholic Spiritual Life is a peaceful and informative blog, something like either liturgical spirituality, or spiritual theology–drawing theological truth from all those wonderful sources that we have available to us as Catholics. All of these sources of truth bear upon one another, and we can be caught up in their dynamism, and filled with the living Word of God.
A sample:
At last we return to our orderly reading of Matthew – and see how beautiful are the ordinary words of the Gospel.
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
Such words are like balm. They are really worth reading and hearing just to bathe in them. Such a beautiful reminder that none of our pious meditations can equal the healing power of God’s word.
***
But let us come to him, and learn! These words teach us even more when we read them in context. The Lectionary is good enough to give us the verses that immediately proceed.
“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones. . . . No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”
The two halves of this paragraph illumine one another. Not by strength does man prevail. It’s not human wisdom that discovers the love of the Father. It’s a gift, through Jesus Christ.
And this is the deeper meaning of “take my yoke upon you.” The “rest” he gives us is precisely knowledge of the Father. This is the cure to our labors and burdens.
We have to take his “yoke” upon us. But this doesn’t mean hard work. To the contrary, it means being so assimilated to him that we let him be our all – let Jesus be the source of our strength, and learn from him to receive everything from the Father. That’s the true meaning of meekness.
And meekness is a “yoke” – a challenge to our self-sufficient ways, requiring a real change of behavior – but also “easy,” because what we learn is precisely that we don’t have to be self-sufficient.