O Cecilia!

 Writing this reflection gave me a serious Simon & Garfunkel earworm last February!

I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart;
I will declare all your wondrous deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, Most High. — Psalm 9

On this day, we celebrate the memorial of St. Cecilia, so it is not surprising that a line in the opening verse of the psalm caught my eye: I will sing praise to your name. Cecilia is, perforce, the patron saint of music and musicians, of all who give voice to God’s praises in song.

Over and over in the psalms, we hear the imperative: Sing! Qui cantat, bis orat, said St. Augustine (perhaps). To sing is to pray twice. Music propels a text out of two dimensions. It pulls us into a space where beat and timbre, harmony and counterpoint can rouse us, can give shape to what is ineffable, unutterable.

I take a deep breath to begin the entrance hymn, and encounter God’s expansive grace, enabling me to be just a little bit more than who I was a moment before. I feel the pew shiver under my hands as the organ digs into a deeper register, my awe of the all-powerful, ever-living God literally palpable. I hear the woman behind me in line for communion break into a soprano descant and am reminded that in prayer, as in music, we are called to be one Body, one Word, our differences intricately woven into a stronger and more beautiful whole.

St. John of the Cross called prayer the breathing of God in the soul and of the soul in God. So, whenever I sing in prayer, the living Word of God breathes within me, and I, alive with that Word, breathe within God.

— From Give Us This Day, November 2025

Weird Catholic Twitter: Hymn Edition

There is such a thing as Weird Anglican Twitter, which I find (for the most part) gentle and grace-filled (and occasionally perplexing, not being Anglican).  Their Advent devotional got me through a chaotic end of the semester. Would recommend.

Weird CatholicTwitter? Not so much. Lots of pearl clutching and “well, I never”ing.  It’s often holier than thou. And sometimes perplexing (and I am Catholic). I try not to follow the denizens of that virtual space, but occasionally we cross paths in the comments to a post, as happened last week.

One of the common tropes on WCT is that people should not sing hymns that speak in God’s voice. Someone posted a paean to Sr. Susan Toolan’s “I Am the Bread of Life” — appreciating that so many congregations sing this with gusto. This brought out the “don’t say God’s words” crowd in droves. (Including a new spin, women should not sing this because they are quoting Jesus.)

I’m perplexed. The Divine Office, which can be sung, includes psalms which feature God speaking in the first person. The Church’s ancient liturgical tradition has us singing as if we are God speaking. If you want  to ban that practice, ok, I guess, but be consistent. If “I Am the Bread of Life” is off limits, so are those psalms.

I tried to engage someone on this (yes, I know, I’ll go to confession, I promise) who wouldn’t answer my question about the sung office, but insisted that I reject “a song writer putting themselves in the voice of God” (as opposed to scripture). I surrendered when I realized he didn’t know that the words to “I Am the Bread of Life” were from the Gospel of John. Oh….dear.

Column: An active silence

I've been reading Wound of Love, by an anonymous Carthusian (or as Google books would have A. Carthusian). It's a miscellaneous collection of essays, conferences and homilies, written by contemporary Carthusians for their brothers. The essay referred to below is called "The Facets of Silence."

This column appeared in the June 2012 issue of the Catholic Standard & Times. Read it at Catholic Philly.

A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountain and crushing rocks before the Lord — but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake — but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was fire — but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound. 1 Kings 19:11-12

“Take a look at measure 12, it’s the most critical thing you will do in the entire piece,” cautioned the director. “Note the two rests there? Do not sing! Stop, or you’ll be very lonely.” And embarrassed.

A couple of dozen parents of choral seniors are gathered in a small practice room, trying in twenty minutes to master a sung blessing (acapella, in four part harmony) to be sung to our graduating children at the end of the night’s concert.

The text is the beautiful blessing given in Numbers — “May the Lord bless you and keep you…” — set to two dozen measures of music, hundreds of notes rippling over each other, every space on the staffs filled, except for this beat and a half. Stop. Wait.

It may sound odd, but as a cantor, my favorite part of singing the psalm is not the moment when the Church first fills with our response to the first reading. It’s not even the moment of exquisite relief when I’m sure I’ve found the note that I was tentatively hunting for in practice. No, it’s the thirty or so seconds of silence my parish keeps before the psalmist stands and goes to the ambo. We stop. We wait.

Unlike my students, who often let me know it’s time to move on to their next class by noisily packing up their books and papers, these silences are still. We aren’t collectively itching to get on to the psalm and second reading; we are as engaged in listening as we were when the lector was reading.

“Reading is bound to silence,” wrote Peter of Celle, a 12th century Benedictine abbot, in his lessons for monks. Like composer Claude Debussy, who 700 years later defined music as “the space between the notes.” Peter suggests that silence is not just empty space, but something that is active, that tunes us in to words just spoken and words to come. The silences in our liturgies aren’t accidents, the inevitable result of the time it takes to move one person off the ambo and the next person on.

As Elijah stayed safely in his cave while rock-crushing winds and harrowing fires swept past, emerging, head covered, to hear God calling him in the near total silence that followed, we hear God approaching us in the reading. So, too, we emerge, wrapping ourselves in the silence, to hear what God is calling us to, here and now.

Last week I read a series of reflections on silence by an anonymous Carthusian novice master who pointed out that sacred silence is a communal activity, that it’s not a private affair between individuals and God. We are entrusted to each other’s care in these silences, he notes, safeguarding the silence for our neighbors.

While my parish does not practice the profound silence that the Carthusian monks and nuns do, even in these brief moments at Mass, I sense the support of the assembly as we craft a silence — together — to listen to what God has to say in each of our hearts.

The novice master encourages his young monks to consider the ways in which their silence wells up and flows out over the earth, supporting God’s revelation of Himself to those far beyond the boundaries of the monastery gates.

In the end, the parents did not have to carry the sung blessing on our own. We were supported by the rest of the chorale, their gloriously well-trained voices welling up and flowing out, their eyes pinned to their director’s hands. Holding us in song, and binding us together in perfect silence.


Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear. — Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. in The Habit of Perfection

Babu Yetu

Long ago, when I was in college, working on a linguistics degree, I had to take two years of a non-Indo-European language. I chose Kiswahili, in part because I had friend who spoke it and I could practice with him, and partly because the structure of the language fascinated me. Plural nouns are fomed by prefixes, instead of English's "s" suffixes. Nouns that refer to objects that are alive are treated differently from nouns for objects that are and have ever been inanimate.

The Boy and Crash's choral group sang this piece for this final concert and I enjoy seeing if I could follow the Our Father in a language I haven't tried to speak in almost three decades. (For the record - no.)


Baba yetu uliye mbinguni,
Jina lako litukuzwe,
Ufalme wako uje,
Mapenzi yako yatimizwe,
hapa duniani kama huko mbinguni.
Utupe leo riziki yetu.
Utusamehe deni zetu,kama sisi nasi tuwasamehevyo wadeni wetu.
Na usitutie majaribuni,lakini utuokoe na yule mwovu.
Kwa kuwa ufalme ni wako, na nguvu, na utukufu, hata milele.Amina.
(Our Father in Kiswahili)

When ages beyond number had run their course

Never mind Facebook, this is the ultimate in timelines. The Christmas Proclamation sets the birth of Christ into time. To chant it feels like a cascade, one marker to the next, until hanging on the reciting tone for more than seven times seven syllables we wait and wait until the Word bursts into time at "was born of the Virgin Mary.."

You can hear it chanted here. By the time you read this I will have stood at the ambo, taken a deep breath and proclaimed again "The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh."

Merry Christmas!

The Twenty-fifth Day of December

When ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world,

when God in the beginning created heaven and earth,

and formed man in his own likeness;

when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace;

in the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith, came out of the Ur of the Chaldees;

in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt;

around the thousandth year since David was anointed King;

in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel;

in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;

in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the foundation of the City of Rome;

in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace,

Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,

desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence,

was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

and when nine months had passed since his conception....

was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man:

The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

Fiery Furnaces

(Cross posted from RevGalBlogPals - Crash Kid's choir did this piece this year....and somehow on this hot, fiery, humid Sunday it seemed a good piece to choose for the Sunday Afternoon Music Video feature!)



Repentant, weeping, anointed and anointing, we are delivered from the lion's den, untouched by the fiery furnace. I love the looks on the faces of chorus and director. There is a deeply rooted joy amid their fierce concentration. I wonder if this is how the woman with the alabaster jar looked?! And it's an amazing piece of music, too.

May you know joy today,
may it sink deeply into your soul,
and may it rise higher than these sopranos' voices!
Amen.

Passiontide

I cantored for the evening Mass today - the first (successful) outing since I lost my voice last Advent. (One of my Augustinian confreres joked that I gave up singing for Lent, for Christmas, for Ordinary time...) We began outside with the Blessing of the Palms, on the plaza in front of the church, across from the busy grocery store parking lot. People slowed to watch Fr. Tony, brilliant in his red chasuble, proclaim the first Gospel, telling of the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem.

On cue, the organist inside broke into All Glory Laud and Honor and from the corner of the church I began. Ah...my breath control is not what it's been. Can I walk, and hit a high C with enough punch to be heard in a carpeted church (it has surprisingly good acoustics for all that)? The answer is no.

The sung response for the Passion was a marvel of sung community prayer, sustained, plaintive. My community, always pretty comfortable with silence, committed anew this liturgical year to being attentive to the silences. Today, when we all knelt at the moment of Jesus' death, in the stillness you could hear the kneelers hit the floor, rumbling like thunder through the church. Then, of course, there was the moment that the phone in the back sacristy started ringing, clearly audible through the open doors. I stood there, trying to remember how much time I had before the next sung response and could I make it there and back before I had to lead the next response....

I wonder what the medieval equivalent of the ringing phone liturgical interruption was? From the homilies I've read from the the early days I suspect that disruptions from the assembly are not a modern phenomenon!

Exomologesis

The subject line read "exomologesis" -- I'd emailed the college chaplain to make an appointment to go to confession. In confirming the time, I noted that I hoped he did not mean me to take the subject line literally. The Church fathers used this term to refer to sacramental penance (I won't subject you to the history and theological development, it's convoluted -- then as now) and it eventually gathered the sense of "public confession of your sins".

On Wednesday, I'm cantoring the parish penance service (other than a failed try in January the first time I've sung since the middle of Advent!). I realized that there is just a wisp of the old practice here. By standing up and walking up to a priest, one makes a very public statement of what we likely prefer to have kept private: I have sinned. Thankfully we have not embraced social media in this context - can you imagine a stream of sins on a screen above the altar? Hopefully you can't!

But there is something about hearing the murmurs of confessions and absolutions that wash through the church during these services that brings home for me the all encompassing sense of God's mercy and forgiveness. Loyola Press has just launched a site called Other6, which left me with a similar feeling. Subscribers can post (anonymously) where they've found God in their lives today, and where they want to find God. On the side is a tag cloud -- like the murmurs in the church, the tags point to what we all need, where we all find God.

Last chance Gloria

Lent starts on Wednesday, and my community will strip down the music to a bare minimum. Some traditions fast from music entirely during Lent, a practice that sounds particularly penitential to my musician's soul. Different, yes. Sparser, fine. None? (Cue anguished wail...)

This year I'm actually looking forward to the sparser singing. I lost my voice before Christmas and still cannot sing, so I've been on a musical diet of sorts for weeks. Less music to hear, less temptation to exceed my imposed vocal restrictions. Still, I find myself craving certain songs, like a kid with her face pressed up against the glass of the chocolate store, dreaming of which piece she would choose, imagining the taste.

As we (or at least as everyone else) sang the Gloria today, I realized I won't hear it again until the Triduum, long weeks away. If I were to have only more taste of a Gloria, this might be the one I would choose!

---

Cross-posted (and slightly edited) from RevGalBlogPals's Sunday Afternoon Music Videos.

The Touch of Sound

These 'monks' are too funny! But there is a bit of irony here, too. I'm on vocal rest - not speaking. It's interesting how much you can get done in the public sphere without speaking. The pharmacist quickly figured out what was up, and put my stuff aside so when I came back I didn't have to ask for it; the checker at the grocery store was miffed that I wouldn't give her my card number aloud -- but for the most part, you can do what you need to and say nothing in response (just smile and nod or not) and no one seems to notice.

I'm still going to morning prayer, since I feel fine. The pastor noted yesterday that they were "giving me voice" (another colleague teased that perhaps we should have a "silent Office in deference to" me...hello, if I wanted a silent office I could stay home and pray it with Fluffy!). Sound is tactile, air physically hits your ear. So to hear the words prayed, even if I can't pray them aloud, lets me engage a bit differently. To listen, is to let yourself be touched. Maybe that's what happens when our words are stripped away...

Hebdomadarian - it's not a camel

In writing about the musical adventures of the monastic community I pray with I used the term hebdomadarian. I first encountered this word many years ago in Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede - and thank heavens there was a glossary in the back! It's the term for the assigned leader of sung prayer in a monastic community. The assignments were usually rotated weekly, and this is reflected in hebdomadarian's etymology, it derives from the Greek for seven, hepta. I have to say, to this day when I see or hear this word, my first thought is not the Divine Office, but camels (dromedary!).

The Augustinians I pray with use a weekly rota (I used to be Thursdays), with substitutes filling at need, but the title persists.

A night in the novitiate

I got up very early this morning to drive the hour and a half to the old Jesuit novitiate. I had an appointment with my spiritual director in the afternoon -- and had a room in the retreatants wing reserved for the night.

I spent the first 5 hours in blissful silence -and surprisingly even singing for the noon liturgy did not break the resulting stillness. The pianist and I practiced each song once, speaking softly and only the few words necessary.

I saw a half dozen cardinals (of the bird sort, not the ecclesial sort) on a morning walk, listened to the wind rustle the winter leaves in the afternoon.

I woke this morning before dawn and sat in the small chapel, at the very top of the hill, and watched the light morph from rose to amber to soft white.

In the middle of it all, I did stop by the computer in the small parlor and check my email -- and make a Scrabble move in my game against Cathy! [OK, I confess...I went twice.] The second time there was a sign on the computer saying "Please don't turn this computer off." Signed God. God, S.J.

RGBP Friday Five: Hard Habit to Break

1. Have you ever successfully quit a bad habit, or gotten a good habit established? Tell us about how you did it.

I started walking, 30 minutes a day, every day. It helped to ask a friend to help me monitor, "Are you still walking?", on a regular, but not too frequent, basis. It helped to ask for Math Man's, Crash's and the Boy's support (necessary if I'm going to get out the door while kids are awake).

2. "If only there were a 12-step program for _________________!"

Putting laundry away. During the semester, the baskets are always with me. Even though I know the time I spend digging through them in one day for socks is equal to the time to put it all away, I procrastinate this task beyond belief! And worse yet, I've enabled it by buying more laundry baskets!!

3. Share one of your healthy "obsessions" with us.

Singing! The extra oxygen is good for the brain or something...but I know it makes the people I live with nuts (but we're even on that see #4)

4. Share the habit of a spouse, friend or loved one that drives you C-R-A-Z-Y.

Leaving the drawers open - it looks like the bedroom has been ransacked. All three of my guys do this and it drives me NUTS.

5. "I'd love to get into the habit of ___________________."

Putting the laundry away the day it's folded.

Bonus: What is one small action you might take immediately to make #5 a reality

Giving away those extra laundry baskets (and then I could claim another fifty fewer category!)