“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

Today during after-Mass refreshments, we all learned a lot. Jeffrey Tucker learned about etymology, ancient history, and botany. We all learned about Utah’s Sunday laws. And it was confirmed for me, by Jeffrey Morse and Matthew Williams, that children love a challenge.
All of us have established groups of choristers, and all of us have had the same experience. The children do not want to take the easy way out. No Rossini, thank you! No Psalm-tone propers! Credo I, the solemn Salve, one of the real Kyries instead of #18–they want to sing the most difficult chants.
The young people in my Schola are incredibly nice. The only time I get the almost-unavoidable eye-rolling of their age group is when I suggest they cannot do something. With no insult intended, sometime choir directors want to take the easy way, for the sake of a polished performance. But for the young people, who have in fact proved themselves capable of rising to any occasion, we really should allow them to sing the very best music for God.

“Faith Comes Through Hearing”

The preliminary working document (Instrumentum laboris) for the Bishops’ Synod on the New Evangelization does not mention either music or singing. Beauty is mentioned less than a dozen times, primarily in paragraph 157:

Some responses refer to the subjects of art and beauty as places for the transmission of the faith and, therefore, are to be addressed in this chapter dedicated to the relationship between faith and knowledge. Many possible reasons are given to support this request, especially those coming from the Eastern Catholic Churches who have a strong tradition in this area. They have been able to maintain a very close relation between faith and beauty. In these traditions, the relation between faith and beauty is not simply a matter of aesthetics, but is rather seen as a fundamental resource in bearing witness to the faith and developing a knowledge which is truly a “holistic” service to a person’s every human need.  

The knowledge coming from beauty, as in the liturgy, is able to take on a visible reality in its originally-intended role as a manifestation of the universal communion to which humanity and every person is called by God. Therefore, human knowledge needs again to be wedded to divine knowledge, in other words, human knowledge is to adopt the same outlook which God the Father has towards creation and, through the Holy Spirit and the Son, to see God the Father in creation.  

This fundamental role of beauty urgently needs to be restored in Christianity. In this regard, the new evangelization has an important role to play. The Church recognizes that human beings cannot exist without beauty. For Christians, beauty is found within the Paschal Mystery, in the transparency of the reality of Christ.

I am reminded of St. Augustine’s accounts of his own conversions in his Confessions, the initial conversion inspired by the singing of the Church in Milan, and the deeper conversion inspired by the singing of the small child, who sang “Take and Read!”

Preliminary documents famously do not always entirely determine the scope of these sacred deliberations, and one would hope that the final documents of the Synod would better reflect the power of music and singing to change the human heart.

Hymn Tune Introit for the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Here is tomorrow’s entrance antiphon in the Missal:

The designs of his heart are from age to age, to rescue their souls from death, and to keep them alive in famine.

This is a rhymed(-ish) version in Long Meter, which can be sung to a number of standard hymn tunes:

His heart’s designs forever stand;
From age to age His loving plan,
That He may save their souls from death;
In famine save their life and breath.

From the Saint of the Day

There grew a vine-shoot on my tongue: and increased and reached unto heaven, And it yielded fruit without measure: leaves likewise without number. It spread, it stretched wide, it bore fruit: all creation drew near, And the more they were that gathered: the more its clusters abounded. These clusters were the Homilies; and these leaves the Hymns. God was the giver of them: glory to Him for His grace! For He gave to me of His good pleasure: from the storehouse of His treasures. 
Saint Ephrem