Second Sunday in Advent

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear!
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

Based on “O” Antiphons,
Latin, 9th century

Music in Advent: the “O!” Antiphons
During the season of Advent, the music from liturgy to liturgy and week to week will be much more united in character than it is during Ordinary Time. We are using different Mass Acclamations, our Kyrie and Alleluia are based on a familiar Advent carol (“O Come, Divine Messiah,” which we sang at the closing for most of last weekend’s liturgies,) and we will use the same ancient hymn at the Entrance for all four Sundays, with different verses each week.
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is one of the best-known and best-loved Advent hymns of all time. What many people do not know is that it is, in its original form, over 1200 years old: it was a Gregorian Chant hymn in Latin (“Veni, veni, Emmanuel”) commonly sung by monks to count down the final week leading to Christmas Day. The verse we now know best and sing first in our version of the hymn would have been the antiphon for December 23, the last evening before the Nativity celebrations begun.

Each of the seven verses, in the Latin, began with an invocation of a different title for the Messiah: “O Key of David!” “O Root of Jesse!” “O Dayspring!” and so on. These texts have become an integral part of much of our Advent hymnody: during this season, we will also sing two different contemporary settings of the same text: “For you, O Lord, my soul in stillness waits…” (#336 in our hymnal) takes its refrain from Psalm 95 but its verses from the O Antiphons. “Maranatha, Lord Messiah!” by Kathy Powell (#324 in our hymnal) removes the word “O!” from the beginning of each verse, but they still follow the pattern of the original, even to re-placing “Come, Emmanuel” in its original spot in verse 7.

Enjoy these hymns, as we raise our voices in song to prepare for the Lord’s coming!

O Come, Divine Messiah! Advent week I

O Come, Divine Messiah!
The world in silence waits the day
When hope shall sing its triumph,
And sadness flee away!

French Carol, 16th century

The First Sunday in Advent: Happy New Year!
Advent marks the beginning of the new liturgical year—you’ll notice that today we have new Word and Song books in the pews, and that the general style and form of the music has shifted from the grander and more expansive praise hymns and songs to music that is a bit quieter, a bit more ancient, a bit more hushed and subdued.

We do not sing the great “Glory to God in the Highest!” acclamation of praise during Advent; instead, we choose to sing the ancient Greek “Kyrie Eleison” where we normally recite the same text in English: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

We also choose to sing the ancient chanted “Agnus Dei” Gregorian Chant as the presider breaks the Eucharistic Bread. Many will know this well from their own childhoods, and all our parish second graders learn it for their First Communion each year. However, since I know there are folks who are unfamiliar with it and wonder about those strange Latin words that we are singing...

Just as when we sang in English, we sing the first line (“Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.”) twice, and the third time we end with the supplication, “grant us peace.” (It is number 320 in the hymnal.)

Advent Lessons and Carols: December 7, 7pm

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel!

Based on “O” Antiphons,
Latin, 9th century

Mark your calendars…December 7 at 7pm!

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, the last Sunday in the church year...next Sunday we begin our Advent season of waiting and anticipation.

While the holiday season outside the parish is full of frenetic busy-ness, the Church calls us to spend time in prayer, seeking simplicity and calm as we prepare our hearts to receive Christ into the world. Thanksgiving is not even here yet, but already the barrage of secular holiday songs has begun.

Why not take a break from all the noise and clutter to spend some time in prayer and song, listening to the stories of our faith, in the traditional format of Advent Lessons and Carols? We will gather in church on December 7, at 7pm, for about an hour, in prayer and song. Familiar Advent hymns will be sung by all who are gathered there, and the choir will offer several pieces of choral music in anticipation of Christ’s coming. (No, they won’t be “Christmas” carols—not yet!—but they will be songs beloved and known to us as praying Catholics.)

Find peace amidst the noise! Come sing with us!

Music Ministry Series: Part VI (Communion Song)

Come to the Banquet, come to the feast,
Eat the bread of life!
Share in the singing, share in the joy,
Drink the cup of love!

From “Come to the Banquet,” James J. Chepponis, b. 1956,
© 2000 by GIA Publications, Inc.

The Communion Song
So...we come together, this Sunday as every Sunday, a community in Christ. We have gathered at the Table of the Word to experience Christ’s presence in Sacred Scripture. We have offered our community’s prayers to the Lord, and we have brought forth our community’s gifts. Our priest celebrant has, on our behalf, offered prayers of praise and thanksgiving, and called upon God to send the Holy Spirit down upon our humble gifts of bread and wine, so that that same Spirit might transform them into Christ’s own Body and Blood. And then we move forward, together, to share in this wonderful banquet—we take the Body of Christ into ourselves, and become what we receive.

From a music ministry standpoint, the song we sing at Communion is one of the most challenging of the entire liturgy. People are walking to Communion, moving in and out of pews, picking up and putting down hymnals...many people wish to spend time in silent prayer before and after receiving. In many ways it would be much easier if the music at Communion time were just offered by the choir or cantor. However, the documents on the liturgy clearly invite us to sing together, as an assembly, at this time: “[the Communion song’s] purpose is to express the communicants' union in spirit by means of the unity of their voices, to show joy of heart, and to highlight more clearly the ‘communitarian’ nature of the procession to receive Communion.” (General Instruction on the Roman Missal, #86)

That’s a powerful statement! It is also a clear indication that music in the liturgy is about much more than adding beauty, or making the Mass lovely to listen to—the act of singing together, our Church teaches us, is itself a symbol of the very Communion we gather to receive. We don’t go to Communion in this way simply because it is the most efficient way—we process, a people walking together, singing together, receiving together, being changed together.

This is why, at Communion time, the music we sing is usually in “song” form—it has an easily singable refrain, one which hopefully has been used often enough that most people can sing it from memory as they walk to Communion and return after receiving. Songs like “Take and Eat,” “Draw Near,” or “Blest are They,” just to name a few, are perfect choices: they are flexible enough to invite people to sing or give them time to listen and pray, and they remind us of who we are: the Body of Christ in the world, rejoicing in Jesus’ great gift of Himself.

In Paradisum...

May the angels lead you into Paradise;
May the martyrs come to welcome you,
And take you to the holy city:
The new and eternal Jerusalem!

In Paradisum, Rite of Funerals

Singing Death to New Life
On this Sunday when we celebrate the souls who have gone before us into God’s loving embrace, I’d like to take a pause in our weekly “about the Music Ministry” series to recognize a remarkable group of men and women whose ministry often goes unnoticed and unrecognized. Most parishioners may not even know that they exist, until the moment when they gather in the parish church with their family for a loved one’s funeral.

I am speaking of our parish Resurrection Choir. This group of music ministers consists mostly of retired parishioners, or those whose weekday work schedules are flexible. Some are members of one of the other parish musical ensembles, but for many this is their only opportunity to minister through music. Whenever a funeral is scheduled, a chain of phone calls goes out to the various members; everyone who is available on any given day arrives half an hour prior to the service to warm up their voices, put on robes, and rehearse a bit. They graciously re-arrange choral parts to make sure everything will be well-heard and well-sung (on a day when we have 8 sopranos and only one alto, some flexibility and adjustment is helpful!), they rehearse anything that may be unfamiliar at a given funeral, and sometimes they spend some time learning a new piece of music or a new harmony part, to help the group continue growing and deepening its skills. As mourners begin to arrive, they will frequently offer a choral “prelude” to the Mass, helping those who are gathered to find a place of peace and prayer.

Sometimes the 10-20 members of the choir raise their voices to a full church; sometimes the dozen or so in the choir outnumber a smaller group of mourners. Sometimes they go weeks without singing together, and some weeks the group may gather four or five times, or even twice in one day. But I can truly say, as Music Director, that I have never met a more prayerful, humble, committed group of musicians and believers, and it is my privilege to know and make music with them, to stand by their side in singing our beloved dead home to the God who loves us all.

Whether or not you see them, you should know they are there. And please offer a prayer for their continued ministry, as they continue to sing and pray for all of us.

Music Ministry Series: Part V (Responsorial Psalm)

“Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord!”
Psalm 89:2


The Responsorial Psalm
The Responsorial Psalm, sung between the first and second reading, holds a special place within the liturgy—a place not shared by any other action of the music ministry. For in this moment the cantor becomes not so much a music minister as a Minister of the Word—the sung Word. It is for this reason that the psalm is normally proclaimed from the ambo, where Scripture is read, rather than the cantor’s more accustomed place at the cantor stand—here, he or she is not merely singing, here the cantor is proclaiming the Word of God.

These exquisite scriptural pieces of poetry are ancient and deeply beautiful; they were certainly known to and prayed by Jesus himself, as a familiar and deeply valued part of the Jewish holy texts. These 150 poems span the depth and width of human emotions—they sing of praise, of lament, of anger, of love, of war, of sorrow, of joy, of betrayal, of trust...anything we feel now, today, in our lives, was probably felt and sung about by the ancient psalmists.

While other pieces of music in the liturgy may be changed or chosen from week to week, the Responsorial Psalm functions as part of the proclamation of Scripture. As such, each week the Lectionary contains a particular psalm or portion of a psalm that was selected specifically to expand upon or respond to the themes in the first reading. While sometimes we may shift the psalm slightly or change to a “seasonal” psalm setting for Advent or Lent, generally the cantor/psalmist will lead the singing of the “proper” chosen psalm for the week.

When we say that the psalm is “responsorial,” we are not referring to its position as a “response” to the first reading (though it often functions as such.) “Responsorial” refers to the way it is sung, with the cantor intoning the brief refrain and the assembly “responding” by singing it back. (The Gospel Acclamation “Alleluia” is also sung “responsorially,” you may notice.) The cantor then sings the inner verses, the scriptural heart of the psalm, and invites the “response” of the assembly after each verse. When a choir is present to add support or the assembly’s familiarity with the psalm is particularly strong, you may even notice the cantor not singing the assembly refrain with you. (This is our goal, eventually, for all liturgies, so that the singing of the psalm may be the dialogue it is intended to be—and for any dialogue to occur, one person must speak and then stop speaking so that another may take a turn. )

So over the next few weeks, I invite you to listen closely: try to hear how your own moment in the psalm echoes your response to the spoken Word, and calls out to millennia of believers before you who have done the same.

Music Ministry Series: Part IV (Hymns and Songs)

Hymn, Song, Chant—what’s the difference?

It’s easy to become confused about the different terms that get thrown around regarding what it is we are singing at any given moment...Sometimes we sing an “Opening Hymn,” sometimes it’s a “Communion Song”...and then there’s that word “chant” that gets used from time to time.

So, let us take a moment to look at some of the different words and try to sort them out.

Most of the liturgical documents from Rome, as well as from the U.S. Bishops, use the word “chant” to describe anything we sing in the liturgy. For us this term tends to conjure up images of ethereal Latin-singing monks, slow and mystical music hearkening to a traditional and “high church” style of worship. While Gregorian Chant, this centuries-old form of church song, is still a traditional and beautiful form of sung prayer, when the documents refer to a “chant” they are simply translating the Latin word cantus—basically, “song” or “something sung.” It also can refer to any non-rhythmic unaccompanied speech-singing, such as when the priest chants “Through him, with him, in him…” or other texts through the liturgy. Generally, the more festive the occasion, the more the priest will choose to chant. (If he is comfortable chanting at all, that is—we are blessed to have some wonderful singing priests at our parish!)

So: what is the difference between a song and a hymn?

A hymn is usually a term for a specific kind of sacred song, one with several verses or stanzas (or, if you like, strophes). The melody will repeat several times, exactly the same, with different words for each verse. “I Come with Joy,” sung this week to open the liturgy, is a hymn. So is “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”; so are most of our favorite Christmas carols— “Silent Night,” “Joy to the World,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and so on.

The word song can be a bit more confusing, though. On the one hand, it can (like chant) refer to anything that is sung. But a piece of music in song form is very specific—this means that it may have verses like a hymn, but each ends with a chorus or refrain—a passage of music that comes back, with the same words, every time. Songs like “Here I Am, Lord” and “On Eagle’s Wings” are good examples of music in “song” form.

(But what about “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” another Christmas carol, you may ask? Just because it has the repeating refrain “O come, let us adore him,” does that mean it’s not a hymn?)

The good news—and I hope this is not a disappointment to those who have managed to read to the end of this column—is that when it really comes down to it, it doesn’t matter much. None of these terms is absolute, and very seldom will anyone be able to say “You’re wrong!” if you should refer to any piece of sacred music by almost any of these titles. This is just a little background given for the benefit of those who’ve asked the question in the past—call it what you will, just keep singing!