Regina Caeli Schola Cantorum

Schola: Feb. Calendar

2012-01-26T08:09:00.000-08:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
Feb. 4, 18

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
SEP (2/4)
Adoro te Devote (2/18)
Ave Regina Caelorum

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Feb. 11, 25

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
SEP (2/11)
Jesu Dulcis (2/25)
Ave Regina Caelorum

Mass of the Presentation at St. William of York
Missa Cantata, Feb, 2, 7 AM (warm-up at 6:45AM)

Introit: Suscepimus
Gradual: Suscepimus (women)
Alleluia:Senex puerum portabat
Offertory: Diffusa est (women)
Communion: Responsum accepit Simeon
Communion Motet: O Sacrum Convivium/Farrant
Alma Redemptoris Mater

Mass setting IX and Credo I

Children's Schola

First Friday Mass at OLPH
Feb. 3, 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria (prelude)
Kyrie VIII
Gospel Accl.
Offertory: SEP
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Communion: Adoro te Devote
O Salutaris Hostia (Benediction)

Wednesday Mass at St. Paul
Feb. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29. 8AM

Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Communion chant

Mass shift: Christmas eve trumps day liturgy

2011-12-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.osv.com/tabid/7621/itemid/8810/Mass-shift-Christmas-eve-trumps-day-liturgy.aspx

“The day was organized around the Mass,” he said. “Not the Mass fitting in wherever it was most convenient.”
Making time for Mass on Christmas Day, especially for families, would send a message to children about what’s most important at Christmas.
Plus, he said, going to Mass Christmas Eve, especially when the readings for midnight or Christmas Day Masses are used, cuts into what could be a sacred sense of anticipation. .."

Schola: January Calendar

2011-12-23T07:28:00.000-08:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
Jan. 7, 21

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Corde Natus ex Parentis (1/7)
Manducaverunt (1/21)
Alma Redemptoris Mater

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Jan. 14, 28

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Corde Natus ex Parentis (1/14)
Manducaverunt (1/28)
Alma Redemptoris Mater

Children's Schola

First Friday Mass at OLPH
Jan. 6, 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Puer Nobis Nascitur in English (prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Communion chant in Engliish
O Salutaris Hostia (Benediction)

Wednesday Mass at St. Paul
Jan. 4, 11, 18, 25, 8AM

Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Communion chant

Alma Redemptoris Mater

2011-11-28T09:17:00.000-08:00

The Spectacular Success of the New Missal Translation

2011-11-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/11/spectacular-success-of-new-missal.html
by Jeffrey A. Tucker

"As much time as I had spent reading the new translation of the Missal, looking over the differences with the old translation, even saying the new prayers aloud and writing extensively about them, nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced today. The experience was beyond anything I believed would come in my lifetime. I found myself nearly overcome with a kind of controlled glee from the beginning of the Mass until the end...."

On New Translation

2011-11-28T09:11:00.000-08:00

http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2011/11/jesus-makes-national-catholic-reporter.html

"....But this change in the English translation isn't just more faithful to the Latin text. It's what Jesus said, as reported in Scripture. Here's how His words are reported in Mark 14:23-25,

Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

And from Matthew 26:27-29,

Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, from now on I shall not drink this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father.”...

2011-11-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
Dec. 3, 17, 31

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Creator alme siderum (12/3)
Veni, Veni Emmanuel (12/17)
Alma Redemptoris Mater, Palestrina (12/31)
Alma Redemptoris Mater

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Dec. 10

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Creator Alme siderum
Alma Redemptoris Mater

Children's Schola

First Friday Mass at OLPH
Dec. 2, 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria (prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Veni, Veni Emmanuel
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Communion chant in Engliish
O Salutaris Hostia (Benediction)

Immaculate Conception at St. William of York
Missa Cantata, Dec. 8, 8 AM (warm-up at 7:30 AM)

Introit: Gaudens Gaudebo
Gradual: Benedicta es tu (women)
Alleluia:Tota pulchra es
Offertory: Ave Maria (women)
Offertory Motet: Alma Redemptoris Mater, Palestrina
Communion: Gloriosa
Communion Motet: Ave Maria, Ravanello (small group)
Alma Redemptoris Mater

Mass setting IX and Credo I

Schola: November Calendar

2011-10-29T15:59:00.000-07:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
Nov. 5, 19

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Lux Aeterna (11/5)
Panis Angelicus (11/19)
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Nov. 12, 26

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Lux Aeterna (11/12)
Panis Angelicus (11/26)
Salve Regina

Children's Schola

First Friday Mass at OLPH
Nov. 4, 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

In Paradisum (prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Ave Maria
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Jesu Rex Admirabilis (communion)
O Salutaris Hostia (Benediction)

Schola: October Calendar

2011-09-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
Oct.1, 15, 29

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Panis quem ego(10/1)
Jesu, Rex Admirabilis (10/15)
Panem de Caelo (10/29)
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Oct. 8, 22

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Jesu, Rex Admirabilis (10/8)
Panem de Caelo (10/22)
Salve Regina

Children's Schola

First Friday Mass at OLPH
Oct.7, 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Bless the Lord, O my soul(offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Adoremus in Aeternum(communion)
O Salutaris Hostia (Benediction)

Authentic Liturgy and Chant: Some Considerations

2011-09-17T14:21:00.000-07:00

...Pope Benedict XVI has introduced two notions into the liturgical discussion which make me think that the Ordinary Form of the Mass is not actually the point of departure for these discussions at all. The concept of the hermeneutic of continuity, which has been a theme of this pontificate, stresses the fundamental unity across both rites. Also the concept of liturgical pluralism and the equality of rites, introduced in SP, also stresses their fundamental unity. Therefore, any discussion about the liturgy and music of the Roman Rite must have as its point of departure the Roman Rite as a whole, Ordinary and Extraordinary, seen in a continnum insofar as possible. Even more than that, the point of departure is not the General Instruction of the Roman Missal of Paul VI, but the answers to the more basic questions about liturgy, music and the life of the Church, as well as the shared and sharable patrimony of the Roman Rite.

More here,
http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/09/authentic-liturgy-and-chant-some.html

Petition for Sacred Music during Madison’s Youth 2000 Retreat

2011-09-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

To Whom It May Concern:

As you might know, many have attended the Youth 2000 retreats since they began here in Madison in 2009. Thank you for all of the work that you have put into these retreats. But, as you may know, one of the frustrations that many have stems from the music used during the weekend. It seems quite clear that the church consistently asks us for something higher, something more reverent than rock music during the Holy Mass (rock music is being used in a more general sense, for the sake
of this discussion).
Of course, this is not a new problem. For example, in 1905, Pope Pius X covered nearly the same issue

(with added emphases):
“[2.] It must be holy, and therefore avoid everything that is secular, both in itself and in the way in which it is performed. It must really be an art, since in no other way can it have on the mind of those who hear it that effect which the Church desires in using in her liturgy the art of sound.
“But it must also be universal in this sense, namely, that although each country may use in its ecclesiastical music whatever special forms may belong to its own national style, these forms must be subject to the proper nature of sacred music, so that it may never produce a bad impression on the mind of any stranger who may hear it.”
—Tra Le Sollecitudini, 1905

Now, as recently as 2005, this has been recognized as a problem yet again, except this time around, the music in question is rock music, instead of opera and theater music. But the effect and consequences is still the same as in 1905: introducing secular-styled music distorts the liturgy.
[with emphases added]
“[61.] The faithful need to know the standard Gregorian chants, which have been composed to meet the needs of people of all times and places, in virtue of their simplicity, refinement and agility in form and rhythm. As a result, the songs and hymns presently in use need to be reconsidered.
[. . .]
“[62.] A few responses made particular mention of music and singing at Youth Masses. In this regard, it is important to avoid musical forms which, because of their profane use, are not conducive to prayer.”
—Synod on the Eucharist, 2005

In addition to this, our Holy Father, in his many moves to bring more dignity and reverence to his Masses, has raised Gregorian chant to its rightful pride of place at the Masses he celebrates, which are a model for the world—a model for us to follow. But this is not just happening during his Masses in the Vatican City. Recently, encouraged by our Holy Father, all of the Masses in English at World Youth Day (WYD) in 2011 in Madrid featured the chanted Latin propers and ordinary, and following the proper chants, some traditional hymns. Sacrosanctum Concilium, the
Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy repeatedly stressed the importance and pride of place of chant in the liturgy, as well as innumerable other documents. [emphases added]
“[116.] The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Article 30.”
—Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963

In his first post-synodal apostolic exhortation, the Holy Father adds [emphases added]:
“[42.] Finally, while respecting various styles and different and highly praiseworthy traditions, I [Benedict XVI] 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.”
—Sacramentum Caritatitis, 2007

All this seems to be reinforced even more by the change in language in the new English translation of the GIRM from song to chant in most places, but at the same time, still differentiating between a chant and a hymn. The church desires chant in the liturgy, because it is integral to the liturgy.
Even the founder of WYD, Blessed John Paul II, reiterated the need for sacred music in his 2003 chirograph on that very topic.

Regarding the propers of the Mass, the USCCB’s 2007 document Sing to the Lord, speaks quite highly
of the proper chants of the Mass.
“[117.] The proper antiphons from the liturgical books are to be esteemed and used especially because they are the very voice of God speaking to us in the Scriptures [. . .]”
—Sing to the Lord, 2007

Interestingly, the 1958 document, De Musica Sacra, makes a clear difference between religious music and liturgical music. Both are good, both can even be called sacred music, but both have distinctly different uses. [emphases added]

[5.] Gregorian chant, which is used in liturgical ceremonies, is the sacred music proper to the Roman Church; it is to be found in the liturgical books approved by the Holy See.
[. . .]
[9.] Hymns are songs which spontaneously arise from the religious impulses with which mankind has been endowed by its Creator. [...] Even such music can, at times, be admitted to liturgical ceremonies.
[. . .]
[10.] Religious music is any music which, either by the intention of the composer or by the subject or purpose of the composition, serves to arouse devotion, and religious sentiments. Such music "is an effective aid to religion". But since it was not intended for divine worship, and was composed in a free style, it is not to be used during liturgical ceremonies.
-De Musica Sacra, 1958

It other parts of the document, it states clearly that chant, polyphony, organ, and some other forms of music constitute liturgical music, and that there is also a separate genre of music called religious music, which is still important, but not appropriate for the liturgy. So called “Praise and Worship” music seems to fall under the categorization of religious music.

Based on the above points, and because the church has clearly stated on numerous occasions that Gregorian chant is “especially suited to the Roman Liturgy,” we, the undersigned, request the consideration of using, in Latin or English, chanted ordinaries and traditional Catholic hymns, or if at all possible, chanted ordinaries and propers at the Masses during the 2011 Youth 2000 retreat in Madison.

Signed,
[Signatures will be inserted here]

http://musicasacra.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=5530&page=1#Item_3

Schola; September calendar

2011-08-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
Sept.3, 17

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Hoc Corpus (9/3)
Panis quem ego(9/17)
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Sept.10, 24

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Hoc Corpus (9/10)
Panem quem ego (9/24)
Salve Regina

At St. William of York

Feast of St. Michael, the Archangel
Sept 29, Thursday, 7 AM (warm -up 6:45 AM)

Introit: Benedicite Dominum
Gradual: Benedicite Dominum
Alleluia: Sancte Michael
Offertory: Stetit Angelus
Motet after the Offertory: Jesu, Rex Adimirabilis

Communio: Benedicite Omnes Angeli
Hymn after the communio: Adoro te Devote

Recessional hymn: Salve Regina

Ordinaries: setting VIII, credo I

Children's Schola

First Friday Mass at OLPH
Sept. 2, 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ace Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Veni Creator (offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Adoro te Devote (communion)
O Salutaris Hostia (Benediction)

Index Of Forbidden Songs

2011-08-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

Index Of Forbidden Songs (Music Issue, Pt. I).
Well, here is the first installment. This is not an in depth analysis, but rather my own personal and cursory take on them. See below for the key-code for the reason for their banishment. If you want a clarification, feel free to ask for it in the combox.

Numbers 301-350:

302-Gather Us In: HH, DTD, DO ("Not in the dark of buildings confining, not in some heaven, light years away"? A little SF is a dangerous thing.)
303-What Is This Place: H ("What is this place, where we are meeting?" An icon of heaven, doofus.)
304-Gather The People: DS
306-Let Us Go To The Altar: DS
310-Table of Plenty: DS, DO (It is an ALTAR.)
315-We Gather Here To Worship: NAU (We, we, we....)
322-Song Of The Body Of Christ: HH, NAU (We come to tell HIS story.)
324-To Be Your Bread: HH, DO
325-Gift Of Finest Wheat: DTD (Nice song, but give it a rest. Also, can I have an article please?)
329-Bread of Life: H, NAU (No, Jesus is the Bread of Life.)
333-God's Holy Gifts: DS (Not bad for a DS song actually.)
340-Look Beyond: DTD
341-I Am The Bread Of Life: C, SIGV
345-I Am The Living Bread: HH, SIGV
349-Eat This Bread: SIGV

Sigh, this is going to take longer than I thought.

C=Castrated, DO= Dubious Orthodoxy, DS=Dan Schutte, DTD=Done To Death, H=Heretical, HH=Haugen&Haas, NAU=Not About Us, SIGV=Singing In God's Voice(i. e. we are not God)
Posted by Fr. Erik Richtsteig at 6:31 PM

http://orthometer.blogspot.com/2011/08/index-of-forbidden-songs-music-issue-pt.html

Sound is the by-product of Awe and Wonder

2011-07-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

Awe and wonder are the only true vehicles for music making. Great music, by its very composition, is infused with awe and wonder. But its sonic beauty will never be realized unless the choir sings through the door of awe and wonder. Arrival into and at the state of aesthetic fantasy, and ultimately a heightened state of aesthetic reality, should be one of the over-riding and compelling objectives of any warm-ups or rehearsal. Sound is the by product of awe and wonder.

James Jordan, from 'Evoking Sound'

Chant Notation: Its Advantage

2011-07-29T04:01:00.000-07:00

When an infant learns to walk, you can often see him kind of leering down at his feet, thinking, "Okay, now I need to move this foot right here, on to that spot on the ground right there." And then he does that, and then he pauses, and says, "Okay, now I need to move this other foot here, on to that other spot right there." And his mind is always on one foot at a time, and knowing exactly where it's going to be placed.

But when an adult walks, he doesn't even care where exactly his feet are going, only that both feet are somewhere under him, and that his weight is distributed over them, and that they are propelling his weight forward without toppling him. So his mind is actually conscious of much more about the relationship between his two feet and how they affect his movement, but he doesn't always know or even much care about which foot he moves or where exactly it lands.

Like learning to walk, modern notation is concerned with the real value of where you are pitchwise at any moment. "Right now I'm singing an A, and now a B-flat, and now a G, and now..." You lose sight of how any one note is actually related to the next. If you get all the pitches right, then the melody will be right.

But like walking, chant notation is ultimately most concerned with moving the phrase forward. It is defined in terms of making the melody. If modern notation is constantly saying, "and now, and now," then chant notation is always saying, "and next, and next." And next I'll be going up a fourth. And next I'll be going down a second. And next I'll sing to pitches right where I'm at."

I like the feeling of knowing that I'm shaping a phrase, not just singing a note. And that's why, even though people may be resistant to neumes, I think it's highly important that people accept that modern notation isn't in the cards for learning to chant. I suspect that if this aspect of chant notation is made clear to people, they'll actually be less resistant to it.

There is a certain strike against your pride in being well educated musically and suddenly finding yourself unknowledgeable about what you're trying to sing, but ultimately I, for one, have found it very rewarding. I just wish I could have seen the reward coming. I hope that people teaching others the neumes make it clear to them why chant notation is important and what they'll gain from it, and how to conceptualize why it works.

Seth G
http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/07/reaction-to-sep.html#IDComment177499311

Schola: August Calendar

2011-07-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

At St. William of York

Feast of St. Dominic
August 4, Thursday, 7 AM (warm -up 6:45 AM)

Introit: Os justi
Gradual: Justus ut palma florebit
Alleluia: Justus germinabit
Offertory: Veritas mea
Communio: Fidelis servus
Motet: O Bone Jesu
Recessional hymn: Salve Regina

Ordinaries: setting VIII, credo I

At OLPH

The Trasnfiguration of the Lord
August 6, Saturday, 8:15 AM

Introit (Entrance Proper from Graduale Romanum) : (schola)
My heart declared to you:
Your countenance have I sought:
I shall ever seek your countenance, O Lord:
do not turn your face from me.

Kyrie (363-A)

Gloria (364)

Responsorial Psalm:
The Lord is king, the Most High over all the earth

Gospel Acclamation:
This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,
listen to him.

Sanctus (370-A)

Mysterium Fidei (371-A)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias

(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess
Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (375-A)

Communio (Communion Proper from Graduale Romanum): (schola)
Tell no one about the vision you have seen
until the Son of Mas has risen from the dead.

Communion Motet: O Bone Jesu
O good Jesus, have mercy upon us,
for thou hast created us.
Thou hast redeemed us by thy most precious blood

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (894)

Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
August 20

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Aima Christi
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church
Saturday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
August 13, 27

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Anioma Christi
Salve Regina

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
Twenty-first Sunday Ordinary Time
August 21, 10:30 AM (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance Proper) : (schola)
Listen, Lord, and answer me. Save your servant who trusts you.
I call to you all day long.
have mercy on me, O Lord.

Kyrie (857)

Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
Lord, your love is eternal;
do not forsake the work of you hands.

Gospel Acclamation:

Offertory Proper: (schola)
He put a new song into my mouth,
praise of our God.

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)
(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess
Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper: (schola)
Lord, the earth is filled with your gift from heaven;
man grows bread fron earth, and wine to cheer his heart

Communion Hymn: Be Thou My Vision (391)

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (708)

Norwalk student singing group bound for Madrid

2011-07-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

While many kids these days are listening to Justin Bieber on their iPods, there is one group of Fairfield County youth who are gearing up to sing Gregorian chant at the 2011World Youth Day in Madrid this August, the gathering of the world’s Catholic youth, for prayer, adoration, catechism, and entertainment with Pope Benedict XVI.

This unique group of young adults, ages 9 to 18 from St. Mary Parish in Norwalk, Connecticut, has been singing together for nearly three years as the St. Mary’s Student Schola , formed by organist and choirmaster David J. Hughes. A schola differs from a church choir, in that they are dedicated to the teaching and practice of chant, the music Pope Benedict calls the “supreme model of sacred music.”

Chant is a form of music that is making a comeback in the Catholic Church. With Pope Benedict’s recent lifting of restrictions in the celebration of the 1962 Traditional Latin Mass, churches in Connecticut , and nationwide have begun to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, including the music that is specific to it, Gregorian chant, with its unmatched purity and timeless beauty. While chant is making a slow turn toward mainstream, David Hughes admits it is not something that the youth at World Youth Day may readily recognize. Then why sing it?

Hughes believes, as many popes including John Paul II and Benedict XVI have written, that chant, unlike any other genre, aids in the spiritual formation of all Catholics. “Chant is prayer taking shape in the form of song,” he says. “Chant is not a sonic overlay to prayer, but rather is prayer itself.” Hughes is certain it will reach the youth at World Youth Day, and lead them deeper into praying the Mass. "I have every confidence that the intrinsic prayerfulness of chant… will be experienced by the youth that hear these children sing."

Continue reading on Examiner.com Norwalk student singing group bound for Madrid - Hartford Catholic | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/catholic-in-hartford/norwalk-student-singing-group-bound-for-madrid#ixzz1SlTcYL2w

“If I kneel before God I can stand before any man.”

2011-07-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

At one level “human respect” seems a good thing. After all we ought to respect, honor and appreciate one another. What then is meant by the “sin of human respect?”

Here

Schola: July Calendar

2011-06-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
July 2, 16, 30

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Qui Manducat (7/2)
Introibo ad Altare (7/16)
Adoro te Devote (7/30)
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church
Saturday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
July 9, 23

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Introibo ad Altare
Salve Regina

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 17, 10:30 AM (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance Proper) : (schola)
God himself is my help. The Lord upholds my life.
I will offer you a willing sacrifice; I will praise your name,
O Lord, for its goodness.

Kyrie (857)

Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
Lord, you are good and forgiving.

Gospel Acclamation:
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth;
you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom.

Offertory Proper: (schola)
Sweeter are they than honey, than honey from the comb.
In them your servant finds instruction.

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)
(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess
Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper: (schola)
The Lord keeps in our minds the wonderful things he has done.
He is compassion and love; he always provides for his faithful.

Communion Hymn: In His Temple Now Behold HIm (609)

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (708)

Dear P&WPerson

2011-06-06T17:58:00.000-07:00

5 days ago @ Chant Cafe - "We don't know why wha... · 0 replies · +2 points

Dear P&WPerson - I became a Christian back in the '70s, as the "Jesus Movement" was picking up serious speed (Remember Explo '72? or are you too young?). We used to sit around in the basement of the Methodist Church where I grew up, singing to guitar music. Later, when the coffeehouse movement got going, I was involved. That venue is actually the birthplace of what you think of as praise and worship music.

Its purpose was two-fold - one to entertain (right there you've got a problem from a Catholic Liturgy point of view) and the other to emotionally manipulate (oh, yeah also a serious issue).

Because it had to entertain, it had to scud the surface to reach the greatest number of people. Coffeehouse geeks generally don't want to exert enough energy to grasp Manly Hopkins' translation of an Aquinas hymn, ya know what I mean? That means a lot of repetition of style, pattern, images, etc. And that is what "banal" means. Go back and look at the old Maranatha! albums/songs - I just had to play Karen Lafferty's "Seek Ye First" for Mass a week or so ago, so they're still floating around. Maranatha! was the #1 source of all that became known as Praise & Worship music.

Now - P&W is RELIGIOUS music, meaning it has religious themes and content... but it is not SACRED music. Its purpose is to entertain, as I said above, while sacred music has far more complex purposes: to turn the mind toward God, to set in the mind that God is Other, and not "our buddy Jesus," to TEACH us how properly to worship (attribute Worth), and in many ways to catechize.

As religious music, it is acceptable for personal devotions. Heck, I still pull out the old Second Chapter of Acts stuff from time to time, even now. But I wouldn't dream of trying to pull even "Easter Song" out for the Liturgy. Religious music is inadequate for sacred Liturgy - which has a universal and eternal quality and character.

Hope that makes sense.
http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/06/we-dont-know-why-what-we-are-doing-is.html#idc-container

A Case for Life-Teen Music: Your Response?

2011-05-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

Paul Weber
"...but he problem with his thinking is that all religious experience must occur within the context of the Mass. This, as we all know, is untrue. Pius XII gave the distinction between Sacred-liturgical and Religious-recreational music in his encyclical of 1955, and both are good. It's a matter of using the right tool for the right job. Music destined for the Sacred Rites must be appropriate for them by being derived from them, which is how the music achieves holiness and universality (artfulness is another matter). The nature of art destined for the universal Sacred Rites cannot have as its point of reference the individual. This is the problem with the following justification of Life Teen music's supposed liturgically-appropriate holiness:
"Which means the musicians who are going to be interpreting this composition have to have holiness as the center of their life. The people receiving the music have to have a passion to be holy. Sacred music rises or falls in its sacred dignity on whether or not holiness is at the center. Let it be so, because if you start with a holy seed, you’ll get holy fruit. And as music serves the worship, so will it serve holiness if it starts in holiness and is brought by holiness."
It isn't up to the composer, the performer or the individuals of a congregation to determine whether they feel holiness. For that matter, holiness is hardly a matter of objective feeling (that's piety). Holiness is a quality conferred upon the liturgy by God, and through the liturgy to Sacred Art by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through Sacred Tradition. What's wrong with using Life Teen music for extra-liturgical prayer (Holy Hours, festivals of praise, retreats, etc.) and maintaining an elevated form of music and art appropriate for a supremely elevated task: the Sacred Liturgy. Religious music, as Pius XII teaches, is uniquely powerful in moments of catechesis and evangelization among the young and within families, but this does not displace the singular expression required for the Mass. Use the right tool for the right job.

http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/05/case-for-life-teen-music-your-response.html#idc-container

Do Women Have a Role in the Liturgy and in the Church?

2011-05-29T03:58:00.001-07:00

Posted by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

"...There are thus two different sacred powers associated with two different sacraments which were instituted by Christ for the salvation of souls. But they both are intimately related to the sacrificial offering and priesthood of Christ, although in ways irreducible one to the other. These two distinct powers mark the difference between the ministerial priesthood of Christ the Head conferred by Ordination and the common priesthood of the members of Christ’s Body conferred by Baptism. Just as Christ’s Body and Head are distinct, but cannot live one without the other, so too the priesthood and the laity are distinct and cannot live one without the other.

Note that in none of this discussion has the difference between the two types of priesthood been described in terms of function. The difference is not functional, but sacramental. Furthermore the two are not parallel to each other as adversaries, but mutually complementary to such a degree as to be impossible one without the other. Thus we understand why Blessed John Henry Newman, when asked what he thought of the laity, responded, “We’d look foolish without them!” Just as a head would look foolish without a body.

If the Mass is the sacramental re-presentation of the self-offering of Jesus Christ to the Father, the sacramental distinction between ministerial and common priesthood is logical. But once we begin to see the Mass as a sacrifice of praise given by a community to God, it is hard not to transform our idea of the priesthood from a sacramental one to a functional one. Once the functional trumps the sacramental, the ministerial priest becomes one elected among the assembly of the faithful who presides over them by gathering them together and organizing their common prayer. The common priest is then one who participates in any way in such a common prayer. Then the question arises: if the priesthood (common or ministerial) is merely a question of function, Who decides who fulfills those functions?..."

http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/05/do-women-have-role-in-liturgy-and-in.html

A Great New CD by the St. Gregory's Academy

2011-05-29T03:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.digstation.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?albumID=ALB000077535

Simple English Propers

2011-05-29T03:49:00.000-07:00

Ricardo Mutti on Church Music

2011-05-29T03:40:00.000-07:00

Posted by Jeffrey A. Tucker

From Catholic Culture:

The music director of the Chicago Symphony has thrown his support behind the drive by Pope Benedict XVI to revive the tradition of sacred music.

''The Pope is right when he says it is necessary to bring our great musical heritage back into churches,'' said Ricardo Muti. The Italian conductor said that the revival in church music “cannot happen outside the great traditional path of the past, of Gregorian chants and sacred polyphonic choral music.”

Muti said that he has no objection to the composition of new sacred music, but resents the use of pop tunes. “When I go to church and I hear four strums of a guitar or choruses of senseless, insipid words, I think it's an insult,” he said. Offering mediocre music, when the Church boasts a priceless treasury of compositions, shows “a lack of respect for people’s intelligence,” he said.

Schola June Calendar

2011-05-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
June 4

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Cantate Domino
Regina Caeli

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
June 11, 25

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Veni Creator Spiritus (11)
Qui Manducat (25)
Salve Regina

Ascension Thursday at St. William of York

Missa Cantata (Traditional Mass)
June 2nd, 7AM (warm-up at 6:45AM)

Introit: Viri Galilaei

Alleluia I: Ascendit Deus
Alleluia II: Dominus Sina

Offertory:Ascendit Deus

Communio;Psallite Domino

Regina Caeli

(Ordinary parts, Mass setting I, Credo I)

Children's Schola

At OLPH
First Friday Mass, June 3, 8:15 AM (warm up at 7:45 AM)

Regina Caeli(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Ametur(offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Gustate et Videte(communion)
O Salutaris Hostia (Benediction)

At St. Paul
Wednesday June 1, 8 AM (warm-up at 7:45)

Veni Creator Spritus (prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Agnus Dei XVIII
Gustate et Videte(communion)
Regina Caeli

Why the Catholic Church needs to be distinctly Catholic

2011-05-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

"Because, for one reason, there are people out there making powerful, though flawed, arguments like the ones in the video below. The video reminds viewers that you “don’t need a church to GIVE” and encourages people to “give DIRECTLY to a cause dear to your heart, essential to your community and worthy of your support.” Causes that don’t “manipulate the penitence of their disciples.” The implication in the video is that religion is just an unnecessary type of middleman that gets unfair tax breaks and skims the top off of charitable giving for its own enrichment...."

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/why-the-catholic-church-needs-to-be-distinctly-catholic?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When:13:32:14Z

Traditional Mass, Universae Ecclesiae, New Translation, Homeschoool

2011-05-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday, I attended two Traditional Masses.(7AM and 11 AM). My boys were doing double duties as altar boys.

The 7 AM Mass has been growing since the priest started as his private Mass, and now we had a first communion last week. The boy and the family decided to it at the Traditional Mass. (The boy is in my children's schola, and he commented that the music he got a CD for the communion at the Novus Ordo were not very inspiring to him.:-) Since he is a homeschooling boy there were many homeschooling families at the Mass. Many of them had never attended the Traditional Mass before. They were so impressed by the beauty of the Mass that they decided to invite the priest this week to the homeschooling group and had the Traditional Mass. We had to move chairs and the table around in the sanctuary, and give a brief instruction to the families and the children before the Mass. It was like a miracle! The Mass was celebrated beautifully, and the children were following the Mass amazingly well. (It took a couple of years for me.) It was a low Mass, and the congregation did the dialogues and Ordinary parts from 'the red book'. The group wants to continue to have the Traditional Mass at least once a month when they meet together, but there are only two priests we know available to do so. (one has to drive about 40 minutes.) And the other priest is a pastor for two parishes, extremely busy. I really wish there are more priests who can celebrate the Traditional Mass. (there is another homeschooling group I teach chants also wants to have Traditional Mass, but don't have a priest who knows how to do it.)
I found out in the class on the new translation I attended yesterday that many people, even devout Catholics, really don't have much knowledge on liturgy, and they were so happy now that they have a class on liturgy and the prayers. People were asking many questions about the liturgy and made lots of positive comments, such as the Mass is not about me, faith isn't based on feelings, appreciate the riches and reverence in the new translation and not so casual dialogues in the Mass especially in 'And with your Spirit." ... My pastor who is very careful with introducing Latin in Mass even repeated a few times that they all have been in Latin already, and very enthusiastic about the richness of the forthcoming translation, and people started to feel the importance of the tradition and the root of our faith. Because of the misunderstanding of Vatican II and the absence of the Tradition, the tradition which was almost wiped out in celebrating Novus Ordo in many parishes, especially in this area, many Catholics are so confused and at loss in terms of celebrating the Mass. Mostly we just did what others did during Mass without thinking. The experience and the knowledge of Traditional Mass can be truly valuable for many Catholics to understand and appreciate the Mass and deepen their faith through it.

Today, may 13th, the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae (UE) has been released.

"The will of the Pope in the Motu Proprio included that people who don’t know the older form actually come to be exposed to it. The older, Extraordinary Form is a gift for all, not just those who know about it. For all. Every Catholic of the Latin Church – and also in the whole of the Catholic Church – has the Extraordinary Form as part of their heritage. It belongs to all of us...

The Instruction, in line with the Motu Proprio, does not regard only those who desire to continue to celebrate the faith in the same way by which the Church substantially did for centuries; the Pope wanted to help all Catholics to live the truth of the liturgy in order that, by knowing and participating in the old Roman form of celebration, they might grasp that the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium wanted to reform the liturgy in continuity with tradition."

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/05/must-read-msgr-pozzos-comments-on-the-instruction-universae-ecclesiae-in-losservatore-romano/

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/05/wdtirs-universae-ecclesiae-21-drilling-into-the-latin-and-english-training-of-priests-and-seminaries/

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/05/13/vatican-tells-bishops-give-priests-the-option-of-learning-extraordinary-form/

"A new Vatican instruction calls on local bishops and pastors to respond generously to Catholics who seek celebration of the Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal.

The instruction, issued today, said pastors should approve such Masses for groups of faithful, even when such groups are small or are formed of people from different parishes or dioceses. These faithful cannot, however, contest the validity of the modern Mass or the authority of the Pope.

“In deciding individual cases, the pastor or the rector, or the priest responsible for a Church, is to be guided by his own prudence, motivated by pastoral zeal and a spirit of generous welcome,” it said.

The instruction said that, depending on pastoral needs, bishops should make sure seminarians are trained in celebrating the Extraordinary Form of the Mass..."

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/new-guidelines-for-tridentine-mass-10-key-facts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+catholicnewsagency%2Fdailynews+%28CNA+Daily+News%29

"Vatican City, May 13, 2011 / 10:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Local dioceses should give a “generous welcome” to any laity who wish to attend Mass in the “extraordinary form” and to priests who wish to say it..."

We live in a very exciting time in the history of the church. I only wish we can help our children to cherish the Holy Mass as the center of their life by our examples and the teachings of authentic Catholic faith. The church needs lots of saints. The Mass is the 'font' of our faith, and the holiness truly flows from the Mass where we experience God and His true love and Holiness. This is the most extra ordinary event in our daily life. If the Mass is celebrated in a casual manner with casual music, casual dialogue, casual manner..., how the children can take the Mass seriously? We need to learn to celebrate the Mass properly, so we can help ourselves and children truly experience God and deepen our faith through the Mass.

Happy to hold hands, but no kneeling?

2011-04-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

I had to drive a distance this morning to a Traditional Mass to hear Gregorian Propers and be 're-connected' to Catholic tradition after I attended the Vigil Mass at a local parish where the liturgy had almost zero authentic liturgical music, broadway style singing, commercial piano tunes, plus girls in the sanctuary in cassocks.... Some people are lucky to have the liturgy that is connected to Catholic tradition and faith.. but others sadly don't. In the absence of the Church's tradition, and the celebration of the liturgy that tries to connect to God directly without the connection to 2000 years of the Church, I couldn't experience and share the Catholic faith that I cherish and converted for.

They are happy to join hands during 'Our Father,' but no one remembers to kneel when we receive our Lord anymore. No matter the explanations there are, to my common sense, it doesn't make much sense.(the historical explanation of receiving communion in standing at some time or in some other rites are,to me, taken out of contexts) It would be nice if priests encourage people to show gestures of humility to our Lord first, then we can truly feel united, whether we hold hands with each other or not. I don't think those social gestures, holding hands, shaking hands, hugging and kissing during the sign of peace, don't mean much, if we don't show the utmost humility to our Lord when we receive HIm.

I just thank God, we still have Traditional Mass where I can experience God and learn His true humility and charity. (I don't think I was able to get up 5AM all by myself without being tired at all after the late night. God is good. He truly provides us what we need.)

Vatican Redefines Divine Mercy Sunday

2011-04-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/vatican-redefines-divine-mercy-sunday/

Schola: May Calendar

2011-04-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
May 7, 21

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ego Sum
Regina Caeli

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
May 14, 28

Kyrie XI
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ego Sum
Regina Caeli

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
Fourth Sunday of Easter May 15, 10:30 AM (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance Proper) : schola
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord;
by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, alleuia

Kyrie (857)

Responsorial Psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd;
there is nothing I shall want

Gospel Acclamation:
I am the good shepherd, says the Lord;
I know my sheep, and mine know me.

Offertory Proper (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)
(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess
Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper: (schola)
The Good Sheperd is risen! who laid down his life for his sheep,
who died oft his flock, he is risen, alleluia

Communion Hymn: I know that my Redeemer lives (609)

Recessional Hymn: Regina Caeli (172)

Children's Schola
(classes at St. Paul on Monday & at St. Michael's Academy on Thursday)

At OLPH
First Friday Mass, May 6. 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Regina Caeli(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Ametur(offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Star Above the Ocean (communion)
O Salutaris Hostia (Benediction)

At St. Alphonsus
2nd Thursday Mass, May 12, 11 AM (warm up at 10:30 AM)

Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Ametur(offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Star Above the Ocean (communion)
Regina Caeli

No Eulogies During Funeral Mass

2011-03-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/03/bp-morlino-affirms-prohibition-of-eulogies-as-night-follows-day-liberals-whine/

[The "recent" mandate was already made in 2000, GIRM 382: "At the Funeral Mass there should, as a rule, be a short homily, but never a eulogy of any kind."]

Immutemur Habitu

2011-03-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDuR1Xrr0zM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H79MXM0xas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR_CxUPcma8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTZTfyVPAcU&playnext=1&list=PL8D50C82BE135D726

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7zzRFvUvSU

Colloquium XX

2011-03-24T18:19:00.001-07:00

Sacred Music Colloquium (CMAA) from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

Schola: April Calendar

2011-03-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
April 2, 16, 30

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Parce Domine
Pascha Notsrum (April 30)
Ave Regina Caelorum
Regina Caeli (April 30)

Holy Hour for Vocations and Benediction
St. Benedict April 9, 5 PM

1. Anima Christi (Children; during Preparation of the Holy Hour)

2. O Salutaris Hostia (everyone)

Prayer

3. Adoro te devote (children and men)
4. O Panis Dulcissime (children)
5. Ave verum Corpus (women and children)
6. Jesu Dulcis Memoria (Adults)

Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 3:8 – 10

7. Veni Creator Spiritus (children)
8. Ubi caritas (adults & children)
9. Adoramus te Christe (Adults)

Prayer for Vocations

10. Salve Regina (Solemn tone, women)
11. Ave Regina caelorum (Solemn tone, men)

Scripture Reading: Matthew 4:18 - 22

12. Ave Maria (Mode VI, children)
13. Ave Maria (Mode I, children)
14. Immutemur Habitu (adult)

Benediction

15. Tantum Ergo (everyone)

Priest: Panem de caelo praestitisti eis
Response (all): Omne delectamentum in se habentem

Prayer (priest)

Divine Praises (chanted by cantor/everyone.
Music and words are at the end of this packet.)

Final chant (schola)

16. Christus vincit

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
April 9

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Parce Domine
Ave Regina Caelorum

At Resurrection Church
Good Friday
April 22, 7:30 PM (warm-up at 7PM)

Ecce Lignum
Vexilla Regis
Reproaches
Adoramus te Christe

Children's Schola
(classes at St. Paul on Monday & at St. Michael's Academy on Thursday)

At OLPH
First Friday Mass, April 1
8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Attende Domine(offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
O Panis Dulcissime

At St. Alphonsus
2nd Thursday Mass,
April 14 11AM (warm up at 10:30 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Attende Domine (offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
O Panis Dulcissime(communion)
Salve Regina

Traditional Mass in Our Area; how it started and kept

2011-03-15T07:50:00.001-07:00

I thought I should write about the Thursday Traditional Mass that has been offered now for 2 years before I forget and take it for granted.

One of the young priest started Traditional Mass on Thursdays in Glen Burnie as his private Mass a couple of years ago and was able to invite people by words of mouths. One of the priest I have known told me about it, and I started to attend it with my homeschoooled boys. I thought it would be wonderful for my boys to experience the Traditional Mass, The Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, since they are also learning about it at home. It is pretty early, 7AM and we have to get up by 6 and just go, but we kept going. When this priest became the pastor of St. Agnes, he continued this Mass in the small chapel in the new church in Catonsville. It was very small, and he was quite busy, but one of his friend priest who specialized in liturgy and studied in Rome came to rescue. He made this Thursday Mass regular, and we ddidn't have to skip weeks any more. The amazing thing is that my boys picked up a prayer card at the Glen burnie church for who was ordained a couple of years ago, and they prayed for him for a year in the 'year of priests' without knowing who he was. After the year, they still kept the prayer card near their beds, and finally they got to meet him.
This is the priest who came to help with the Thursday Traditional Mass. Now my boys are being trained to serve, and celebrating the Mass with him. What a joy and miracle for us.

The main server is a convert of 3 years. He said he went to a very anti-Catholic unversity, but while he was getting a Master's degree in history, he found out that Catholic church is the true church and converted. Now he learned all the Latin prayers and serving the Traditional Mass, and he is quite busy with young people introducing the beauty of The Traditional Mass. One of his friends who was not so thrilled to go to Mass which is only in Latin at the beginning is now joined FFSP seminary.

We also had a beautiful Missa Cantata for Epiphany in a small chapel this year. As the number of attendees grew, the priest was able to move us to a bigger church which still had a high altar. Now we have a big church and can invite more people. On the first day, we had to move the altar table that is used for Novous Ordo on Sundays, but still altar severs couldn't use steps to the high altar, because a big wooden plank has convered the steps. We thought it was bolted, but found out that we could actually remove it. And voila! there were steps. My boys and the main server, Matt cleaned out all the dust, and now they can actually use the steps and have space to receive communion. The high altar and the steps probably have not been used for 40 years(pretty sad). But it is cleaned and dusted now. It seems to me that the glory and the beauty of this church has returned. We still have to put everything back after the Mass, but we are quite happy that we can still have this beautiful Traditional Mass in this beautiful church. After a few generations, will people find out how we kept this traditional Mass? I do surely hope so, and I hope they treasure this Traditional Mass as we did.
Deo Gratias.

Cardinals: liturgical abuse weakens the faith

2011-03-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/03/03/cardinal-bad-masses-weaken-the-faith/

By Cindy Wooden on Thursday, 3 March 2011
Cardinals: liturgical abuse weakens the faith

A weakening of faith in God, a rise in selfishness and a drop in the number of people going to Mass can be traced to liturgical abuse or Masses that are not reverent, two Vatican cardinals and a consultant have said.

US Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the Vatican’s supreme court, said: “If we err by thinking we are the centre of the liturgy, the Mass will lead to a loss of faith.”

Cardinal Burke and Spanish Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, spoke yesterday at a book launch in Rome.

The book, published only in Italian, was written by Fr Nicola Bux, who serves as a consultant to the congregations for the doctrine of the faith and for saints’ causes and to the office in charge of papal liturgies.

The English translation of Fr Bux’s book title would be, How to Go to Mass and Not Lose Your Faith.

Cardinal Burke told those gathered for the book presentation that he agreed with Fr Bux that “liturgical abuses lead to serious damage to the faith of Catholics”.

Unfortunately, he said, too many priests and bishops treat violations of liturgical norms as something that is unimportant when, in fact, they are “serious abuses”.

Cardinal Cañizares said that while the book’s title is provocative, it demonstrates a belief he shares. “Participating in the Eucharist can make us weaken or lose our faith if we do not enter into it properly,” and if the liturgy is not celebrated according to the Church’s norms, he said.

“This is true whether one is speaking of the Ordinary or Extraordinary form of the one Roman rite,” the cardinal said.

Cardinal Cañizares said that at a time when so many people are living as if God did not exist, they need a true Eucharistic celebration to remind them that only God is to be adored and that true meaning in human life comes only from the fact that Jesus gave his life to save the world.

Fr Bux said that too many modern Catholics think the Mass is something that the priest and the congregation do together when, in fact, it is something that Jesus does.

“If you go to a Mass in one place and then go to Mass in another, you will not find the same Mass. This means that it is not the Mass of the Catholic Church, which people have a right to, but it is just the Mass of this parish or that priest,” he said.

Schola Calendar: March

2011-02-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

Memorial Mass for Anna Agnello at OLPH
March 7 (Monday) at 10 AM (warm-up at 9:15AM)

Introit : Requiem Aeternam

Kyrie XI

Responsorial Psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

Gospel Acclamation:
Come, you who are blessed by my Father, says the Lord;
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

Offertory: Ave Maria

Sanctus

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias

(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei

Communio: Lux Aeterna

Recessional : In Paradisum and Chorus Angelorum

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
March 5, 19

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Gustate et Videte (March 5)
Joseph fili David
Ave Regina Caelorum

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
March 12, 26

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Attende Domine
Ave Regina Caelorum

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
Second Sunday of Lent
March 20, 10:30 AM (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance Proper) : schola
My heart has prompted me to seek your face;
I seek it, Lord; do not hide from me

Kyrie (857)

Responsorial Psalm:
Lord, let your mercy be on us,
as we place your trust in you.

Gospel Acclamation:
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,
King of endless glory!

Offertory Proper (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias

(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper: (schola)
This is my Son, my beloved,
in whom is all my delight: listen to him.

Communion Hymn: Lord, Throughout These Forty Days (136)

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (708)

Children's Schola
(classes at St. Paul on Monday & at St. Michael's Academy on Thursday)

At OLPH
First Friday Mass, March 4
8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Veni Creator Spiritus (offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Adoro Te Devote

At St. Alphonsus
2nd Thursday Mass, March 10
11 AM (warm up at 10:30 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Attende Domine (offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Adoro Te Devote (communion)
Salve Regina

Children's schola class: Blessings

2011-02-19T12:55:00.000-08:00

Hi, everyone,

I just wanted share what we've been doing in our chant class.
Last few weeks have been especially rewarding for me to see what they've learned in the class.

Some of the highlights;
My youngest student who joined the class this year with a special permission :-), Faith (61/2 years old) on Monday class sang Ave Maria perfectly from memory and most beautifully with everything I taught for the proper singing, good singing posture, deep breathing, creating space inside the mouth and beautiful pure vowels. (It was so beautiful, I had to blink my eyes quickly to stop tears.)

Anna N. on Thursday class who used to be one of my youngest until last year , memorized Veni Creator and lead the class in singing it.

Peter, who think singing chant is actually fun and always full of energy, calmly explained the different bows on Jesus name and Holy Trinity, especially when we sing chants.

The high school students, like Emma (Monday) and Madeline (Thursday) are excellent in explaining the meaning of the chant.

Gregorian Hymns, such as Adoro te Devote by St. Thomas Aquinas, are truly uplifting. They are of course more than 'safe hymns' to sing because they are accepted by the Church and the tradition. As you might have noticed there are many modern hymns with questionable texts and musical styles to be used in Holy Mass and have not gone through the test of the time. Music can be a powerful tool, and we need to be careful about 'what and how' we sing.

We started to read notes ("reading notes' in music means be able to sing the notes ) in solfege from the music in the chant book and compare modern notation and chant notation. They are catching up very quickly, and I am very pleased with their progress.

I won't go though the progress of each student here, but all the children in the class are truly working hard, and I feel very blessed.

Thank you so much for all your support.

Mia

The Gather Hymnal Redux

2011-02-18T09:16:00.000-08:00

Sorry for this.

Confessions of a Former Contemporary Music Minister

2011-02-17T14:10:00.001-08:00

http://catholicphoenix.com/2011/02/17/confessions-of-a-former-contemporary-music-minister/

There is a lot of potential division in our Church today, and predominantly over liturgical norms in Divine Worship. No one ever said that re-uniting is an easy act. It’s messy business! Consequently, expressing thoughts on this matter can be messy, too. A recent “Catholic Answers Live” interview with Francis Cardinal Arinze, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, is the source of my inspiration to tackle this topic now.

Program host Patrick Coffin posed:

There is a sad irony here, Your Eminence, in which people who are attached to the Traditional Latin Mass often get into fractious arguments with people who prefer the Novus Ordo, so it’s almost like the mass itself, in a sense, is a source of division. Is there a way for it to bring all the members of the Body of Christ together, and does the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum signal a kind of turn toward the future of greater reverence and greater unity?

Cardinal Arinze answered:

Yes, the Pope’s document is a great help to get all of us better together. We should accept and recognize that when we say “Latin Mass” it can be the traditional way of saying (it) up to Vatican II. It can also be the way of celebrating the mass now in the last 40 years. The way we say mass now can all be done in Latin today so that if perhaps some use the term Tridentine Mass, even though the term is not so exact, because that mass had that form even before the Council of Trent. So Pope Benedict has given it the two terms, the Extraordinary and Ordinary form of the Latin Rite. Both are of the Latin Rite. And the Holy Father, by giving out that document (i.e. Summorum Pontificum), wants to give people freedom. If people find their spirituality better nourished by the traditional celebration of the form that is what we call now Extraordinary, very good, let them not be denied that. If people find themselves nourished by the present way of celebrating mass, what some call Novus Ordo, which the Holy Father calls Ordinary Form, so be it. The main thing is to follow what Holy Mother Church has laid down. Indeed, if every priest who celebrated the mass according to Novus Ordo were to follow the books exactly, add nothing, subtract nothing, not project yourself, celebrate in Latin sometimes, you will find that most of that tension would be gone.

Revised Roman Missal: Understanding the reasons for the changes

2011-02-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

“We are beggars before God,” said Father Stravinskas. “We are not his equals. He’s not our buddy. He is our Creator, and as his creatures we owe him adoration. We haven’t come to Mass to give orders, but to receive orders. The current texts have blocked that distinction.”

All this matters, of course, because in the journey to holiness, humility is a must.

http://www.osv.com/tabid/7621/itemid/7529/Revised-Roman-Missal-Understanding-the-reasons-fo.aspx

Catholic Identity and the New Translation

2011-01-28T08:02:00.000-08:00

Those who have been reading for the last couple months will be familiar with my “New Translation Monday” column. Well, it seems that this week is turning into “New Translation Week.” The last four posts have dealt directly with the upcoming changes to the Roman Missal, and this will make five.
It is well known now that the entire Missal is available at Wikispooks. Of course, the Ordinary has been available for some time, but there have been rumors, versions, and rumors of versions about what the Proper texts will look like in the end. It seems that we now know. (Thought I have to admit, in this day and age of the internet, it would not at all surprise me to find out that this is not the “final final” text, and that last minute changes will be made before it is sent off to the publisher ... I will, however, give the reports the benefit of the doubt for now, reports that claim this is the version that has been sent to the publishers. It certainly appears to be.)
Being the geek that I am, I couldn’t help be download all the files and begin looking through several of the Collects. Merely because of its place in the liturgical year, and therefore in the Missal itself, I began looking through the Advent Collects. (As a side note, in the new translation they are actually referred to as “Collects” rather than “Opening Prayers.” In previous posts on why vocabulary matters I went into why the term “Opening Prayer” is not appropriate. In short, the prayer is a “closing” of the Introductory Rites; it “collects” the this portion of the Mass into a single prayer. Similar occurrences are found at other points during the Mass.)
As I glanced at the Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, I nearly fell off my chair. Before giving you the new text, let’s take a gander at what we heard this past year:

Lord,
fill our hearts with your love,
and as you revealed to us by an angel
the coming of your Son as man,
so lead us through his suffering and death
to the glory of his resurrection,
for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Now, we could go through the Latin and point out the deficiencies in this translation, but there is something larger at stake here. To see it, let’s look at the Latin, but more importantly the new translation. The Latin text reads,

Gratiam tuam, quaesumus Domine,
mentibus nostris infunde,
ut qui, Angelo nuntiante,
Christi Filii tui incarnationem cognovimus,
per passionem eius et crucem
ad resurrectionis gloriam perducamur.

Some people may already see the connection I am hinting at. For the rest of us, myself included, reading the new translation brought the whole thing to light:

Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord,
your grace into our hearts,
that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son
was made known by the message of an Angel,
may by his Passion and Cross
be brought to the glory of his Resurrection.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

The Angelus (1857–59) by Jean-François Millet
The above is the familiar prayer from the close of the Angelus. The Angelus is the prayer of the Incarnation that has been recited by Catholics throughout the centuries three times daily: 6:00 am, noon, and 6:00 pm. The prayer itself goes back at least 700 years, but probably even to the eleventh century or earlier. In times past, it was one of the most familiar and celebrated prayers in our Catholic heritage, and as such it provided a distinctive mark of Catholic identity. A priest friend of mine has often recalled the story of his family’s restaurant/bar on the east side of Columbus. Growing up, every day when the noontime bells rang out from the Catholic Church across the street, everyone in the bar dropped what they were doing and said the Angelus. Even those who were not Catholic sat in silence during the recitation of the prayer because they know if they didn’t, they would not be served. This story is an illustration of Catholic identity. If the same bells were to ring today, how many Catholics would know why, let alone be able to rattle off the words to the Angelus?
Having the Collect from the last Sunday of Advent taken from this timeless prayer is important for establishing the link between the ritual liturgy and the lived liturgy. In the spirit of lex orandi, lex credendi, if congregations were to hear the Angelus Collect in the context of Mass, those familiar with it would be immediately placed in the presence of the three-times-daily ritual. Conversely, if the Collect were to be used, more people would become familiar with the Angelus prayer itself.
Unfortunately, until now, the prayer has been disguised beneath a mistranslation. I am someone who is very familiar with the Angelus, yet I never realized that the Advent Collect was one and the same. Of course, there are others who have. It only took a quick Google search to turn up and article from Fr. Zuhlsdorf written in 2004 (and reprinted in 2006) on precisely this issue.
I am not one to debate these chicken-and-egg questions. Has the mistranslation led to an abandonment of the Angelus, or was the Angelus abandoned long before, and therefore the “retranslating” of the traditional words for the purpose of the Mass Collect was not seen as such a big deal? Quite frankly, it is probably both. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the loss of the Angelus is both a symptom and a cause of the loss of Catholic identity, and recovering the translation in the Roman Missal can go a long way towards the process of its restoration. At the very least, it provides an impetus for a stellar homily. (Imagine, actually, if the priest on this Sunday were to give a homily that begins with the Angelus and ends with an explanation of the term “consubstantial.”)
Let’s put it this way. When I read the words for the corrected translation of the Collect from the First Sunday of Advent, my eyes “perked” up from line one: “Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord...” Imagine how much more will my ears do the same when, blessed be God, they hear the glorious recitation of this prayer on December 18, 2011. Who knows, maybe they’ll even hear the ever faint echo of the Angelus bells accompanying the text.
Posted By Jake Tawney at 3:00 PM
Labels: Liturgy, New Translation of the Roman Missal

Comment:

B. said...

Nick,

I have to admit that I have a hard time understanding exactly what your comment is responding to. On the one hand, this post was not about local traditions but the expression of the universal Catholic faith as the common link between the holy Mass and in the devotional life by which the Liturgy is extended through life.

On the other hand, perhaps you were responding to Mr. A. Layne. In any case, I think that the substance of your comment is correct: the universal Church is both ontologically and existentially prior to the particular Church, as J. Cardinal Ratzinger rather conclusively demonstrated in his article, "The Local Church and the Universal Church: A Response to Walter Kasper" (America, Nov. 19, 2001). This of course was already a defense of the official CDF document "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church as Communio" (May 1992). So, in this much, I think you raise a very good point.

On the other hand, the universal Church is "made flesh" so to speak in the particular Churches spread throughout the world. Thus, while there will certainly be local traditions that authentically express the nature of the Church (an authentic kind of inculturation), these traditions should grow organically from the great Tradition of the Church. I recommend that you read carefully the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation (Dei Verbum), particularly nn. 7-10. I think you will find that Tradition, which is one of the two means by which the fulness of Revelation is transmitted to all the Faithful of all time, is not opposed to Jesus (as you seem to suggest), but is rather the working out of what Christ our Lord promised (Jn 16:12), namely, that the Spirit of Truth (the Holy Spirit) would continue to guide the Church into understanding the fulness of what He did and taught. Thus, Tradition itself is guided and developed by the Holy Spirit. Local traditions, then (which is already a rather ambiguous term), must be consonant with both sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture since the local/particular Church is an expression of the one-subject, universal Church. There does exist, then, an objective measure of local "expressions" as you term them.

Finally, specifically on the point where you say, "The Church has the power to change the form of the Mass." I can agree that this is true, but not as unqualifiedly as you put it forth. The Church certainly does have the power, given by Christ, to be guided by the Holy Spirit in regulated the outward expression of the sacred Liturgy. However, as Ratzinger has also said, this power is not absolute and certainly cannot be exercised arbitrarily. In fact, the Church is a servant of the Liturgy because she lives from it and expresses the truth of her being in it (see JP2, Ecclesia de Ecuharistia). Thus, any change and development should grow organically from what was before. In the recent past, this has not always happened. Cardinal Ratzinger observed in the Preface he wrote to Msgr. Klaus Gamber's book, "The Reform of the Roman Liturgy" that the 1970/1MR does not seem to be an expression of the organic growth of the Liturgy. Thus, not every exercise of the Church's power is authentic simply because those who have the power do it. This is a very complex topic but I invite you to consider these things.

Nick, thank you for your thoughtful engagement and, as you suggest, let us keep our eyes fixed on Christ, Who shows us His face only in and through the Church, His Bride and Body.

Peace,
B.
January 27, 2011 9:56 AM

http://causafinitaest.blogspot.com/2011/01/catholic-identity-and-new-translation.html

And with Your Spirit

2011-01-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

Posted by Jeffrey Tucker

For me personally, the least controversial aspect of the new translation is the restoration of "And with your spirit" as opposed to the street-talkin' "And also with you." In fact, I was disappointed that we are not to say, "and with thy spirit" because this is the phrase one hears most commonly in literature and legend. In any case, the transliteration of the Latin is most welcome.

But does it make sense? This is the question that got us in such trouble in the first place, for it implies a kind of liturgical rationalism and a mandate to come to understand and thereby approve -- construct -- every aspect of the liturgy. The rationalist project requires that we throw out as ancient cruft all that strikes us as odd and only retain that which makes sense to us in our generation. Here we have a serious problem because the liturgy itself is larger than one generation. It stretches back into a history the details of which grow foggier the early we go. More than that, there is an element of the divine at work in the development of liturgy, and this means that ultimately it might include words, rubrics, and even music that is beyond human comprehension. This is why a good rule is: defer to tradition. Changing things risks doing violence to a divine thing.

In any case, and understandably, people do want an explanation for the modern move to "and with your spirit," and Fr. Austin J. Milner has provided a beautiful one today. The phrase is an ancient greeting, unique to Christianity, and intended to underscore our conviction that the spirit of God exists in every human person. This is certainly in contrast to the belief in the ancient world, which lacked this kind of mystical universalism at its ethical core.

This is such a beautiful explanation, one that helps underscore ideas that we too often take for granted: the dignity of the human person, the universality of human rights, the breath of God as the source of rationality, and much more. All of these were the great contributions that Christianity made to the world. I'm happy to read this explanation so that I can say these words with greater appreciation - and this is precisely the best use of these kind of studies, not to call into question a tradition but to shed light on its meaning and implications.

This article should certainly be shared with all Catholics.

By the way, this was apparently Fr. Milner's last article that he wrote before he
died.

http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/01/and-with-your-spirit.html

Tu es Petrus

2011-01-28T07:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/01/tu-es-petrus.html

Comments:
Anonymous said...

Well, it's a fine music and maybe was a 'pastoral' decision for the occasion. To me it's rather too dramatic (or theatrical). Remind me of big old movies, like Quo Vadis? Sort of music that accompanies the Roman emperor entering a theatre. I would have appreciated a bit humble, but dignified and quiet music.
January 28, 2011 4:54 AM

Keith Fraser said...

What you get is the awe and the majesty befitting the man commissioned by Christ to lead his church, majesty passed to his successors. The awe, the terror of that commission, juxtaposed by the quiet, polyphonic resolution of the piece just after the timpnoy and before it went to the Introit, Dignus est Agnus.

I thought it was amazing.
January 28, 2011 4:59 AM

Anonymous said...

Although drastic shift of the fine music can be amazing, I have a reservation for too much of dramatic contrast for the music in Mass. I think this has to be done carefully so not to be overdone.
The spiritual experience of Gregorian chant is very sublime with the subtle beauty that avoids the extreme of emotional turmoil by its nature of hiring musical concepts that avoid extreme range, volume, tempo..., so the emotion and feelings are moved naturally, not as if forced by external elements, which can be appropriate and needed in other places.

By the way I'm a fan of all your postings. I guess just this one I have a bit of disagreement. Thank you for all your work.
January 28, 2011 7:14 AM

Dad29 said...

The awe, the terror of that commission, juxtaposed by the quiet, polyphonic resolution of the piece

Precisely what I heard! "You will suffer" at the beginning, "unsettled" music illustrating 'the gates of Hell', and a gentle, loving, "I will give you the keys"--as if to say "I will love and support you" at the end.

Marvelous stuff.
January 28, 2011 11:10 AM

The "Easy" Life of Lay Clerk (Musically speaking)

2011-01-28T07:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/01/easy-life-of-lay-clerk-musically.html

Sacred Notation, Sacred Music

2011-01-28T07:43:00.000-08:00

http://www.chantcafe.com/2011/01/sacred-notation-sacred-music.html

Score and audio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9j7y65wgx8&feature=related

a brief talk on the history of Solfege
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxkstaYPztM&feature=related

This is interesiting and beautiful singing in good accustics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1AbgbtKIJg

With Scott T (I'm there somewhere with some schola members.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-SAwQBFXZc&feature=related

Schola: February Calendar

2011-01-21T09:29:00.000-08:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
Feb.5, 19

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Manducaverunt (Feb.5)
Gustate et Videte (Feb.19)
Ave Regina Caelorum

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Feb. 12, 26

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Manducaverunt (Feb.12)
Gustate et Videte (Feb.26)
Ave Regina Caelorum

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Feb.20, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance Proper) : schola
Lord, your mercy is my hope, my heart rejoices in your saving power.
I will sing to the Lord for his goodness to me.

Kyrie (857)

Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
The Lord is kind and merciful.

Gospel Acclamation:
Whoever keeps the word of Christ,
the love of God is truly perfected in him.

Offertory Proper (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias

(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper: (schola)
I will tell all your marvelous works.
I will rejoice and be glad in you,
and sing to your name, Most High.

Communion Hymn:

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (702)

Children's Schola
(classes at St. Paul on Monday & at St. Michael's Academy on Thursday)

At OLPH
First Friday Mass, FEb.4
8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Veni Creator Spiritus (offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Anima Christi(communion)

At St. Alphonsus
2nd Thursday Mass, Feb. 10
11 AM (warm up at 10:30 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Veni Creator(offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Anima Christi (communion)
Salve Regina

Question on choice of music for Mass

2011-01-14T06:29:00.000-08:00

From http://musicasacra.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=4544&page=1#Item_3

* darrharis
* CommentTime2 days ago

Hello, I'm a non-musician and new here, so forgive my naivety and ignorance.

Would it be fair to say that most of the liturgical music that church choirs choose and sing (and aside from chant) is biased to what they personally like singing i.e. a reflection of their own tastes in music? If so, where does this priority sit in most people's minds in relation to more objective liturgical priorities such as providing music that will enrich the prayers of the congregation? There may be overlap between the two priorities of course, but
not necessarily, esp if the congregation are not enthused (or even distracted) by what is being sung.
#

* CommentAuthorchonak
* CommentTime2 days ago

Welcome to the forum, darrharis!

One weakness in most parishes' music can be summed up in the phrase: "Don't sing at the Mass, sing the Mass." In a lot of parishes, people sing four hymns (entrance, offertory, communion, recessional), but don't sing the ordinary parts of the Mass.

The Church actually sets objective priorities for us in her teaching about sacred music. The priest and the congregation should be singing their dialogues ("The Lord be with you"/"And also with you") and the major parts of the Mass ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). The Mass is sort of designed to work well that way, and the Church's teaching about liturgical music urges us to sing those parts first of all. That's the kind of "active participation" Vatican II wanted, in which people are directly involved in their role as the congregation at the Mass.

Instead, many parish musicians have their choirs or congregations sing hymns, anthems, or songs. They may be good music or even great music (or maybe not-so-great music) perhaps, but they're not an official part of the Mass text, so they really are just being tacked onto the Mass at the parish. They're incidental to the Mass, and they're not really the prayer of the Church. It's lawful to use them (generally), but it's a poor second or third-choice, considering how wonderful it is for a congregation to sing the Mass itself.

When a congregation and priest do sing their respective parts of the Mass, the role of the choir makes sense: it's to sing the variable elements in the Mass -- the entrance antiphon, the psalm between the readings, the offertory antiphon, and the communion antiphon -- which require practice because the texts and melodies change from week to week.

I hope this is sort of along the lines you're thinking about.

Anyway, welcome: to find out more about what the CMAA is and does, watch the great video about our annual summer colloquium, produced by artist collaborative Corpus Christi Watershed.

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

2011-01-11T11:56:00.001-08:00

This morning, for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, we sang Introit (in English) instead of a 'hymn.' (what I mean by 'hymn' here is one with the text of individuals.) Although it's not a Holyday of obligation, the church was full. In this parish people are used to spoken Entrance and Communion antiphones in daily Mass, so many people know what they are, but singing the Introit was a historical event in this parish. The celebrant was very happy that he can solemly process without carrying the hymnal and lead us to the Holy of Holies.

It was amazing!!! You can say I'm wrong, but I truly sensed that the silence in the church channel people to LISTEN to the Word, the text of the Proper in a beautiful music. It was a beautiful moment.

The schola sang Veni Creator before the Mass (Plenary indulgence) and Te Deum after the Mass (we invited people whoever wants to stay after the recessional hymn, Hail Holy Queen. I made copies of texts and music on the back of handouts of the Mass. Amazingly inspite it was first time sung, there were some people actually stayed for Te Deum.( I know indulgence for Te Deum was yesterday, but the schola wanted to sing it anyway. It was a tough one to learn.), and the celebrant joined us in singing it.
After the Mass a lady came and told us that she was from out of town but was so glad that she came. She said it was absolutely beautiful. It wasn't just a polite thank you, which is also nice to hear, but I can tell she was glowing with joy. I'm sure there were people who didn't like the way it was done, although I didn't hear any, but as we know we cannot satisfy everyone. Our schola was very very happy, and the priest and people told us it was beautiful. But most of all, I pray that it pleased God the most, because I believe what pleases God the most truly sanctifies us the most. After I started to sing Gregorian chant, that's what I learned. The more we focus on God, not on us, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, even a small sacrifice like conforming our taste to what the Church desires the most for the Church's liturgy, helps us to remember the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross which was offered in obedience to the Father with humility. We still have lots of difficulties and take small steps, but this is the goal of our schola and share that experience with others around us.
Happy New year to you all.

Te Deum

2010-12-27T07:56:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VVrFdURVPw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqwV9l-U8ds&feature=watch_response

Schola: January Calendar

2010-12-20T11:53:00.000-08:00

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
OLPH. Jan. 1, 9 AM (warm-up at 8:15AM)

Veni Creator (Plenary Indulgence)

Introit (Entrance proper) : schola

A light will shine on us this day, the Lord is born for us:
he shall be called Wonderful God, Prince of peace,
Father of the world to come; and his kingship will never end.

Kyrie eleison (2x)
Christe eleison (2x)
Kyrie eleison (2x)

Gloria (392)

Responsorial Psalm:
May God bless us in his mercy.

Gospel Acclamation:
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets;
in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.

Offertory: Salve Mater(schola)

Sanctus (370-B)

Mysterium Fidei (371)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias

(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (375-B)

Communion Proper (schola)
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.

Recessional Hymn: Hail, Holy Queen (883)

Te Deum

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up at 7:40)
Jan. 15, 29

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Manducaverunt
Alma Redemptoris Mater

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Jan.8, 22

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Corde natus ex parentis (Jan, 8)
Manducaverunt (Jan. 22)
Alma Redemptoris Mater

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jan.16, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance Proper) : schola
May all the earth give you worship and praise,
and break into song to your name, O God, Most High

Kyrie (857)

Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
Here am I, Lord;
I come to do your will

Gospel Acclamation:
The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.
To those who accepted him,
he gave power to become children of God.

Offertory Proper (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias

(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper: (schola)
We know and believe in God's love for us

Communion Hymn: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence (215)

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (702)

Children's Schola
(classes at St. Paul on Monday & at St. Michael's Academy on Thursday)

At OLPH
First Friday Mass, Jan. 7
8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Puer natus (offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Adeste fideles (communion)

At St. Alphonsus
2nd Thursday Mass, Jan. 14
11 AM (warm up at 10:30 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Puer natus (offertory)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Anima Christi (communion)
Salve Regina

A beautiful 4-part motet sung by one singer

2010-12-19T05:58:00.000-08:00

SATB Hodie Scietis • Kevin Allen (Cantiones Sacrae II) from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

Hodie scietis, quia veniet Dominus et salvabit nos: et mane videbitis gloriam ejus.
This day you shall know the Lord will come, and save us: and in the morning you shall see His glory

Pueri concinite

2010-12-04T17:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EabtwyF2P4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rXP_wzGU3E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVFATPkZpt0

Pueri concinite
Nato regi psallite
Voce pia dicite
Apparuit quem genuit Maria
Sum implenta quae praedixit Gabriel
Eia, Eia, virgo Deum genuit
Quem divina voluit clementia
Hodie apparuit
Apparuit in Israel
Ex Maria virgine natus est Rex!
Alleluia.

English translation

Sing together, children,
sing songs to the newborn King;
in pious tones, say:
He who was born of Mary appears.
Now we see fulfilled the word of Gabriel:
Eya, eya! The Virgin has given birth to God,
As the divine mercy willed.
Today appears,
Appears in Israel.
To the Virgin Mary is born the King!
Alleluya.

Prayer to St. Cecilia

2010-11-24T03:54:00.001-08:00

"If we really understood the Mass, we would die of joy." (Saint John Vianney)

"It would be easier for the earth to carry on without the sun than without the Holy Mass." (Saint Pio of Pietrelcina)

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd." (Flannery O'Connor)

St. Cecilia pray for us church musicians that we may gain the wisdom and strength to provide music that glorify God and help others to experience the joy of salvation given through Christ's obedience and humility on the cross.

Schola: December calendar

2010-11-22T11:30:00.000-08:00

At OLPH
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
Dec. 4, 18

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Creator alme siderum
Veni, Veni Emmanuel
Alma Redemptoris Mater

At Resurrection Church
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Dec. 11

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Veni, Veni Emmanuel
Alma Redemptoris Mater

Immaculate Conception
Resurrection Church
Dec. 8 7:30 PM

Introit (Entrance proper) : schola

I exult for joy in the Lord, my soul rejoice in my God;
for he has clothed me in the garment of salvation
and robed me in the cloak of justice,
like a bride, a bride adorned with her jewels

Kyrie eleison (2x)
Christe eleison (2x)
Kyrie eleison (2x)

Gloria (255)

Responsorial Psalm:
Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marveluos deeds.

Gospel Acclamation

Offertory: Ave Maris Stella (schola)

Sanctus (316)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(316-A)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias

(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (320)

Communion Proper (schola)
Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, Maria:
quia fecit t ibi magna qui potens est.

(Glorious things are said to you, O Mary,
for he who is mighty has done great things for you.)

Communion Hymn: Immaculate Mary (783)

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (780)

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
Dec 12, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance Proper) : schola
Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I say, rejoice! The Lord is near

Kyrie (857)

Responsorial Psalm:
Lord, come and save us

Gospel Acclamation

Offertory : Veni, veni Emmanuel (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias

(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper (schola)
Say to the anxious: be strong and fear not,
our God will come to save us

Communion Hymn: O come, O come Emmanuel

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (702)

Children's Schola
(classes at St. Paul on Monday & at St. Michael's Academy on Thursday)
First Friday Mass, Dec. 3

OLPH 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Veni, Veni Emmanuel
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ave verum Corpus natum

Bishop Morlino's letter to parishioners at Platteville

2010-11-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

http://badgercatholic.blogspot.com/2010/11/bp-morlinos-letter-to-platteville.html

Fr. Rutler's article

2010-11-09T15:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/08/the-liturgical-expertsrsquo-long-tassels

Two Important Sites for Sung Mass

2010-11-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

Chant totorial for the New translation
http://vimeo.com/channels/cmaa

Simple Propers
http://musicasacra.com/simple-propers-of-the-mass-ordinary-form/

Bishop Slattery and the Sung Introit

2010-11-08T05:41:00.000-08:00

Posted by Jeffrey Tucker
http://www.chantcafe.com/2010/11/bishop-slattery-and-sung-introit.html

Bishop Slattery of Tulsas has offered a wonderful case for bringing back the sung introit. What he calls for here is PRECISELY what the Chant Cafe has been pushing with the Simple English Propers Project. We are making progress in this campaign but we need your help. Please make a donation today.

But today I would like to suggest one simple change by which we might begin to recover the sense that the liturgy is something we receive, rather than something we create. I do not propose this as the most important or essential change towards this end, but merely as one change, one step, one movement away from the chaos of created liturgies towards the proper vision of the Council.

What I would like to propose is that we recover the sung introit at Mass.

I know that for two generations now, Catholics have been expected to sing an opening hymn at Mass and in many parishes the faithful are regularly browbeaten to “stand up and greet this morning’s celebrant with hymn #so-and-so” which, depending upon the parish, might be taken from the red hymnbook, or the blue hymnbook, or the nicely disposable paperback missalette. So deeply has this ‘opening hymn mentality’ shaped our consciousness that most Catholics would be astounded to hear me say that hymns have no real place in Mass.

Hymns belong in the Liturgy of the Hours and in the common devotions of the faithful, but the idea that the parish liturgy committee should sit down sometime early in the month and look through a hymn book, trying to find pretty hymns which haven’t been overdone in the past three or four months, which explore the themes of the Sunday Masses and which brings the people together as a singing community is an idea completely alien to the spirit of the Catholic liturgy.

It is alien first of all because the singing of hymns as Sunday worship was a Protestant innovation, better suited to their non-Sacramental worship than to the Mass, and alien secondly because an opening hymn introduces - at the very inception of the sacred action - that element of creative busy-ness, which is, as we have seen, antithetical to the nature of salvation as a gift we receive from God.

What belongs at the beginning of Mass is the sung introit, that is a sung antiphon and psalm. In the Catholic liturgical tradition, these are unique compositions in which a scriptural cento is set to a singular piece of music. The melody explores and interprets the text of the cento, while the composition as a whole illuminates the meaning to be discovered later in the readings of the day.

The Sung Introit
These sung introits have been an integral part of the Latin Rite, and remain so in the Extraordinary Form, where the schola or choir chants the more difficult antiphon, and the congregation sings the psalm. This gives the faithful both the chance to listen and respond, practicing, in effect, the basic elements of the Mass, listening and responding, listening, for example to the Word of God as it comes to us in the readings, and then responding to the Father’s initiative by offering to Him the obedience of Jesus.

Unfortunately these antiphons have never been set to music in the Novus Ordo. For forty years they have sat, lonely of notation, at the top of each page in the Sacramentary unable to be sung, until even the memory of the sung introit has passed away.

Yet there are changes afoot and reason to hope. The introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal, now definitely set for the First Sunday of Advent of next year, gives me reason to anticipate a new beginning here. Faithful to the spirit of the Latin text and with an accurate translation into a consciously sacred style of English, the new Missal points to a rediscovered seriousness in the way America celebrates her liturgy and perhaps a greater appreciation as well of the elements of liturgy which have been discarded these past forty years.

Perhaps with this new seriousness, and given the need to compose new chant melodies to accompany the new translations, this may well be the time when liturgists will begin discussing the meaning of a received liturgy; when composers might make their first attempts to set these antiphons to a simple English Plain Song, and when publishers might begin to produce worthy and dignified liturgical books.
at 8:57 AM 15 comments Links to this post
Labels: Jeffrey Tucker

Holiness is More than Being Nice

2010-10-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

http://blog.adw.org/2010/10/holiness-is-more-than-being-nice/

Schola: November calendar

2010-10-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

At OLPH (practice on Mondays at 7:30)
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
Nov.6, 20

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ego sum vitis vera
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Nov.13, 27

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ego sum vitis vera
Salve Regina

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)

Our Lord Jesus Christ the King
Nov. 21, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance antiphone) : schola

Entrance Hymn: Crown Him with Many Crowns (747)

Kyrie (857)
Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:

Gospel Acclamation

Offertory Proper: schola

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper (schola)

Communion Hymn: Alleluia Sing to Jesus (742)

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (702)

Children's Schola
(classes at St. Paul on Monday & at St. Michael's Academy on Thursday)
First Friday Mass, Nov. 5
OLPH 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Salve Regina
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ave verum Corpus natum

Benjamin Zander on music and passion

2010-10-15T13:39:00.001-07:00

Sacred vs. Secular cartoon

2010-10-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a cartoon, produced by Corpus Christi Watershed, that got more than 12,000 views on YouTube within the first four days of its release. The cartoon was designed with humor in mind. The intent is to get folks to start delving into the Church’s legislation on Sacred music:

Sacred Vs. Secular Cartoon from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

The cartoon is similar to another Corpus Christi Watershed video:
Can You Tell The Difference? Sacred vs. Secular Music at Mass
http://vimeo.com/10686215

Vernacular hymns in the Liturgy of the Mass

2010-10-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

I do use metrical vernacular hymns, but to me they are inferior to Gregorian chant, spritually and musically. They are not the text of the Mass, they are commentaries of individuals when they are used in Mass. Even if they are chosen by the most wise music director, they cannot surpass the chosen text by the Church.

English is a syllabic language, so it might fit better with the metered music. But metrical music cannot transcend like Gregoriant chant does. If a parish needs a commentary in Mass, I guess you need vernacular metrical hymns too. And if the parishioners are not familiar with Gregorian chant, I guess you have to use vernacular hymns. But there are also people who want to experience the liturgy without commentaries, the liturgy that trascends the time and space, which is supported by the music that highlights it.

"What active role did the apostles play at the Last supper? They let the astounding events enfold them, ...
"if I do not wash you, you have no part in me." (Mosebach, Heresy of Formlessness)

What part do we play in His sacrifice and how much commentaries do we need for His sacrifice?

I'd like to share the following I read recently. Even if you don't agree, it might help you to think twice before you promote vernacular metrical hymns in Mass. ( 'hymn' refers to vernacular hymn in the following quote, not hymns such as Gloria, Sanctus... )

"vernacular hymns have played significant part in the collapse of the liturgy. Just consider what resulted in the flowering of hymns: Luther's Reformation was a singing movement, and the hymns expressed the beliefs of the Reformers. Vernacular hymns replaced the liturgy, as they were designed to do; they were filled with the combative spirit of those dismal times and were meant to fortify the partisans. People singing a catchy melody together at the top of their voices created a sense of community, as all soldiers, clubs and politicians know. The Catholic Counter-Reformation felt the demagogic power of these hymns. People so enjoyed singing; it was so easy to influence their emotions using pleasing tunes with verse repetition. In the liturgy of the Mass, however, there was no place for hymns. The litrugy has no gaps; it is one single great canticle; where it prescribes silence or the whisper, that is where the mystery is covered with an acoustic veil, as it were, any hymn would be out of the question....
Still they were there: the sound of hundreds of people singing smothered the liturgy and obscured what was going on at the altar. It was clear that something needed to be done; but as we know, it was the hymns that were victorious, not the liturgy..."' (M. Mosebach)

Schola: October calendar

2010-09-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

At OLPH (practice on Mondays at 7:30)
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
Oct. 2, 16, 30

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Anima Christi (Oct.2)
Ubi caritas (Oct. 16)
Adoro te (Oct.30 )
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Oct. 9,23

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Anima Christi (Oct.9)
Adoro te (Oct. 23)
Salve Regina

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)

Twenty-nineth Sunday in Ordinary time
Oct. 17, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit (Entrance antiphone) : schola
I call upon you God, for you will answer me; bend your ear and hear my prayer.
Guard me as the pupil of your eye; hide me in the shade of your wings

Entrance Hymn: In His Temple (213)

Kyrie (857)
Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Gospel Acclamation

Offertory Proper: schola

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper (schola)
See how the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those who hope in his love that he may rescue them from death and feed them in time of famine.

Communion Hymn: Be Thou My Vision

Recessional Hymn: Salve Regina (708)

Children's Schola
(classes at St. Paul on Monday & at St. Michael's Academy on Thursday)
First Friday Mass, Oct.1
OLPH 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Veni Creator
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Adoro te devote

A Church Musician's Lament By Michael Olbash

2010-09-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.magisterium.net/lament.htm

The hymns of the St. Louis Jesuits, however hideously they might be crafted as pieces of music, at least are usually based upon Scripture and authentic Catholic teaching. But other songs from the 1980s and 1990s--by composers like David Haas, Michael Joncas, and Marty Haugen--are more frightening. Not only is the music poorly crafted; not only are the words trite; not only are the melodies shamelessly dramatic and emotional; but many of these contemporary composers proudly identify themselves as theological liberals, and the teachings that they subtly espouse through their music can be dangerous.

Personally, I stopped performing the music of David Haas after he published Dear Sister God, and presented a music workshop at which he and his ex-wife, composer Jeanne Cotter, informed the participants of their "duty" and "responsibility" to purge their parishes of "exclusive language" in the liturgy.

Father Jan Michael Joncas, the notorious composer of the drippingly saccharine "On Eagle's Wings," is another serious offender, who promotes misleading ideas about Holy Communion. His series of songs and rituals called "Tableprayer" is used all round the country by women and non-Catholics who act as quasi-celebrants, breaking bread and sharing wine at meetings that tread dangerously close to profaning the Catholic Mass.

Marty Haugen, a Lutheran whose music is probably performed more widely in American Catholic parishes than that of any other composer, has produced ugly, ridiculous hymns that emphasize the sun, the moon, trees, and dancing--all set to primitive melodies that evoke a whimsical stroll through a field of organic sunflowers.

Crack open a copy of GIA Publication's Gather hymnal or the annual Music Issue from Oregon Catholic Press, and you will find clear evidence of feminist theology, an overwhelming amount of confusing (if not outright heretical) texts about the nature of the Eucharist, and countless awkward "inclusive language" revisions of familiar hymns. You will find dozens of songs and "psalm settings" that are said to be "based on" or "inspired by" passages from Scripture, yet completely obliterate the meaning of the original text.

Great article: Lost Meaning of Sacred

2010-08-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

http://causafinitaest.blogspot.com/2010/08/lost-meaning-of-sacred.html

Gregorian Chant

2010-08-26T06:33:00.000-07:00

We remember Pope Saint Pius X especially for his famous Motu Proprio of November 22, 1903 on the reform of Sacred Music and the restoration of the Church’s plainchant. Like Pope Benedict XVI today, Pope Pius X was a musician; he was above all concerned that the faithful of the Catholic Church might pray in beauty. He recognized in Gregorian Chant the native idiom of the Roman liturgy. Gregorian chant shines with an evangelical poverty. It is chaste in its expression. It is entirely obedient to the Word of God that it clothes, carries, and delivers.

WORTHY OF THE TEMPLE

Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have reiterated his insistence on the primacy of Gregorian Chant and the value of the traditional Roman polyphony in the liturgy of the Church. On November 22, 2003, the anniversary of Pius X’s Motu Proprio, Pope John Paul II said, “With regard to compositions of liturgical music, I make my own the general rule that St Pius X formulated in these words: 'The more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration and savour the Gregorian melodic form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple.’” On June 24, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI spoke in similar terms: “An authentic renewal of sacred music can only happen in the wake of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony.”

From
http://vultus.stblogs.org/

Singing Gregorian chant made possible for me and many people I know to expereince humility and true divinity of God. One can read documents merely intellectually and try to reason endlessly, or simply try and experience the teachings and the tradition of the Church. Simplicity and humility are essential than intellect to learn the true love of Christ and His sacrifice. Although there have been several stages in my faith journey, only through Gregorian chant I fell in love with the Church, her liturgy and ultimately with God, and come out of 'self-centered worship.'

I believe there are stages to reach the ideal of sacred music in Liturgy, and those stages to be 'honored.'

Schola: September Calendar

2010-08-26T04:41:00.000-07:00

At OLPH (practice on Mondays at 7:30)
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
September 4, 18

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Qui manducat
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
September 11, 25

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Qui manducat
Salve Regina

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
September 19, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Introit: (schola)
I am the Savior of all people, says the Lord.
Whatever their truobles, I will answer their dry,
and I will always be thier Lord.

Entrance Hymn: All People that on Earth Do Dwell (313)

Kyrie (857)
Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor

Gospel Acclamation
Though our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, he became poor,
so that by his poverty you might become rich.

Offertory : Proper (schola)
You stretch out your hand and save me

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord,
and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper (schola)
You hve laid down your precepts to be faithfully kept.
May my footsteps be frim in keeping your commands

Communion Hymn: Jesus, the Very Thought of You (731)

Recessional: Salve Regina (708)

Children's Schola (practice on Mondays at 1:30 at OLPH)
First Friday Mass, September 3
OLPH 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Veni Creator
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Anima Christi

Obedience vs. Conscience

2010-08-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

Obedience vs. Conscience
Help Lapsed Catholics Return by Teaching Them to Fall in Love With Christ and His Church

By JANET SMITH 08/13/2010 Comments (1)

What to do about all the lapsed Catholics? Those Catholics who don’t come to church because they reject the Church’s teachings on such matters as contraception, the ordination of women to the diaconate, and married priests.

Father Joseph Breen of Nashville proposed in a video posted last month on his parish website (and since removed) that these individuals are under the erroneous view that they need to accept these teachings. He says that as adults they need to be obedient to nothing but “the spirit of God”: The conscience is supreme.

Ironically, Father Breen invokes a Church teaching to defend rejecting Church teaching. He likely has in mind the principle found in the Catechism: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience” (No. 1790). He rejects the principle articulated in Lumen Gentium No. 25: “In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent.” Father Breen chooses to believe what he wants to believe and rejects the rest.

How can it be simultaneously true that Catholics must follow their consciences and that Catholics must follow Church teaching?

First, we must understand that the conscience is not equivalent to our thoughts or our opinions or our judgments. The Catechism (No. 1776) defines the conscience as an inner sanctuary in which we listen to God’s voice for guidance about our actions. So when someone is consulting his or her conscience, the question being asked is not “Do I think this action is good or bad?” but “Does God judge this action to be good or bad?” And God speaks to the consciences of Catholics through the Church.

If a Catholic is considering doing something that the Church teaches to be wrong, he can be certain that he is not listening to his conscience, but some other “voice” that has caught his attention.

Consider a question of conscience of this sort: “My wife has been in a persistent vegetative state for years. Would it be immoral for me to have relations with my lovely, lonely, unmarried secretary? We would get married if we could, but until my wife dies, I am not free to marry.”

Suppose this unfortunate, lonely husband said he thought his conscience was clear on this point — he was not really committing adultery because his wife was not available as a wife. Now, only God knows the extent of this man’s confusion and how honestly he has tried to work through the issues. But wouldn’t a Catholic priest have to say to this man, “I am sorry, but you are not properly consulting your conscience. God is clear on this point: Adultery is having sexual intercourse with someone who is not your spouse, and that is precisely what you would be doing.”

Such a man ignoring Church teaching would certainly be welcome to attend Catholic services, but would not be welcome to receive the Eucharist.

Let’s consider another question: “Should I have a baby through in vitro fertilization?” I suspect a Catholic asking the question in the proper fashion — “Would God approve of me having a baby through in vitro fertilization?” — when talking with God in her inner sanctuary, would hear God’s voice say: “You are a Catholic; I have set up the Church to guide you in such decisions; turn to the Church for guidance, and you will be hearing my voice on this matter.”

She must now do what Catholics are obliged to do: “Form” her conscience (Catechism, Nos. 1783-87). Truly forming the conscience involves reading Church documents, seeking clarification on difficult points, and praying that God will lead one to the truth. After all that, suppose she still is not convinced that IVF is moral. Is she free to utilize IVF and still remain a Catholic in good standing?

Only God can know the source of her confusion, but any Catholic priest should tell her she is violating God’s law and would not be free to receive the Eucharist, though she is certainly welcome at church.

Would Father Breen maintain that the above individuals are doing what is right when they follow their “consciences”? Would Father Breen hold that there are any teachings of the Church from which a Catholic is not free to dissent on the basis of conscience? Teachings on racism, greed etc.?

He may respond that different kinds of teaching require different levels of obedience. It is correct that the Church itself teaches that different teachings require different levels of adherence, but all of those listed by Father Breen as nonbinding the Church teaches require “religious assent.”

What should we do to bring lapsed Catholics back to the Church? Father Breen recommends that we turn the Church into a more inviting place, and he believes the Church would be more welcoming were it to become more like Protestant churches which accept contraception, women ministers and married priests.

What will Father Breen provide that these churches don’t? Some even have plush seating and Starbucks coffee. What can compete with that? The sacraments?

Well, the validity of the sacraments is dependent upon a certain structure of the Church that is rooted in the validity of the papacy. But Father Breen is questioning the papacy, and he encourages his flock to do the same. A huge flaw in his proposal is that Protestant churches are rapidly declining in membership, not growing. I suspect their flocks will decline further as those lapsed Catholics who have found their way there eventually cease worshipping altogether.

Let me offer a proposal for winning back lapsed Catholics: something worth coming back to.

Priests should evince a tremendous love for Christ and his Church and the papacy. They should do everything they can to help their congregation fall in love with Christ and his Church; they should encourage them to read Scripture and receive the sacraments; they should find a myriad of ways to help them understand and accept Church teaching on difficult issues and inspire them to live lives of radical Christian service.

These Catholics will then go out into the world as powerhouses of grace and as knowledgeable witnesses to their faith. I suspect both lapsed Catholics and those who are entirely “unchurched” might find the Catholic Church has something to offer them found nowhere else in the world.

Janet E. Smith is the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

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Explanation of the Ceremonies of Holy Mass, Part 5: Communion and Dismissal

2010-08-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

No one was there when Jesus rose from the dead. But he appeared on the evening of His Resurrection to two disciples walking on the Road to Emmaus. They do not recognize Him until He breaks bread with them. In the Mass, no one sees the Resurrection, even in symbol, for no symbol could ever do it justice. But the priest breaks the consecrated bread so that we may recognize the presence of the Crucified and Risen Christ in the Eucharist as surely as the disciples knew Him in the breaking of the bread. Just as the angel, removes the stone from the tomb, the deacon removes the pall from the chalice. The priest breaks the host into three parts, signifying that Christ was in three parts: His body was in the tomb, His Blood poured out upon the earth, and His soul was freeing the just from hell. The priest places one section of the three into the chalice. Jesus’ Body and Blood are reunited in the Resurrection and this commingling of Body and Blood is the eloquent and simple sign of that Resurrection.

All the while, the choir and people sing, Agnus Dei, Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. The priest raises the Host, the sacrificed Lamb, and exclaims in the words of John the Baptist when he sees Jesus: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! The people respond with some of the same words as the Centurion said to Jesus when asking Him to heal his sick child: LORD, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

The priest consummates the sacrifice by reverently consuming the Host and the Precious Blood, couching that moment of union with his God by preparation and thanksgiving. The sacrifice has been made and consummated. Now the fruits of that sacrifice can be shared with those who have participated in that sacrifice, who have been witnesses to it in faith. The fruits of the sacrifice of redemption are shared in the sacrament of Holy Communion. Baptized faithful who have been taught the faith and are in communion with the Church can approach the altar to commune, become one, with God, through this great sacrament.

The faithful who have mystically participated in the teaching and ministry of Christ in the Liturgy of the Word, in his Passion and Death in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, in his Resurrection through their prayerful and reverent preparation for Communion, now come forward to consummate their union with Christ in the sacrament of Holy Communion. While all of the rites and ceremonies of the Church are now open to all, while all may gaze upon them and participate in them, Holy Communion is not for every one. The Church has always had a strict discipline for who is to be admitted to Holy Communion. Saint Paul admonishes believers, Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the LORD in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning he body and blood of the LORD. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.

Sacramental communion with God presupposes two things: union with Christ through grace and union with Christ’s Body through the Church. Only baptized and practicing Catholics who are not in the state of mortal sin may approach Communion, and then only if they have been fasting for at least one hour. It is not something to be taken lightly, for it is like passing through fire – a fire which purifies some and makes them shine and which destroys others and compounds their misery.
Just as the priest is consecrated from among men to offer the sacrifice, he is also deputed to administer the sacrament. At ordination his hands are anointed with sacred chrism to set them apart for blessing, consecrating, and administering the mysteries of God. He is the ordinary minister of the Eucharist, and others administer Holy Communion only when licensed by the Bishop to do so in cases where priests are lacking for Communion to be distributed in a timely and reverent manner.
The preferred method for receiving the Host is directly on the tongue. Just as birds open wide their mouths to receive from their mothers all they need to sustain life, the faithful reverently open their mouths and receive the Bread of Life from Christ. For much of history, Christians in the West have received Communion kneeling, that profound symbol of humility and adoration. Where Communion is received standing or in the hand, by the Church’s permission but not by her preference or tradition, care must be taken that no one approaching the sacrament does so out of a sense of right or that it is due to them. We should always approach the altar not like the Pharisee, proudly standing, assured of our own righteousness, but meekly kneeling, beating our breast like the publican, LORD, have mercy on me, a sinner.

When the distribution of Holy Communion is finished, the priest consolidates what is left of the consecrated bread and places it in the tabernacle of the church, that receptacle which recalls the Ark of the Covenant where God’s presence dwelt with the Israelites and in which the Bread of Heaven is kept so that we may visit and adore the LORD’s wondrous presence. The vessels are carefully purified so that not even the slightest particle or drop may remain. The altar is despoiled of the Missal and the sacred vessels, prepared for another celebration of the Divine Sacrifice.

We have seen the true light! We have received the heavenly Spirit! We have found the true Faith! Worshipping the undivided Trinity, who has saved us. The Eastern rites sing this hymn after Holy Communion. Our true faith and worship have brought us to celebrate the mysteries of Christ in the worship of the Trinity. The priest sings a final prayer and then calls down God’s blessing upon us once again through the sign of the life-giving Cross. Recalling the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and Mary at Pentecost, the priest in the person of Christ blesses the faithful disciples in the church gathered at the sacred assembly. They have had the Holy Spirit poured out upon them at Holy Mass so that they can go forth from the church into the world, united to Christ by grace to share what they have witnessed and experienced. The deacon sings, The Mass is ended, go in peace, sending forth the baptized faithful into their mission territory, the world. All sing back to him, Thanks be to God, in one simple phrase summing up the nature of the Eucharistic celebration itself: giving thanks to God for His Sacrifice and for giving us the fruits of His Sacrifice in Holy Mass.

The priest gives a final kiss of gratitude to the altar and genuflects before the Holy Presence before he and his ministers return to the sacristy. Going out of the people’s sight, he enters the place where he vested, just as then Christ ascended into heaven, the clouds took him from the sight of those who gazed upon Him. And tomorrow, the whole drama of the LORD’s sacrifice will be repeated once more and God will be glorified as he has been adored through the Mass at every moment every day until the last priest says the last Mass and the LORD comes to proclaim a new heaven and a new earth.
at 12:46 PM
Labels: Fr. Christopher Smith
http://www.chantcafe.com/2010/08/explanation-of-ceremonies-of-holy-mass_02.html

Explanation of the Ceremonies of Holy Mass Part 4: Offertory and Eucharistic Prayer

2010-08-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Explanation of the Ceremonies of Holy Mass Part 4: Offertory and Eucharistic Prayer
Posted by Fr Christopher Smith
The altar must be prepared for the sacrifice. The Missal, the book out of which the priest signs the prayers, is placed on the altar along with the sacred vessels, all made from precious metals. The chalice in which the LORD’s Precious Blood will become present is placed on the altar under a veil. There are many veils in the church, and all of them have the same symbolism. A veil partially or completely covers something, pointing to the fact that what is beneath it is a mystery not entirely accessible to man. Thus, much of what has to do with the sacrifice is veiled. The chalice is veiled. The tabernacle where the Blessed Sacrament is veiled, like the tabernacle of old. Inside the tabernacle are to be found veils, which symbolise the veil separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. The ciborium which contains the Sacred Host has a veil on it after the hosts inside are consecrated.

Saint Paul in even instructs women to veil their heads when they pray: any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonours her head . . . a woman ought to have a veil over her head because of the angels . . . if anyone is disposed to be contentious, we recognize no other practice, nor do the churches of God.

The altar itself is often veiled with an antependium, a covering over the whole altar. In the Middle Ages a large veil called the hunger veil hid the entire sanctuary from the people at Mass during Lent, to highlight the separation of man from God by sin. In the East, an iconostasis, a large wall covered with holy images, blocks the view of the people so that they may not gaze on the mysteries and have contempt for them. In the West, rood screens and grilles are often seen in churches to underscore that God and the things of God are sacred, removed from the profane, wholly other. The language of Latin also serves as a veil; the words which are used in sacred worship are different than ordinary words, consecrated for divine use to emphasize that the actions that are taking place now are truly from another world.

In ancient times, the faithful often made the bread and wine for Mass and brought them, along with all kinds of gifts for the poor and the needy, to the altar. The deacons would distribute them from the altar while the priest went with the bread and wine to the altar. In the Ordinary Form it is common to have a procession during which monetary offerings for the good of the parish are brought up along with the bread and wine for the Eucharist. The bread is unleavened, just like the bread used by Christ at the Last Supper on Passover. The wine is ordinary wine made from grapes with nothing else added or taken away. The bread is fashioned into smaller and larger hosts. The word host comes from the Latin hostia, victim, because the bread of the host then becomes Christ who is both Priest and Victim. A larger host is placed on a paten, a large dish, and smaller hosts in ciboria.
In the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the subdeacon takes the paten away from the altar and stands with it wrapped in a humeral veil placed around his shoulders. During the entire Eucharistic Prayer, he stands with the paten over his face, to symbolise the cherubim who covered their faces from the Divine Presence in the Book of Ezekiel, again calling to mind the mystery of the God hidden underneath the sacramental veils of bread and wine.

The priest and deacon prepare the chalice with wine, careful to use a purificator, a linen cloth, to wipe away drops which adhere to the sides of the chalice, A small quantity of water, no more than a drop, is added to the wine. The wine is a symbol of Christ, and is not blessed. The water symbolizes us, and is blessed before it is placed in the wine, just as by baptism in water we are blessed in Christ and then submerged into his divine life. When water is mixed with wine in the chalice, the people are united to Christ. The sacred vessels are placed on another linen cloth called a corporal, from the Latin corpus, or body, because the Body of Christ will become present in the Host which rests upon it. The chalice is covered by a rigid piece of cloth to protect it called a pall, the same word used for the covering of a coffin at a funeral Mass. Everything on the altar at this moment makes reference to the death of Christ, which the Mass commemorates. The round paten is the stone rolled over the tomb. The Chalice is the sepulcher. The purificator and pall are the winding sheets and the veil used to cover the face of Jesus in the tomb. The stage is set for the Sacrifice of Calvary to be re-enacted in an unbloody manner.

These gifts of bread and wine, work of human hands, are now set apart from any use other than that of sacrifice. In the temple in Jerusalem, there were three sacred spaces, an altar of incense, an altar of bread and the Holy of Holies. The church melds all three sacred spaces onto the altar which is the Cross on which Christ is sacrificed and upon which bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ. The priest imposes incense in the thurible once more. In the Extraordinary Form, he asks the blessing, not of the angel standing at the right hand of the altar in heaven in John’s dream of the Apocalypse, but of the Archangel Michael, the prince of the heavenly hosts. Just as the Cross was the battle by which Christ vanquished the Father of Lies and the Prince of Darkness, the Church invokes the blessing of him who offers us protection from the wickedness and snares of the Devil as our prayers ascend before the Father on His Celestial Throne. The priest incenses the gifts, the Cross, the altar, all in groups of three, which recalls the three comings of Mary Magdalene to anoint the LORD with aromatic spices: at the house of Simon the Pharisee, t the house of Simon the Leper, and at the empty tomb.

The priest is then incensed, and one by one, every one in the sanctuary is also incensed in order of rank, and then the faithful assembled in the church. This hierarchical incensation is a reminder of the hierarchical nature of the Church. Just as there are nine choirs of angels, there is a hierarchy in the order of grace and in the order of nature.

When the priest has been incensed, while the thurifer incenses others in the church, filling it with the smoke which hearkens back to the pillar of cloud in the Book of Exodus which guided the people of Israel and the fragrance of holiness, the priest washes his hands. In ancient times, the priest frequently became dirty from handling all of the material gifts the people brought at Mass and the use of incense. Now, it is generally a ceremonial washing. But it is still important. As the priest quietly prays, Wash me, O LORD, from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, he reminds himself that he must be entirely pure to be admitted into the presence of the LORD and that his life must be coherent with his preaching. He returns to the altar, the words of Psalm 26 accompanying his movement, I wash my hands in innocence, and go about thy altar, O LORD.

The priest invites the people, Pray, brethren that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father. The sacrifice of the priest is different from, although not unrelated, to that of the people. Only a priest can offer sacrifice; only a priest can celebrate the Mass because he is ordained by God to do so. He offers the sacrifice in the person of Christ the Head. Yet, where the head is, so too the Body, and the faithful unite the sacrifice of their praise and their lives with the action on the altar.

After saying another prayer, the priest engages in a dialogue with the people that is present in all forms of worship from all times. He shouts out, Lift up your hearts and raises his hands from where they have been resting on the corporal in that priestly gesture of prayer. He then bows low before the Divine Majesty as he says, Let us give thanks to the LORD our God. The moment of sacrifice has arrived, the death of Christ comes upon us. But it is not a sad and tremendous occasion as it was on Calvary. We look upon the unbloody re-enanctment of this one sacrifice with great joy as the price for our redemption, paid once for all on a green hill far away, is made present in the here and now of our lives. And we rejoice as the priest prays the Preface, a prayer to recall to us the mystery of salvation, sung according to the same melodies the Greeks used to welcome their heroes home fro the Olympic Games. The priest calls upon the angels and the saints to be present on the altar before the choir representing the blessed in heaven along with the Church militant on earth and the Church suffering in purgatory all cry out, Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.

Holy, Holy, Holy LORD, God of hosts, heaven and earth are filled with your glory. The heavens open to unite themselves with earth and the cry of the angels in the Book of Revelation becomes ours as we proclaim the awesome majesty of God. We cannot help but cry out in the primitive language of the Church, Hosanna, save us, the Hebrew invocation to Jesus as he rode triumphantly amidst palm and olive branches into Jerusalem. The veiled vision of the glory of God inspires us to call out to Him to save us and we are reminded of that great truth, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD, affirming that the man who has faith to come to God to ask for mercy has is truly blessed in this moment when the doors to heaven are mystically opened to the believer in the Mass.

Part 5: The Eucharistic Prayer

Holy Thursday meets Good Friday in the most sacred part of the Mass, the Eucharistic Prayer. This prayer of consecration changes bread and wine into Christ Himself. This is the kernel of the Mass, the actual sacrifice. Christ bent over bread and wine during a Passover meal and said, This is my Body, which is given up for you, the same body which would be given up for men the next day on the Cross .

Christ’s actions on that first Holy Thursday night were not yet another re-enactment of the traditional Jewish Passover meal. There was something different about this meal, as evidenced by how Jesus celebrated it. Christ gives the definitive meaning to this meal only the next day, when he dies. The sacrifice of Christ, which is ordered to be commemorated by the memorial of eating bread and drinking wine which is His Body and Blood, is the fulfillment of Passover, the passing over of Christ from death to life in the Resurrection.

What happens in the Eucharistic Prayer is no more an exact replica of the Last Supper meal than Jesus exactly replicated the Passover meal. In fact, what is called the Institution Narrative, the words that surround the consecration of the bread and wine, are not taken exactly from the scriptures at all, but is an amalgamation of scriptural texts into the form of the sacrament. The reality is that what Christ did is commemorated in a way which makes the entire Christ present, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, under the outward appearances of bread and wine.

Up until the liturgical reforms after Vatican II, the entire Eucharistic Prayer was said in silence. The priest never turned to face the people, intent on contemplating the divine alone, and raised his voice only seven times from the beginning of the Offertory until Communion, reminiscent of the seven words of Jesus from the Cross. The entire church was plunged into silence, rapt in the mystery of what was happening before them. The silence is there, not to obscure the prayer, but to draw attention to the fact that Christ is doing something on our behalf which is beyond our rational comprehension, it is something to be submitted to in faith.

The text of the first Eucharistic Prayer, or Roman Canon, was fixed already by the end of the second century. In the Ordinary Form of the Mass it is heard aloud, as are the new Eucharistic prayers introduced in 1970. During the first part of the Canon, the Church prays that the LORD will accept the gifts, offerings, unspotted sacrifices she offers to Him. She then prays for the living and remembers the apostles and martyrs before beseeching the LORD to accept this offering as a sacrifice to deliver the elect from eternal damnation.

Then something wonderful happens. The priest then spreads his hands over the gifts of bread and wine. Just as the priests of the Old Law placed their hands on animal sacrifices to set them apart and sacrifice them to the LORD, the priests of the New Covenant do the same to the bread and wine, praying the Father that they become the Body and Blood of His Son, Jesus. This moment of the Mass is called the Epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit who will change the elements into God Himself. The graceful motion by which the priest’s hands flutter over the gifts symbolizes the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts to change them.

The priest then proceeds to the Institution Narrative, the Consecration. The bread and wine are consecrated separately just as they were at the Last Supper, using the very words of Our LORD as appear in the scriptures, although not in any one place. After each consecratory formula, the priest holds the element aloft for the faithful to see. The Body of Christ under the form of bread is showed to the faithful so that they may be stirred to devotion and hope in their salvation. As the LORD said, If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to Myself, and He brings to Himself at that moment all who gaze upon Him with living faith under the sacramental veils of bread and wine. The priest replaces the Host and the Chalice on the corporal, and genuflects: he bends the knee in adoration before the Divine Majesty.

The priest continues to pray that this sacrifice may be carried to the Father in glory and that all who participate in the sacrifice may be blessed. He remembers all the holy dead who sleep in hope of the resurrection, the souls in purgatory. Then, remembering his own sinfulness, the priest asks on behalf of the people that the LORD will remember all sinners and grant them entrance into the heavenly Kingdom. After Christ died, the centurion beat his breast and said, Truly, this is the Son of God and the priest does likewise, showing forth the humility of the sinner before the great sacrifice of Christ which he has just witnessed by touching his heart with a sign of repentance.

The Canon ended, the sacrifice is over. At this moment the Church dare not invent a prayer as she stands beneath the Cross of Jesus. Her sins taken away by the Passion and Death of Christ just re-presented, all the Church can do is pray the words that her LORD taught her to pray: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. This LORD’s Prayer contains seven petitions, and symbolises the seventh day of the week, when Jesus rested in the tomb. The priest prays the Embolism, Deliver us, LORD, from every evil, afterwards; in the Extraordinary Form it is prayed in the silence of the sepulcher. The Church awaits the Resurrection.

Letters from my Windmill

2010-08-05T06:51:00.000-07:00

Letters from my Windmill
Posted by Fr Christopher Smith

I have loved most of my life in cities. As a child, when I had to go and visit my grandparents in the country, visits which came with an alarming frequency, I always grumbled because I knew I would be Bored with a capital B. Accustomed as I was to television, cassette players, friends in the neighborhood and prank calling on the telephone, I never came to appreciate the pastoral beauties of rolling green hills, the smell of fresh hay, and the sounds of rivulets of water and whinnying horses. In fact, I pitied the country folk with the same kind of childish compassion that I had for the starving famine victims in Ethiopia my mother called to mind when I refused to eat collard greens. How sad that they could not live in a city.

The first time I came across Hilaire Belloc’s Path to Rome, I expected a book detailing the intellectual Sturm und Drang that accompanied converts to Catholicism like myself. Instead I found a travelogue which read like an enthusiastic anthropologist’s account of joys of Catholic peasantry. While I appreciated the oft-quoted line, “Wherever a Catholic sun doth shine, there’s always laughter and good red wine,” I imagined myself sipping a meticulously bioengineered Bordeaux at Café Flo in Paris while explaining why St Anselm’s arguments for the existence of God were meaningless, not drinking pastis out of a jug at a game of petanque with old men in Nimes.

Belloc’s “How to Travel Disguised as a Catholic Peasant” meant nothing to me at the time, because my own experience of the faith was wrapped up in extracting myself from fundamentalist Protestantism of the South and the spirit-eating virus of secularism everywhere.

I am firmly convinced that there is a way to develop a Catholic culture in the heart of the city. European immigrants to America had a Catholic culture in large cities like Boston and New York. Some will argue that such a culture still exists. My own experience of what remains of it has led me to see it as a Catholicism of convention rather than a Catholicism of conviction, something unable to sustain neither the convention nor the conviction in the long run.

I would like to think that celebrated liturgical centers like the Oratory in London and St John Cantius in Chicago can provide an oasis in the desert for urban-dwellers, that curious creature whose name is disturbingly close etymologically to bottom-dwellers. Yet, at the same time, even as I participated in a glorious Rogations Procession in an Anglo-Catholic garden in Manhattan, I still had the sense that there was a disconnect between liturgy and life.

There is a lot of talk about how to bring the liturgy to the people where they really are. If I live in the city and my idea of harvesting is a sale at Dean and DeLuca, can I really appreciate the earthy language of Rogations? Would it not be better then to scrap Ember Days entirely and replace them with something more “relevant,” like a protest against nuclear war? Need the language of faith be tied to an ancient agricultural world that none of us, including today’s farmers, inhabit?

It was reasoning like that which led Annibale Bugnini to argue that, since the hours of the day are no longer divided into seven Roman-inspired hours, the Breviary had to reflect that we now live in morning, afternoon and night. Prime was suppressed, and Terce, Sext and None have become Mid-some time of-day Prayer. Liturgical progress was declared a fait accompli because finally the liturgy was adjusted to the real life of believers. Just as no one would ever build a library of cassette tapes today when one can do marvels with MP3s and MP4s and I-things and other abbreviated devices that make our lives more efficient, many wish to remake the Church according to the mind of reason and plain common sense.

Anyone under the age of 30 can see that living together is the best preparation for marriage, so the Church must adjust its teaching to what young people reason as common sense. Young people love loud music and spectacle, so the liturgy does not lose any of its essence, the Church does not become any less Catholic if we all “get with the program” and cast off the shackles of anachronism and embrace the wisdom of the modern city. And so on and so on and so on.

Meanwhile accomodationist Catholicism of this very type has ended up in churches deprived of youth and the older folks engaging in pew-and-blog warfare over what they think the Church should be about. In trying to separate the wheat of the essence of the faith from what is taken to be the chaff of historical accretions and traditions and beliefs fallen into desuetude, no one seems to be able to make a hearty loaf of bread anymore that anyone wants to eat.

But that hearty loaf of bread which was Catholic culture was not the result of a recipe fabricated by rationalist gastronomes. It was the place where Catholic belief, prayer and practice, regulated by a liturgical rite, permeated the ordinary life of ordinary people. Belloc’s peasants did not set about to analyze or produce Catholic culture. They just lived it.

I am getting a glimpse of what this really means, and much to my chagrin, I see that the symbiosis of rural life and Catholic culture is quite natural in a way that the modern urban intellectual, especially if he is a Catholic of conviction, cannot always perceive. Authors like Flannery O’Connor, Evelyn Waugh, Jacques Maritain, or Francois Mauriac are all exemplars of a certain self-conscious Catholicism. They are all part of what has been termed a Catholic literary revival, even when their characters or theses are not “explicitly” Catholic at all.

All of them lived as urban-dwellers for whom the faith was an assent of the intellect to divine truth which formed their lives. Their faith is certainly authentic, but it is still essentially apologetic, because it is at variance with other conceptions of the human person, God, and the Church. Even though O’Connor’s stories reflect the life of the rural South, her theological anthropology is often the result of urban academia, of Teilhard de Chardin’s quest for meaning in the face of modern questions.

Compare this self-conscious, apologetic Catholicism with that of Alphonse Daudet. Practically unknown outside of France, this prolific nineteenth century writer lived the tension between the simple pleasures of a happy boyhood in Provence and the tortured glitterati of Paris. Catholicism permeates his stories of Southern France, not because of a desire to develop characters or a moral with a Catholic idea behind them, but because he describes the inhabitants of down-home country Provence as they are: shorn of pretext and filled with humour. Letters from My Windmill is a collection of stories of people Daudet knew growing up around Nimes. The faith of the characters is not self-conscious, but it is remarkably liturgical.

Today’s liturgical iconoclasts repeat like a mantra that, in the bad old days, no one knew what was going on because Mass was in Latin and the priest’s back was to the people. The characters of Daudet’s book, set as it is amidst Provencal peasantry of another century, would be all totally ignorant if the mantra were correct. The liturgoclasts would laugh at the shepherd explaining to Stephanette that a shooting star was a soul going up to paradise. But have they constructed any community-building rite more touching than that of an entire village continuing to give Old Cornille corn to grist in his windmill when everyone was sending their corn off to fancy new factories in the city?

One imagines the horror with which the modern liberated Christian reads an entire paragraph describing sumptuous processions, “the Pope’s soldiers singing in Latin, the rattles of the begging friars,” only to end in the bald assertion, “That was how the Popes of Avignon governed their people; that was why their people missed them when they were gone.”

Every page mentions causally that some event happened after Vespers, of how the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in every church so the faithful could pray for the sick Dauphin, why “there was not a soul about in the village streets, all were at High Mass” because “our lovely Provence, being Catholic, allows the soil to rest on Sundays.” The book is filled with amusing tale about the village clergy: how the chaplain of the chateau forgot to say Midnight Mass on Christmas because he was thinking of food, how Father Balaguere kept saying Benedicite instead of Dominus vobiscum and how “like hurrying wine-harvesters treading the grapes” priest and server “splatter about in the Latin of the Mass, sending splashes in all directions.”

One of the most side-splitting stories in the book is that of how a Norbertine canon saved his monastery from starving by inventing an elixir of fragrant herbs that everyone wanted. The priest then gets addicted to his potion, and even the Prior’s addition of prayers at the end of the Office for “Father Gaucher who is sacrificing himself in the interests of the community” can’t stop him from singing in his stupor. Daudet calls the clerical medicine man a “worthy parish priest” who then muses aloud, “Mercy me, suppose my parishioners heard me!”

I think that Daudet’s book is illustrative of many things: it gives the lie to the criticism that “fossilized Tridentine worship” had no place in the hearts of the people, and it shows that simple faith lived in a community of neighbors, priests and laity alike, produces joy. He does so not by making an argument, but by describing people whose lives were shaped by the faith. Daudet’s churchgoers are not angrily marking their territories as clergy or laypeople; their relationship is harmonious precisely because they accept the tradition as it has always been handed down to them, without rationalizing it or analyzing it. These are not unintelligent or unsophisticated people. They know their history, they know their crafts, they know their faith.

Crawling into Daudet’s abandoned windmill and enjoying these stories for their literary value has meant a lot to me. If I knew my faith, my craft, my history from my vantage point in the secular city as they did theirs from abandoned windmills! I no longer fear that leaving the city will bore me or that my faith will be shipwrecked if I can’t parry with the truly uncivilized, who live, neither in the countryside nor in the metropolis, but where God is a mystery to be ignored or exploited and not three Persons with whom to share an endle
at 12:19 AM
Labels: Fr. Christopher Smith
http://www.chantcafe.com/2010/08/letters-from-my-windmill.html#comments

Why Humility Opens Doors

2010-08-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

"Nice guys finish last," says the world. "The last will be first," replies Jesus. My guess is that the Lord of creation knows best who really wins in the end. And he says in this Sunday's gospel, "whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted" (Luke 14:11) To understand why the humble get ahead and why the meek shall in.

http://catholicexchange.com/2010/08/02/132941/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+catholicex+%28Catholic+Exchange%29

Without Chant, the Catholic People Have No Voice

2010-08-01T06:13:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Without Chant, the Catholic People Have No Voice
Posted by Jeffrey Tucker

Fr. Ruff posts this fascinating article from Orate Fratres, Feburary 22, 1936. It is called Why People Do Not Like Chant. The author is stricken with grief that everyone but Catholics seems interested in Gregorian chant. Meanwhile, as regards Catholics, "the people have truly no voice at all which can be claimed Catholic." If the situation was improving, which it was, this was interrupted by the ghastliness of the slaughter and upheaval called World War II.

I've attempted an HTML export here. I'm sure it has typos, but you get the drift.

Orate Fratres
February 22, 1936 NO. 4

WHY PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE GREGORIAN CHANT

IT is a well-known fact that the chant of the Church is not appreciated. Everyone who has been connected in some capacity or other with its restoration will bear witness to this statement. But no one really likes to admit it. It seems strange that, thirty-two years after the demand of the saintly Pius X for a return to the sacred chant, such wide-spread prejudices still prevail. This is the more painful, because Catholics are decidedly slower than non-Catholics in realizing the value of a treasure in their keeping.

Whereas here and there (and at that oftener than one would surmise) those outside the fold are curious to know about it, those of the flock are in general very reluctant to show any genuine interest. While a "Guild of Protestant Organists," or the department of music of some secular university, or again some musical group, will professa sincere eagerness to penetrate the charm of Gregorian melodies, Catholic institutions and societies (not to speak of parishes), have ignored the fact, sometimes even contemptuously, that there is such a thing as an art called Gregorian. Some readers who have not gone through the hard grind of introducing the chant, wonder, perhaps suspiciously, at this frank statement; but it would be convincingly vindicated by all teachers who have tried in some way or other to labor in the barren field. No illusion can prevail against such an acknowledgment; and it will serve the restoration of liturgical music better than a proud denial of guilt. Remedy can begin only where there is consciousness of the evil.

Why should it be within the Church herself that the chant is today mostly discredited? If there is an intrinsic value in Gregorian art, we have utterly failed to make it one with our religious concepts and our actual religious experiences. And thus we ask ourselves if the problem of the chant is not just as much of a religious as of a musical nature? This has long been our personal conviction. In other words, if our people cannot give vent to their inmost religious sentiments through the chant, it is because these sentiments have taken a direction entirely estranged from the inspiration of the chant. A break between the chant and our religious sentiment does not prove the chant wrong; it proves that we are wrong. For the chant was the most authentic utterance of religious experience in the early centuries.

It is deplorable that so far nothing has been able to overcome the prejudice against the chant, at least to a marked degree. It has, indeed, been welcomed in a few places; but in the majority of churches and chapels there is not even heard the faintest echo of its wondrous strains. We can by no means say that the chant is the general vehicle of Catholic devotion; in very few places indeed has its authority prevailed to the point where it is made the main source of inspiration in Catholic services. The chant was perhaps by "mission" the "voice of the Church"; it is not any longer the "voice of the people." And having lost its tradition, the people have truly no voice at all which can be claimed Catholic.

The most intruding vulgarity has invaded the t,emple, and holds fast against the most courageous attempts towards the restoration of the chant-attempts which, indeed, have been multiplied during the past twenty years. Many came to the rescue of the dishonored chant; paleographic science has vindicated its glorious authenticity and its unique place in the evolution of musical art; men of genius and taste have marvelled at its simple beauty; schools have opened their portals to students eager to learn about its beauty and form; demonstrations have proved that it can enhance, by its own power, the greatness of our liturgical services. But the choir loft has remained estranged.

Although the authority of the Church is unchallenged by the opposition, both of these have been traveling in parallel ways without ever meeting in open clash. While the decrees of the Holy See and the ordinances of the ordinaries have repeated or interpreted the principles of the Motu proprio with an ever increasing clearness, choir and people alike have been drifting along carefree and forgetful. And perhaps sheer authority will never give back to the faithful the voice which they have lost. Chant is not to be confused with a matter of faith. Were it such it could be enforced through penalty; but such is not likely ever to be the case.

Pius X was the first to realize this difference. This he expressed in his introductory letter to the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, when he insisted on having obedience prompted by the knowledge of the motives which command a reintroduction of the chant into Catholic life. Undoubtedly Catholics do not like it because they do not appreciate it. And until they are educated to like and enjoy it, it is unreasonable to hope that they will sing the chant.

Therefore, instead of deploring sine fine this sad lack ofappreciation, let us survey the groups which make up Catholic opinion in the matter. After we have studied them, remedial plans can be suggested. Proceeding from the altar to the choir-loft, we will meet the clergy, the children, the congregation, and the mixed choir.

The restoration of the chant depends largely on the stand taken towards it by the clergy. We take this opportunity to mention this attitude though our doing so requires respectful criticism. Would it be offending in any way to say that the clergy at large does not profess an enthusiastic admiration for the chant? Is it not true that priests in general are not crediting Gregorian melodies with being the "supreme form of liturgical music" and doubt very much its practicability? Such a skeptical attitude has its excuse: most members of the clergy never received a good foundation in the knowledge of the chant, and many have been quite disgusted with the failure of their loyal attempts to introduce it in their churches.

However, one would not be bold today in asking the following questions: "What would eventually be the vote of the clergy, should a free poll be organized on the question of restoring or rejecting the chant from our liturgical services?" "Can it be said that a concerted effort' has been attempted by an organized priesthood to bring about the restoration commanded by the Holy See?" "Is the study of Gregorian chant still a side-line or rather (what it should be) a main feature of the program of education in our minor and major seminaries?" Whatever answer you give, blame or excuse, it remains evident that the lack of efficient leadership among the clergy in this matter is apt to have a disastrous influence on the opinion formed by the laity. And this is sufficient to diagnose the most important cause of the great difficulties encountered in the work of restoration.

Close to the sanctuary we meet the children. And what they feel about the chant is a very important matter. Their opinion is likely to be free from unjust prejudice, and everyone is conscious that it has an important influence on the future. American children show a delightful openness of heart towards the chant. You may call to the witness-stand all those who have ever worked with them in any State and none will deny this optimistic affirmation.

Exception made for rare, forlorn places, and even there, they always respond to an intelligent presentation by a soulful rendition. Children never dislike the chant, and are prompt to express both their lovely appreciation of it as well as their sharp criticism of vulgar sacred music.

This attitude calls to mind the ex are infantium of the psalm. More than once we had to learn from the little ones what our sophistication or indifference had forgotten and sometimes forsaken. Before the children discovered for us the chaste beauties of the chant, they brought back into the world true Eucharistic life. And their spontaneous return to charming Gregorian songs was preceded by their intimate friendship with Jesus in the divine Eucharist. Now then, we have the experimental proof that like or dislike of the sacred chant is more a religious than a musical problem.

The congregation presents a more complex attitude: it is neither "likes" nor "dislikes." It is the same apathy into which the loss of liturgical cooperation has brought them. How could they be expected to sing with pleasure the musical expression of a prayer which has no longer any meaning for them, especially since they have been gradually reduced to mere onlookers and listeners? This attitude is more or less passive; but all pastors who have tried to overcome it know how hard they have to fight and how many times they have to retreat before a new effort. However, the faithful in the pews appreciate the chant. It has been a repeated experience with the writer that if you do not advertise Gregorian chant with the undiplomatic publicity that it is the music imposed by the Church, but just prepare a service well with a group, many comments will attest that the congregation is pleased. And they all will emphasize that "it was very prayerful and soul-stirring." We ave had so far but a single inscance to the contrary; it came from a "high-society center."

It is in the choir-10ft that the enemy is entrenched as in a fortress. Oftentimes the pastor looks on his choir as his crux, and rightly so, though he may at times forget the good will, the regular attendance, the fidelity of many members. The choir members are not to be blamed; the institution itself is the deep-rooted evil. It has grown and outworn itself into a spirit entirely opposed to the essential objectives of a liturgical choir. It is neither religious nor musical. A religious, a liturgical, a parochial spirit are usually well-nigh impossible with the mode of enrollment, the lack of religious functioning, the location for singing; a musical spirit cannot be formed with the usual repertoire of vulgarities or secondrate music which has been for so long the lot of Catholic choirs.

Add to that the sore fact that many of those who assume (or have to assume) the mission of directing the choir are not prepared to exercise a real authority to educate their group. Their musicianship and their knowledge of the liturgy are too elementary. Unfortunately, improvised musical directors, unless they be humble enough (and some are indeed), will either discredit the chant which they do not appreciate or will ruin it by lack of real presentation. And even when they do fulfill their task, they will encounter many difficulties which at times look insuperable to the most courageous pioneer.

From the examination of groups which make up this criticism, as well as from general considerations, we may sum up the reasons why the chant is not liked, or positively disliked:

1. The loss of that special spiritual feeling which comes only with the experience of liturgical life.
2. The lack of positive leadership impossible to many priests who did not have the opportunity to study the sacred chant welt
3. The passive attitude of the laity in the liturgical services.
4. The incomplete formation of many of our choir-directors.
5. The deformed spirit of our mixed choirs.

The picture looks dark. Perhaps it is well to see it thus. But there is a very bright spot among the shadows, and so the situation is much more hopeful than is our description of it. It will be the object of the entire series of these articles until next Advent to propose remedies. We ask the reader patiently to wait for them.

ERMIN VITRY, O.S.B.
at 8:20 AM
Labels: Jeffrey Tucker
3 comments:
Andrew said...
I think this article is revealing. Imagine if Christians gradually ceased to pray the psalms. Over time the language and imagery of the psalms would become foreign to them and in a few generations the people would find very little in them that they could really take hold of and make spiritually their own. This is exactly our present problem with the chant. Much of its inner beauty and power is only intelligible to a select few who have taken it upon themselves to educate themselves in it. What a sad state we are in. If only the Second Vatican Council's mandate for active participation had led to a real effort to form the People of God in this wondrous music. The liturgical movement of the early 20th Century was certainly sabotaged by something foreign to the spirit of the liturgy....

July 31, 2010 11:18 AM
Jake Tawney said...
Rather than posting a short comment, I wrote a follow piece on this article available here:

http://causafinitaest.blogspot.com/2010/07/article-on-sacred-chant-1936.html

In general, however, I though the article was timely enough to have been written just yesterday. In fact, on my first skim through the piece, its publication date alluded me. It was only on my second pass through that I realized it was written in 1936.

July 31, 2010 12:57 PM
Anonymous said...
Greetings,

When Jews returned to Isreal, when they did not speak Hebrew people would say: Speak like a Jew. It was their cry to re-establish Hebrew as a spoken Language.

Perhaps we should have a similar statement: Sing like a Catholic!

July 31, 2010 6:21 PM

http://www.chantcafe.com/2010/07/without-chant-catholic-people-have-no.html#more

Traditional Mass for Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

2010-07-14T05:04:00.000-07:00

August 15 Sunday, 2PM

Introit- proper
Kyrie IX
Gloria XI
Gradual- proper
Alleluia- proper
Credo III
Offertory- proper
Sanctus XI
Agnus Dei XI
Communio- proper
(Motet? Ave Maria (Arcadelt)
Salve regina (or we could have an organ postlude)

July Schola Calendar

2010-07-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
July 10, 24

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Panem de Caelo
Salve Regina

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
July 18, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Entrance: Praise to the Lord (201)

Kyrie (857)
Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord

Offertory : Proper (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper (schola)

Communion Hymn: Beautiful Savior (204)

Recessional: Salve Regina (708)

Back from the 'Mountain'; a Reflection

2010-07-03T06:45:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone. I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer. I wanted to share my experience of seven days of
'musical heaven,' sacred music Colloquium XX, I attended last week. It was held in Duquesne Univ. in PA. There were about 250 people (including many young people) there. Everyday we sang (prayed), learned and discussed sacred music and Liturgy that our Church and Pope wish us to have in our local parishes. We had a beautiful Mass everyday with many priests who also came to learn more about sacred Liturgy that is authentic to the Church's teachings and tradition. The Masses were incredibly beautiful (I guess this sort of things you cannot describe with words). We had both Novus Ordo (new form of the Mass) and Traditional Mass, and both of them were so reverant and sacred with music that is the integral part of the Mass, that you cannot see much boundaries between the two forms.
Was Vatican II a rupture or a continuation of the Tradition into our time? Is 'active participation' truly meant for the congregation doing so many things and singing everything during Mass? or doing our roles by uniting ourselves with the priest and offer to Christ? Do we truly understand the teaching of
'lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi?' The way we worship (pray) leads to the way we believe, and it leads to the way we live. As a musician, I can say that since we know that singing well is praying twice, therefore the way we sing in Mass will lead to the way we believe and lead to the way we live. I learned and was confirmed to believe
'sing like a Catholic, believe like a Catholic and live like a Catholic.

"The Church's faith precedes the faith of the believers who is invited to adhere to it. When the Church celebrates the sacraments, she confesses the faith recieved from the apostles." (CCC1124)
Somehow music in Mass became a loophole after Vatican II. Music in Mass cannot be decided by the tastes of any individuals. There are norms and rubrics of the Church for sacred music and sacred instruments for Mass. Somehow they have been forgotten by many Catholcs. I believe the Church's own music is going to be restored in the Catholic Litrugy in near future. I was very surprised to see more and more young people at the Colloquium every year. There's a hope in our future.

Here's a link to recordings to the Colloquium.
http://music.dierschow.com/2010Colloquium/

I strongly recommand Fr. Kirby's talks. (scroll down, almost to the bottom, to the breakout sessions ) There were only 3 presentations, and all of us who were there knew that the talk should have been for 5 days and all day. After listening to his talk at the Colloquium, I felt like I was struck by a thunder. He is so much in love with Christ, and his love for Church, Liturgy and chants are not seperable.

Enjoy! (I'll be making CDs of his talks. If anybody want them for your prists, let me know.)

"The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given first place in liturgical services." (Section 116, the Second Vatican Council, in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy)

This is what the Church says (has been said). How many parishes do you know that follow her instruction as above ?

Mia
(Save the Liturgy, Save the world)

Link to Father Z's excellent explanation on "and with your spirit'

2010-06-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/06/wherein-fr-z-drills-into-and-with-your-spirit-and-makes-a-proposal/

Schola: June Calendar

2010-05-26T04:06:00.000-07:00

At OLPH (practice on Mondays at 7:30)
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
June 5, 19

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Salve Mater (June 5)
Panem de Caelo (June 19)
Salve Regina

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
June 12

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Panem de Caelo
Salve Regina

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
June 20, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Entrance: All People that on Earth Do Dwell (313)

Kyrie (857)
Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God

Offertory : Proper (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei (priest)

(all)
Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper (schola)

Communion Thanksgiving Hymn: Jesus, the Very Thought of You (731)

Recessional: Salve Regina (708)

Children's Schola (practice on Mondays at 1:30 at OLPH)
First Friday Mass, June 4
OLPH 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Ametur
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Gustate et Videte

Ninefold Kyrie

2010-05-11T06:49:00.000-07:00

I am writing this in the blog to post in the forum (because somehow there's danger of losing my writing if I directly write in the forum) where currently there is a discussion going on about ninefold Kyrie.

Since we thankfully still have an 'option' to have ninefold Kyrie in Novus Ordo (GIRM,52), children's schola sings ninefold Kyrie. I have a couple of older boys starts the first Kyrie eleison and sing the alternating parts by themselves, and the rest of the schola sings with the congregation. Also in the leaflet I hand out to the congregation for the Latin text and translation, I type in bold the part that congregation sings with a short explanation under it, something like (9 fold Kyrie, sung in alternation with cantors, please join in bolds) - hopefully they will know it without this explanation when they get used to it. I also told them about the tradtional structure of Kyrie, 3 times to the Father 3 times to the Son and 3 times to the Holy Spirit, and also the nine choirs of angels around the altar. A lady I know who likes contemporary music and happens to be in the Mass when the children sing, asked me later why they sing Kyrie differently. I told her briefly about the tradition, and she was amazed saying " there's so much in the Liturgy..." This was a chance to share our Catholic faith through traditions in our Liturgy, even if it was a just a small part. (I think it's a good idea to have a corner for "Note about Music" in the church bulletin where you can provide interesting facts about music, explanation of a neum per week and so on.)

Musically each Kyrie eleison of Gregorian chant has its own unque ternary form that fits the texts beautifully. While trying to make it easy for the congregation and aiming for the immediate result of their singing, 6 fold is destroying this beautiful form of Kyrie. When our Holy Father talks about the beauty in art and music, he emphasizes the importance of the form. When we sing 6 fold Kyrie, we are giving up this beauty for the sake of convenience. In order to experience the divine beauty and love, there must be some sort of sacrifice and effort on our part also. If we keep seeking for our convenience and easy way to worhsip God, what are we going to have left in our worship?
If you wish to dare to be a bit 'extra ordinary' and inpire the congregation to sing and experience the beauty even with the simple Ordinary parts, there are ways to do so (although it might take a long time and hard work). One of my children's schola, which is now getting used to ninefold Kyrie, asked, "why adults sing only 6 fold Kyrie?" Hmmm, don't have a good answer. (Maybe it's too hard for adults or are they too busy? I don't know.)

Traditional Mass in PA

2010-05-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

What a beautiful Mass we had yesterday. I'm very grateful that our schola members were able to sing for the Mass and receive so many graces at the beautiful Mass. To our surpise, it was a high Mass with deacons, seminarians and many altar boys. The priest who sang so beautifully was a self taught celebrant of Traditional Mass (I guess that not many seminarians learn Traditional Mass in the seminary?), and I was told that he started from scratch. Even if the church itself was not set up for the Traditional Mass, they were able to modify it to celebrate the Mass. It gives me hope that someday we could invite him over, as he mentioned, and have this kind of Traditional Mass in this area. I see and hear more and more people wanting to experience the Traditional Mass. This is something to pray about as we work on learning and studying Gregorian chant and make them more beautiful in our singing. I was also introduced to a few Korean priests and seminarians after the Mass. I was very glad to meet them.

What a beautiful Mother's day I had yesterday(and afterwards, thankful for the generous dishes of Chinese carryout to feed the whole family and scrumptious cheese dessert my 10 year old girl made)!

Sacred, Beautiful, Universal

2010-04-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

SACRED, BEAUTIFUL, & UNIVERSAL: Colloquium XIX from Corpus Christi Watershed

Video clips to watch on Sacred music

2010-04-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

True Liturgical music unites us and helps us to become better than we are.

http://www.gloria.tv/?media=60058

http://www.gloria.tv/?media=65189

http://en.gloria.tv/?media=66068
(http://vimeo.com/8941838)

The Beauty of Procession in Mass

2010-04-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

(in response to the question in witnessing Procession from musicasacra forum)

At the Potifical Mass, the Introit was sung after the Procession, not at the Procession. People who don't want to sing and don't want to be distracted in witnessing the Procession should be allowed to do so.
Many people in pews in our local parish already told me that there are too many songs they have to sing in Mass. And when my friends came to Traditional Mass, they were so relieved that they dodn't have to sing so many songs and get distracted by trying to sing all those songs, (because they've been told by the pastor and music directors that if they don't sing, they are not participating), and finally be able to focus on Mass. Many people in pews have to miss other important parts of the Mass, because they have to bury their faces in hymnals and struggle with songs. If 'hymns' are optional in Mass and not required parts, according to the Church's instruction, people should also have an option to sing or not. No Catholics should be forced to sing the parts that are not part of the Catholic Mass.
If one wanted to have more congregational singing, why not help them to sing more their parts of the Mass, "Responses" and "Ordinary parts" (especailly those in Latin as the Church instructed). They will be able to memoriaze them in time and won't need hymnals soon. And once they learn, they will be glad that they can sing the parts of the Mass, and truly participate in Mass, not just participate in singing. Whether hymns are licit or wisely chosen, hymns, especially those that are not liturgical, but individual devotional hymns, have been overused in Mass, and the Catholics in pews start to feel that more and more. I think those hymns and other songs can be sung more in adoration or in other times outside the Mass.

How can we come to an experience of God?

2010-04-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

Credo: Trite music blocks our ears to the divine in the liturgy
Our worship enables us to enter another time and another dimension - a realm of experience beyond our ordinary human experience

John Shepherd

How can we come to an experience of God? It’s a challenge, because no matter how much we read the Bible, study theology, formulate creeds, devise systems of belief and draw up rules for best Christian practice, all these efforts are only partial, tentative explorations into a dimension that lies beyond any definitive grid we could ever hope to impose.

Which brings us to the worship of the liturgy, for it is in worship that we are immersed in the experience of God. It is here that we engage with the living God.

It is in the liturgy that we are able to enter into another consciousness, probe a deeper reality, strive for a sense of transcendence which lifts us above the mundane, and in the words of psalmist, sets us on a rock that is higher than ourselves. Our worship enables us to enter another time and another dimension — a realm of experience beyond our ordinary human experience, beyond all our known thoughts and understandings.

In monastic terms, the liturgy is the path towards an exalted “ecstasy”, a flight into the cloud of unknowing, the place where God is, and where the true contemplation of the creative stillness of God is possible.

And this is a reality which is beyond the ability of historians, theologians, linguists, biblical scholars or even pastoral liturgists to express. Their contributions may even hinder rather than help. The intensity and intangibility of this experience can only be expressed through the arts.

This is why music of quality is a critical element within the life of the Church. It is a necessity, not a luxury. It is neither a frivolous confection nor an elitist distraction from the real business of faith. Music of quality, in the context of worship, does not entertain or divert. It reveals.

By means of evolving harmonies, rhythms, textures, modulations, orchestrations, melodies, counterpoints, imitations, this rich art form has the potential to create an aural environment which enables us to contemplate the mystery of God.

Music of this calibre draws us into an engagement so profound that its sense can never be exhausted. Any work of art, be it sculpture, painting, literature, poetry or music, whose implications are immediately obvious and can instantly be grasped can never enlist our imagination, and so cannot equip us for mystery; and what cannot equip us for mystery cannot equip us for God.

This is why the Church should have no truck with banality. Yet, sadly, this is not universally the case. Too often, in a quaintly deluded attempt to achieve so-called relevance with a largely unidentified and notional constituency, the words of worship are denuded both of intellectual challenge and poetic imagery, and the music of worship is reduced to the most basic and arid of formulae. This toxic combination has achieved what many thought impossible. The emptying of our churches of those with minds to think, and emotions to inspire.

The power of liturgy was unerringly expressed by the prophet Job (iv, 15): “A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.” Yet this power can all too easily be surrendered in favour of pedestrian prose and incompetent music. Badly constructed melodies and harmonies can only ever be transitory simply because they are musically inept. Rhythmic patterns devoid of subtlety, trite words incapable of stimulating any kind of imagery constitute some of the most powerful impediments to the possibility of encountering the divine within the context of the liturgy.

Not only does this behaviour testify to technical deficiency (an odd concept in itself for the Church of God to endorse), it offers nothing but spiritual impoverishment to a world clamouring for spiritual fulfilment.

And it goes without saying that the last refuge for those who deny the possibility of a depth of experience of this dimension will always be the accusation of elitism.

True art transcends the ordinary. It invites us to contemplate a presence beyond itself. It entangles us in the divine web of ultimate reality, and so creates an aural environment in which we can experience, in the words of Anselm of Bec, the presence of “that than which nothing greater can be thought”.

The Very Rev Dr John Shepherd is Dean of Perth, Australia

Pontifical Mass at the National Shrine in DC, Sat. 4/24/10 at 1 PM

2010-04-25T05:22:00.000-07:00

Frankly I didn't think the huge shrine would be so filled today. When my family got there about 12:15, it was already packed, and it was hard to find a pew.

It is almost impossible to describe the beauty and sacredness of today's Mass with words (especially with my limited English).

It was the most beautiful Mass I've ever been. And although I hope there will be more, this might have been my 'once in a life time' one, and it was truly a blessing for me that I was able to be there.

The procession was magnificent, worthy of Christ's Holy Sacrifice and His Church Miliitant leading us to His Holy place with the help of the Church Triumphant and the Church Suffering. And I'm very grateful that I was able to witness that.

The bishop's homily was very comforting to us especially during the time when our Church is persecuted so harshly these days. He reminded us, "Suffering only reveals Christ." I think I witnessed that today.

There was a elderly Afro-american lady in front of me. While her friends might be singing sprituals or gospel music in their worship services, here she is all alone listneing to Latin prayers and praying so eagerly. Especially during Agnus Dei, listening to beautiful heavenly choir's singing, she was praying so hard, I could feel the intensity of her prayers. Her hands were tremblinsg. She was praying with Christ, for our sins, sins of the world, and for our Church and our Pope. Often times people around me during Mass distracts me easily, but this time I was so inpired. I wanted to pray with her eagerly like her. We became one mystical body of Christ through prayers, one race through Christ, and one family through our Church. (We didn't need to sing ' We are one body...' with guitar chords, or hear prayers in different languages to remember what different races we are. Only thing remains with us is that we all are the children of God through Chirst and His Church Universal, because the Beauty and the Holiness of the Mass reminds us of that.)

The Mass was absolutely the Sacrifice of Triumph and Victory of our Church and our faith. I will remember this Mass for a long time, and hopefully my kids will never forget this beautiful Catholic Worship they experienced today, and each one of them will always be proud of being a Catholic.

-Today I was truly remionded that life is full of joy, not because we have many 'fun activities,' but because we get to find the ways to be close to God and receive so many Graces and can share them with others.-

Schola Calendar: May

2010-04-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

Traditional Mass on May 9.

Time: May 9th (Sunday) 3PM (we will decide what time we will meet for practice there. Maybe about 2:15?)

Location: Saint Joseph's Church, on the east side of York (just three turns off of I-83).

Music list

Before Mass: Salve Regina (Solemn tone ) and/or Salve Mater

Kyrie xi
Gloria viii
Credo i
Sanctus viii
Agnus viii (or iv if we don't have time to learn viii)
Psalm tone propers (or Daniel Page can sing these)
http://www.renegoupil.org/chants/417/files/590/

Jesu dulcis (communion hymn)

Regina caeli

From Daniel Page's email:

"The Mass is at 3:00. The priest is an incredibly kind, Capuchin Franciscan. He sings the Mass extremely well—hardly anybody in his order cares about the EF, but he has discovered it on his own and learned from the FSSP priest in Harrisburg. He will be going to a workshop at Saint John Cantius in June. He sometimes has seminarians from Mount Saint Mary come so that he can have Solemn High Mass, which is wonderful. He started saying an extra EF Low Mass every weekday at 6 am during Lent and decided to keep going indefinitely! Unfortunately, he will be transferred someplace else this summer, so the sung Mass in York (twice/month) will probably stop. Saint Joseph’s is a not very attractive modern church, but an ok place to sing in. The Mass on the 4th Sunday is in the downtown church, which is beautiful (altar rail, etc.) and has amazing acoustics."

At OLPH (practice on Mondays at 7:30)
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
May 1, 15, 29

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Salve Regina (Solemn tone, May 1 and 15)
Panem de Caelo (May 29)
Regina Caeli (May 1 and 15)
Salve Regina (Simple tone, May 29)

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
May 8, 22

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Salve Regina (Solemn tone, May 8)
Salve Mater (May 22)
Regina Caeli

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
May 16, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Entrance: Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise (188. vs. 1, 2, 3)

Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
The Lord is King, the most high over all the earth

Offertory : Proper (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei

Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper (schola)

Communion Thanksgiving Hymn: Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (751)

Recessional: Regina Caeli (174)

Children's Schola (practice on Mondays at 1:30 at OLPH)
First Friday Mass, May 7

OLPH 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Regina Caeli(prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Star Above the Ocean
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Salve Mater

Schola Calendar: April

2010-04-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

At OLPH (practice on Mondays at 7:30)
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
April 17

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Gustate et Videte
Regina Caeli

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
April 10, 24

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Gustate et Videte
Regina Caeli

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
April 18, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Entrance: The Day of Ressurection (172)

Gloria (858)

Responsorial Psalm:
I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.

Offertory : Proper (schola)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei

Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Doxology: Amen

Agnus Dei (862)

Communion Proper (schola)

Communion Thanksgiving Hymn: I Know that My Redeemer Lives (621)

Recessional: Regina Caeli (174)

Mass at the Shrine of St. Anthony

2010-02-23T09:58:00.000-08:00

April 11. Sunday at 3 PM
Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)

Choral Prelude: Ametur
(May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved, forever)

Entrance: Introit (Simple Proper in English: schola)
Kyrie XVI
Gloria VIII
Responsorial Psalm (in English)
Alleuia
Offertory: Ubi Caritas et Amor (Where charity and love: schola)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Communio:Gustate et Videte (Taste and See; Proper for general use: schola)
Communion Thanksgiving Hymn: Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All
Recessional: Regina Caeli

Schola: March Calendar

2010-02-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

At OLPH (practice on Mondays at 7:30)
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
Mar. 6, 20

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ave Verum
Ubi Caritas
Ave Regina Caelorum

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Mar. 13, 27

Kyrie XVII
Gospel Accl.
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ave Verum
Ubi Caritas
Ave Regina Caelorum

Stations of the Cross
Resurrection church
Mar. 12, 26 Friday at 7:30 (warm-up at 7 PM)

opening, Attende Domine
Stabat Mater, Latin and English for each verse
Benediction, 59, O Salutaris and GCII 132, Tantum Ergo
Holy God We Praise Thy Name

Good Friday
Resurrection church
April 2,

Vexilla Regis Prodeunt (during collection)
Ecce Lignum Crucis

At St. Martin's (Little Sisters of the Poor)
Mar.21, Sunday, 10:30 (warm-up at 10AM)

Entrance: Forty Days and Forty Nights (139)

Kyrie (857)

Responsorial Psalm:
The Lord has great things for us; we are filled with joy.

Offertory : Attende Domine (124)*
(Please join us in the refrain the second time)
Refrain: Attende Domine, et miserere, quia peccavimus tibi
(Look down O Lord, and have mercy, for we have sinned against thee.)

Sanctus (859)

Mysterium Fidei and Amen

Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine,
et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias
(We proclaim Thy death, O Lord, and we confess Thy resurrection, until Thou comest.)

Agnus Dei (862)
Communion Proper (schola)
From the Depths We Cry to Thee (129)

Recessional: Ave Regina Caelorum

Ave Regina caelorum, Ave Domina Angelorum: Salve radix, salve porta, Ex qua mundo lux est orta: Gaude Virgo gloriosa, Super omnes speciosa, Vale, o valde decora, Et pro nobis Christum exora.
(Hail, Queen of the heavens, Hail, ruler of the angels: Hail, root, hail, portal From whom light has shone to the world. Hail, Virgin most glorious, Beautiful above all, Farewell, O most comely, And pray to Christ for us. )

Children's schola (practice on Mondays at 1:30 at OLPH)
First Friday Mass, Mar.5
OLPH 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria (prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Gospel Accl.
Attende Domine
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
O Panis Dulcissime

Holy Hour for Vacations

2010-02-19T07:32:00.000-08:00

Holy Hour for Vocations and Benediction
with Gregorian chant

On Feb.21 (Sunday), 12:10 PM
at St. Benedict Church in Baltimore
saintbenedict.org
2612 Wilkens Ave, Baltimore, MD 21223(410) 947-4988

Chant List for Holy Hour and Benediction

1. Anima Christi (Children sing; during Preparation of the Holy Hour)

2. O Salutaris Hostia (everyone)

Prayer

3. Adoro te devote (children and men)
4. O Panis Dulcissime (children)
5. Ave verum Corpus (women)
6. Jesu Dulcis Memoria (Adults and children)

Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 3:8 - 10

7. Veni Creator Spiritus (children)
8. Ubi caritas (adults & children)
9. Adoramus te Christe (Adults)

Prayer for Vocations

10. Salve Regina (Solemn tone, Adults)
11. Ave Regina caelorum (men)

Scripture Reading: Matthew 4:18 - 22

12. Ave Maria (Mode VI, children)
13. Ave Maria (Mode I, children)

Benediction

14. Tantum Ergo (everyone)

Priest: Panem de caelo praestitisti eis
Response (all): Omne delectamentum in se habentem

Prayer (priest)

Divine Praises (chanted by cantor/everyone.
Music and words are at the end of this packet.)

Final chant (schola)

15. Christus vincit

Children's Schola Reminder

Music
We numbered the music in their hymnal with sticky note flag according to the program. Please check them before you come on Sunday. This way children can find the music easily without making noise for looking and turning the pages. (the list of the music is attached here again. skip the numbers for the music they don't sing or are not found in the hymnal. The copies of the music that are not in the hymnal will be given to them on Sunday.)

Time
In the calendar, the arrival time wasn't quite clear. (my mistake.) The Holy Hour will be continued from the Mass without break (similar to what we do on First Friday Mass). So if you can make it to 11AM Mass at St. Benedict, please arrive 20 minutes before the Mass, so we can get settled and prepare before the Mass starts and participate in the Mass. (will sit near the organ)

If you can't make it to Mass, please have the children come quietly to where schola is sitting , pews near the organ. (children in the front and the adults behind.) Since the Mass will be going on, please be discreet.

Refreshments
Like last year, please bring something to share after the Holy Hour. Leave the food in the room next to the church (first room on the right.) Drinks and paper products will be taken care of. And I just ordered 4 dozens of donuts. (We will share with whoever can join us. But most of all I think the children deserve some treats.)

Father Paschal is an amazing priest who kept the church door open in this rough neighbour (for 25 years). I'd like to help our fellow parish with what we can. This is very evangelizing for schola children. There will also be a seminarian, according to Father. He will have a short 'reflection' before the Benendiction. I'd appreciate your paryers for this occasion that our beautiful sung prayers will pleasing to God and He will help many young people open their hearts to His calling.

Adult Schola reminder

Arrival time
10:40 (before 11 AM Mass)

Those who cannot make it to the Mass, should come before 12. The Mass will be still going on, so please be discreet. The schola will be next to the organ.

Attire
White top and black bottom

Refreshments
Men - one bottle of 2-liter soda and a good size juice of any kind

Women - any finger food

Leon and Lucy - paper products, cups, plates and napkins

(I don't know how many people to expect to be there, I made 70 copies of the program packet for the congregation. I will bring 4 dozen donuts and some home made treats.)

Please make sure we all know the order of the music and marked. (I think this is as important as our singing in order to make this Holy Hour beautiful and prayerful.)

Thanks,
Mia

Saint Bernadette Church: The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Candlemas Day

2010-02-12T06:37:00.000-08:00

Saint Bernadette Church
The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Candlemas Day by Steve Taylor

Father, thank you for the blessing gift of this holy night. Thank you for guiding your people to rediscover this place of pure Latin liturgy in our time. Thank you for this renaissance in our midst, of our Church’s holy culture and life, which is at the service of Jesus, who comes to us through His Church, in word and sacrament.

Thank you for your servant Monsignor Smith and for words from the Holy Spirit. Lord, help me to summarize these words here that they may bless, nourish and elevate whoever would receive them. Thank you that the nourishment of the Eucharist does not stop, ever manifold is it in movements and ways.

Homily and ajoining thoughts

Monsignor began by saying calmly and emphatically: “It is such a little thing…”. How Mary and Joseph, fulfilling the obligations of the law, came to the temple to give to God, formally and completely, the firstborn Son they already knew was special - by the Annunciation and by His birth - who already belonged to the Lord. He shared that for people who love God and live in the life of God, essence is the simple, little things we do.

“In this deep winter night”, he said, “we are all here to honor this humble thing they did.” And pondering, also said: “Why do we walk about this church in candled procession?” In the Catholic Church, through the centuries, honoring tradition and the covenant: this is what we do. We are connected in lineage to the Holy Family as they are connected to the ancient fathers of Israel.

Monsignor affirmed that the feast of the Purification has no particular glory attached to it, because we are acknowledging a simple act. The Presentation of the Lord in the Temple is akin to His baptism. Christ did not require baptism, for He had no original sin for removal; but that those same waters would be consecrated for sinners who would follow Him. The Presentation parallels this; Christ already belongs to God, but Joseph and Mary simply did what is done, in accord with mosaic law. Jesus is no special exception, He is openly tendered. He is with us (already...and always), ordinary, like His own, in every way, save one. She submits that her Jesus, by this presentation, will too, know and be with all His kindred Israel.

With His people and with us today, Christ joins in solidarity, in simplicity.

Monsignor noted that a further confusion might seem to arise when pondering the need for a purification of the Blessed Virgin, who is the Immaculate Conception. But she humbles herself, submitting to what all of God's temple are to do after birthing. Of her Jewish ancestors, she is not exception either.

A mercy was pointed out; that we may worry about whether or not we are fulfilling God’s law, with our many religious observances and scrupulous activities, motivated sometimes anxiously, by the goal of holiness - by whether we measure up. But this is not God’s want for us; we are only to live out faithfully the simple things, tending the small stuff; not the fevers or heights or compulsions [of a heroic piety]. St Augustine speaks on this: “We are striving for great things; let us lay hold of little things, and we shall be great” We need look only to Joseph and Mary, our model parents.

Thank you Father for your servants in the Chantry choir, for giving them these loving labors of singing, learning and rehearsing. Thank you that all the music spoke in the most transparent way, lightly but exquisitely assisting your glory and mercy. Thank you for letting the beauty of polyphony bless us, heal us, nourish us and consecrate us.

Thank you Father for opening a little window of eternity, to the place where You are rightly worshipped. We are immersed in this rite, firmly on earth but glimpsing heaven. Father we are recovering that precious sense of space, beyond technological entanglements, worries and distractions. Beyond the secular world’s limited sense of time, beyond modernity’s bitter fruit of grossly shrunken human expectations, beyond our self-inflicted incapacity to breath the divine. Father You are the only Grandeur and we are starving for You because of our own wayward ignorance and blind illiteracy, a people who have wandered so far from You that it struggles awfully to perceive what is transcendent.. This must be what You mean by fitting praise and worship; to enter where You dwell, to get outside the strictly and comparatively human. Be still we must, to know that you alone are God.

We praise You dear God, in the candles blessed and solemnly distributed like alms to the poor; and in the lighting of these torches of faith brought from the altar by your very youngest of stewards. Light given to us by children! Thank you for saturating us in incense, granting us herein the faintest whiff of Paradise in prayer.

Thank you that The Procession takes place, all bearing lighted candles, as your twenty robed servants, traced the perimeters of the cruciform (church) while William Byrd praised in Antiphon, the while:

Adorna thalamum tuum Sion
Prepare thy bridal chamber, O Sion,
Et suscipe regem Christum.
And receive Christ the King
Amplectere Marian quae est caelestis porta
Embrace Mary who is the gate of heaven
Ipsa enim portat Regem gloriae novi luminis
for she beareth the King of the new light of glory.

Subsisti Virgo adducens manibus
She remaineth a virgin, leading by her hand
Filium ante luciferum genitum
a son born before the morning star
Quem accipiens Simeon in ulnas suas
Taking him up in his arms, Simeon
Praedicavit populis Dominum eum
proclaimed him to the people
Dominum eum esse vitae et mortis
to be the Lord of life and death
Et Salvatorem mundi
and the Savior of the world.

Here now is the chamber lit and it is we who welcome Him as if today first greeted that moment. And we do, as Beauty is always beginning and forever young. Today is always an acceptable time to welcome Him, to prepare ourselves for Him, to make of ourselves a worthy temple for Him to come. Have mercy on us O God, lowly we are, “I am what I am”. Let us too be purified that our hearts are given and open to Him in faith this night of Purification. Let us preserve this lit flame of faith and bear it within us, remembering our baptism, and every blessing and gift and grace bestowed on us in Christ. For the candles we received this day, let us kiss them and in the morning begin anew to hold them up ever high before others.

Father you overwhelm us and subsume us in a sea of beauty, of sacred voices delicately hovering nearer, altar tending, excellence rising, just to be present at this feast. Yet nothing excels the beauty of perfect obedience. Help us that we would be beautiful as the Holy Family have shown us models of truest Beauty. Help us that we may partake of carrying out what is most pleasing, help us to empty ourselves that we may be filled only with Christ and do what He loves. As sayeth Mother Theresa: “Not great things, but small things with great love.” We pray in our Lord’s name, Your Son who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

What I like about the new English translation of the Roman Missal

2010-01-30T10:45:00.000-08:00

It's gentle, and not so 'casual'. I'm glad "And also with you" is replaced. Probably there are limits on what you can do with English, because I think the casualness and equality are important concepts in everyday life in America. But the language and the culture I brought up, 'reverance' and 'respect' are more important. So the language reflects that. For example, there are different ways of addressing to different people, and you cannot use the same pronouns and verb endings as well as other parts of the speech that you use for your children to you parents. So it sometimes still bothers me when my children use the same 'you' that they use to their dog to me. Even in school, I found it's very hard to teach and expect the children to show 'respect' to the teachers. I even feel that their concept of 'respect' is dfferent from what I learned. So in CCD class, when we can talk about 'love,' I think the children get it. God loves us so we show love. But when when they hear the word 'reverance,' their face looked puzzled. It's a hard concept for them. I hope the new translation helps us and the next generation learn 'reverance' and that God is still above us even if he came to earth as a human being.

February Schola Calendar

2010-01-30T10:26:00.000-08:00

At OLPH (practice on Mondays at 7:30)
Saturday Mass (8:15AM) (Warm - up starts at 7:40)
Feb 6, 20

Kyrie XI (Feb.6)
Kyrie XVII (Feb.20)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ubi Caritas et Amor (Feb 6)
Ave Verum Corpus (Feb.20)
Ave Regina Caelorum

At Resurrection Church (practice on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM)
Satruday Mass (9AM) (Warm-up starts at 8:30)
Feb.13,27

Kyrie XI (Feb.13)
Kyrie XVII (Feb.27)
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Ubi Caritas et Amor (Feb 13)
Ave Verum Corpus (Feb.27)
Ave Regina Caelorum

Children's schola (practice on Mondays at 1:30 at OLPH)
First Friday Mass, Feb.5
OLPH 8:15 AM (warm up starts at 7:45 AM)

Ave Maria (prelude)
Kyrie XVI
Alelluia
Veni Creator Spiritus
Sanctus XVIII
Mysterium Fidei and Amen
Agnus Dei XVIII
Jesu Dulcis Memoria

Holy Hour and Benediction at St. Benedict, Feb.21, Sunday

2010-01-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

Chant List for Holy Hour and Benediction

1. Anima Christi (Children sing, during Preparation of the Holy Hour)

2. O Salutaris Hostia (everyone)

Prayer (priest)

3. Adoro te devote (children and men)
4. O Panis Dulcissime (children)
5. Ave verum Corpus (women)
6. Jesu Dulcis Memoria (Adults and children)

Scripture Reading

7. Veni Creator Spiritus (children)
8. Ubi caritas (adults & children)
9. Adoramus te Christe (Adults)

Prayer for Vocations

10. Salve Regina (Solemn tone, Adults)
11. Ave Regina caelorum (men)

Scripture Reading

12. Ave Maria (Mode VI, children)
13. Ave Maria (Mode I, children)

Benediction

14. Tantum Ergo (everyone)

Priest: Panem de caelo praestitisti eis
Response (all): Omne delectamentum in se habentem

Prayer (priest)

Divine Praises (chanted by cantor/everyone)

Final chant (schola)

15. Christus vincit

Children's schola: Monday Jan.18. 2010

2010-01-19T09:25:00.000-08:00

We are working on Jesu Dulcis Memoria (communion hymn for Feb. Mass) and reviewing Veni Creator Spiritus (offertory).
We also talk about bowing when we sing Holy Trinity (for example, last verse of Veni Creator). It is said that you receive a special grace while you are doing it, and some saints also felt deeply of giving themselves to God while they bow to Holy Trinity. (explained in The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Chapter VI the "Gloria Patri"). Although it is an option for a schola to bow for the reason of being heard, I decided to have them bow whenever possible, because it is a good practice for them, learning the reverance and being reminded of the Holy Trinity. (Sometimes I peek and get amazed, because they look very sincere when they do that. It's so wonderful to see young people show such a humble gesture.)

We started a new chant that we would like to sing at the Holy Hour for Vocations at St. Benedict. O Panis Dulcisimme (P.92). I hope you get to review verses 1 and 2. I don't believe this is in any of your CD, but it's a very simple, but beautiful, chant. (Good one to learn note names too.) I will be having a short meeting with the pastor next Sunday for details. Then I can send you the list of chants and flyer. He is very very looking forward to it.

We also sang the entire Gloria (P.9) at the request of Matt Hill, who also started the beginning part for us. It was a big WOW! (I never heard such a strong start of this wonderful hymn of Glory!)

We are having such a wonderful time in the chant class. Hope to see you all next week.

Mia

Wednesday, January 06, 2010, Clergy Conference in Rome: Address of Msgr. Guido Marini, Papal Master of Ceremonies

2010-01-10T08:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2010/01/clergy-conference-in-rome-address-of.html

Music and the Historical Imperative

2010-01-05T10:46:00.000-08:00

Music and the Historical Imperative from New Liturgical Movement
by Jeffrey Tucker

"...Vast amounts of our liturgical life are devoted to retelling a historical narrative, celebrating events such as the birth of Christ, the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, various miracles, and so on. This illustrates something unique about Christianity. It is not just an abstract theological perspective. It is deeply rooted in empirical events - a real history that we revisit every week forever. But what about music? Shouldn't it partake of the same historical imperative? Why should it be so commonly believed that any music and any text is suitable and that there is nothing we owe to our deep history here? Surely the music should be as rooted in history as the liturgical subject matter is. ..

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2010/01/music-and-historical-imperative.html