The Goodness of God

October 27, 2024

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

  

There are several instances in the Gospels where Jesus heals the blind. In this Sunday’s Gospel, it is Bartimaeus who receives the gift of sight. Now, I’ll tell you a little secret that you can use to predict how I’ll pick out music in the future: Whenever the Gospel reading deals with the healing of the blind, you can be sure that one of our hymns will be Amazing Grace, just because “…was bliiiiind, but nooooow, I seeeeeee!”

 

When I was a kid in Catholic school, my favorite parts in the Gospels were all the accounts of healing. If you’ve watched The Chosen, you may agree with me that the healing scenes are among the most emotional scenes to watch! For one thing, there’s the reaction of the person who was healed – they be like… “wait… can it be… after all these years…… oh my gosh I can walk!!!!!” and they’re all happy and also in tears, and everyone around is astonished, and if you pay close attention, there’s usually a very specific track of background music that plays whenever Jesus is about to heal someone – I sometimes call it “the miracle music.”

 

Well, in the St. Joe’s music ministry, there’s a particular song which I think of as “the goodness music.” It’s a song that I’ll often choose when the Scripture readings are about the assurance that God will do good things. It’s called Goodness of God, popularized by American gospel singer CeCe Winans. This Sunday, that song will be at all three of the sung Masses: the 9:30am, 11:00am, and 5:00pm. If you come to the 9:30, you’ll hear it sung by our Youth Choir’s Ainsley Moran, who is currently in 5th grade at the St. Joe’s School. At the two other Masses, it will be sung by Cassandra Desir, our very talented singer from Haiti, who will be joined by the Adult Choir at the 11am and the Worship Band vocalists at the 5pm.

With my peace,

Carlo Serrano, Music Director