Liturgical music, self-examination, and August(ine)

If you’re a church musician and you’ve read any guidebook on liturgical music, or if you’ve attended any workshop on the subject, then you know that music in the liturgy is not meant to be a performance. Its purpose is to raise the mind to God. At the same time, a church musician employs the techniques of performance to achieve the desired goal, the same way a Priest might employ the techniques of good public speaking to deliver a compelling homily. Now when a minister—be it the lector, the cantor, or even the Priest himself—does a good job and is perhaps even a bit charismatic (cause who doesn’t love charisma, right?), it’s easy to fall into the trap of making that, rather than God, the object of our attention. It seems to be the eternal struggle, for church musicians especially, to carry out their work in a skillful enough way that raises the mind to God, but not to the point of diverting undue attention to themselves.

 

St. Augustine was no stranger to that struggle. In Book 10 of his Confessions, Augustine grapples with two opposing poles: one on hand, he acknowledges how singing has the power to convey the words of God in a unique way, and on the other hand, he recognizes the tendency to focus more on the singing than on the word of God. Aaaaaand here comes a long quotation, just cause I love sharing Augustine’s musings:

 

The delights of the ear had more powerfully inveigled and conquered me, but You unbound and liberate me. Now, in those airs which Your words breathe soul into, when sung with a sweet and trained voice, do I somewhat repose; yet not so as to cling to them, but so as to free myself when I wish. But with the words which are their life do they, that they may gain admission into me, strive after a place of some honour in my heart; and I can hardly assign them a fitting one. Sometimes I appear to myself to give them more respect than, is fitting, as I perceive that our minds are more devoutly and earnestly elevated into a flame of piety by the holy words themselves when they are thus sung, than when they are not; and that all affections of our spirit, by their own diversity, have their appropriate measures in the voice and singing, wherewith by I know not what secret relationship they are stimulated. But the gratification of my flesh, to which the mind ought never to be given over to be enervated, often beguiles me, while the sense does not so attend on reason as to follow her patiently; but having gained admission merely for her sake, it strives even to run on before her, and be her leader. Thus in these things do I sin unknowing, but afterwards do I know it… Notwithstanding, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of Your Church, at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved not by the singing but by what is sung, when they are sung with a clear and skillfully modulated voice, I then acknowledge the great utility of this custom. Thus vacillate I between dangerous pleasure and tried soundness; being inclined rather (though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion upon the subject) to approve of the use of singing in the church, that so by the delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional frame. Yet when it happens to me to be more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned criminally, and then I would rather not have heard the singing. See now the condition I am in!

- St. Augustine, Confessions, Book X, Ch. 33

 

See this is why I love Augustine—he reminds me that I’m not the only overthinker in the room! That said, I might respectfully disagree with him on two points: Firstly, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that someone has “sinned criminally” if they just so happen to be “more moved by the singing than by what is sung.” Feelings, as the Catechism teaches, “are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons…” (CCC 1768). I wonder if Augustine might have had just a little too much… ahem… Catholic guilt… ahem. But I can definitely relate to the struggle of getting caught up in examining one’s motivations, asking oneself “am I doing this for the right reasons?”, or “am I only telling myself that I’m doing this for X-reason when really I’m doing it for Y-reason?”, and perhaps even losing a bit of sleep over such inquiries. I imagine Augustine up in Heaven might cringe if he ever heard a parishioner say, “I only come to Mass for the music…” Thankfully, at least from what I’ve read, cringing does not appear to be a thing in Heaven!

 

Secondly, I wouldn’t necessarily say that using “the delights of the ear” to stimulate devotion is for “weaker minds.” One does not need a degree in music theory to know that different types of music affect different types of people in different ways, regardless of one’s strength of mind. I know some very intelligent Catholics who use the delights of the ear to stimulate devotion! If music helps you to worship, I’d say go with it. If it distracts you from worship, I’d say drop it. And if you’re not sure if it helps you or distracts you because you feel paranoid about your blind spots and get caught in a spiral of self-examination where you wonder if you’re still using it for God or simply for the thrill of it, then I’d say… umm… ask St. Augustine haha.

 

This August, we celebrate the Feast of… you guessed it… St. Augustine! That’s on August 28th. I think the good Bishop of Hippo would appreciate if we all took a moment to examine our internal attitudes toward the music at Mass—but please don’t lose sleep over it! I think one very good way to promote an attitude of treating liturgical music as prayer and not performance would be to… ahem… ahem………… not applaud after a song… ahem. And if the site-building tool for this website allowed me to insert emojis, I would have totally placed at least three smiley emojis after that!

 

Finally, during this month, we also celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That’s on August 15th. On that note, I’d like to make a little plug: At the 6:30 PM Mass on August 15th, my amazing friend Caroline Walsh will be providing music. Caroline both sings and plays the flute like an angel, so I’m excited for the opportunity to accompany her on piano. I may have to mentally prepare myself so that I don’t end up “more moved by the singing than what by what is sung…” Below is a video of Caroline singing a congregational favorite, On Eagle’s Wings.

 

With my peace,
Carlo Serrano, Music Director 

On main quests, side quests... and the Beatitudes

One question I hear fairly often around this time is “how’s your summer going?” Honestly, I think I have waaaaaay too much free time! And I must confess that I end up spending more time playing videogames than I should… Now if you’ve played a bunch of Action/Adventure/RPG videogames (or if you ask your kids about it haha), you may have noticed how in most games, there’s a “main quest,” which is the primary thing you have to accomplish to beat the game, and then there’s “side quests,” which are other things you could do but are not essential. The game developers of course know that different players have different attitudes toward quests, so they design the game such that players have the freedom to play it the way they like. Some players want to finish the game as quickly as possible, so they focus solely on the main quest. Other players like to explore every single side quest, collecting every possible item, trophy, etc., since they feel it gives them a fuller experience of the game. Ok Carlo, why all the videogame talk?

 

Well, this Sunday’s liturgy deals with focusing on the things that are truly important to God. My friends know how I tend to think (and overthink!) about things a lot, and I’m thankful to have been able to talk through some of those things with our wonderful Pastor, Fr. Bryan. Among other things, we talked about distinguishing between “wants” and “needs,” how the word “deserve” is used in common parlance, and how one reconciles self-care with Christianity’s emphasis on self-denial. Underlying all of this was a question I had been wanting to ask different Priests for a while now: Assuming God wants us all to be happy with Him for all eternity in Heaven (our ultimate goal), and that God wants us to live good moral lives while on earth, does God also want us to be happy on earth? I think it’s a fair question, especially if we consider that there are a lot of people out there who live very good and moral lives yet seem… honestly… very unhappy. To phrase my question in videogame language: Assuming our main quest is to find eternal happiness with God in Heaven, and to live a good and moral life on earth, is happiness on earth also part of the main quest, or is it just a side quest?

 

As you can imagine, our conversation went on for quite a bit! I mean, just the word happiness itself has been the subject of much disagreement among philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and life coaches. Fr. Bryan noted how the original Greek word for blessed as it appears in the Beatitudes could also be translated as happy, and we acknowledged the paradoxicality of it—the types of people described in the Beatitudes, after all, would seem kinda… unhappy. I won’t go too much into the details of our conversation (and despite what I’ve shared here, I’d still prefer to keep most of it private), suffice it to say that it was very fruitful, and I’m privileged to be able to serve under a pastor like Fr. Bryan.

 

Speaking of the Beatitudes, sometime back in February, Mateo Sevigny from our Youth Choir played piano at Mass for the very first time. The song was Blessed and Beloved/Bienaventurados, hymn #726 in the current edition of our hymnal. If you missed the Family Mass on that day (it was a very snowy day!), click here to see Mateo singing and playing at Mass!

 

With my peace,
Carlo Serrano, Music Director 

Prayer, the dignity of causality... and some gospel!

Those of you who are social media savvy likely already know that the algorithms are designed to show you your “preferred content” based on your browsing habits, the stuff you click on, etc., right down to how long you spend looking at something. You can tell what a person’s into by simply scrolling through their Facebook feed. Care to know what’s on mine? Well, in my FB feed you’d find stuff like superhero movie clips, The Legend of Zelda clips, science-y things from popular science influencers such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox (Science!!!), stuff about healthy eating (that’s due the influence of Kathy Fritz!), relationship and dating advice (does God want me to be a monk…?), Christian apologetics responses to theological questions from the likes of William Lane Craig and Bishop Robert Barron, Catholic-Protestant debates, and yes, even counter-apologetics from prominent atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. 

 

So as I was scrolling through FB one time, I chanced upon an apologetics clip aimed at answering an all-too-common question which I’m sure you’ve asked at some point: “If God has a plan and He already knows what we’d pray for, why even pray?” As you can imagine, I came upon various answers, such as “Prayer is not aimed at changing God’s will, but rather aligning our will to His,” or this interesting one from Catholic Answers which went along the lines of, “God already knows what we’ll ask, but sometimes He makes things contingent on our asking so that we learn to depend on Him.” One particularly humble answer (perhaps the answer I respect the most) came from a certain Randall Smith, a theology professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. One of his students had asked, “But if I am totally surrendered to God, I shouldn’t be asking for things, should I?” And Smith admits to giving an answer which he describes as “not sophisticated theology or inspired apologetics.” His answer was “Jesus said you should ask for things you need. So maybe you should listen to Him because He probably knows what He’s talking about, being God and all.” I dunno about you, but I have great respect for theological humility!

 

Now of course, if you know me, or if you’ve read my previous posts, you know that despite my respect for humble answers, I have an insatiable urge to find all the possible answers I can when a question is stuck in my head, and questions have a very unpleasant way of sticking in my head for a long time! Sometimes they spiral into other questions, such as: If I ask for something in prayer, is the thing I ask is either aligned with God’s plan or not, or is there a middle category, i.e. not necessarily in God’s plan but not against it either, such as what food I eat for breakfast, or does God’s plan extend to my breakfast choice? If we ask for the intercession of the saints because their prayers are powerful, does that mean that the strength of my prayer is increased through a saint, and conversely, would my prayer be “weaker” had I not asked for the saint’s intercession? Is my prayer likewise strengthened if I say it while I’m right next to the tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament? Is my prayer strengthened by the number of times I say it? Is there like a baseline efficacy value for prayer which can be increased in direct proportion to one’s level of holiness, one’s spatiotemporal location in relation to the Eucharist, and one’s persistence? I could probably seek all kinds of theologically sophisticated answers from Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae or William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith articles, but something tells me I’ll be more at peace with a humble answer…

 

I will say though that in that clip I mentioned, the speaker brought up a phrase that has stuck with me since: “the dignity of causality.” He was making the point that our prayers can cause changes in the world that would otherwise not happen if we didn’t pray. If you Google “dignity of causality” on your phone, the AI Overview will say “The concept of the ‘dignity of causality,’ coined by Blaise Pascal, refers to the idea that God grants humans the capacity to affect outcomes through their actions and prayers.” If the name Blaise Pascal doesn’t ring a bell, you may nonetheless have heard of his famous thought experiment, known as Pascal’s Wager, which argues for belief in God on the basis of risk assessment. Notwithstanding my criticisms of Pascal’s very problematic argument, I must correct a little error of the AI (yes, AI is not infallible…). Blaise Pascal did not coin the term “dignity of causality.” That phrase actually appears in… you guessed it… St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, written centuries before Pascal was even born:

 

…there are certain intermediaries of God's providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures.

- Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I q22 a3

 

To put Aquinas’ eloquent prose in the vernacular: God causes stuff, but you can cause stuff too, cause God is so good that He gifted you with the ability to also cause stuff! I’ve often vented to my friend Danielle about how summer is such a bummer (lol summerbummer…) for me because school is on break, so I don’t get to cause the stuff that I normally enjoy causing. I go “Danielle, I’m wasting my dignity of causality! I need to cause stuff in the world but instead I’m at home playing videogames…” Just ask Danielle how many times I've texted her asking about how I should exercise my causality! So then I try to push myself to go out and do something. And then in the idle times, like on the train rides, I remember that clip and I’m like, “Oh, I guess prayer is also a thing I can do…” See, social media ain’t all bad!

 

Finally, speaking of prayer, if your Mass plan this Sunday (July 27) involves coming to the 5pm Mass, might I invite you to come a little earlier, say, 4:55-ish? My Worship Band colleagues Danielle and Michelle have been hard at work preparing a special Gospel-style setting of The Lord’s Prayer, which we plan to offer as a prelude before the start of Mass. That’s a few minutes before the 5pm Mass this Sunday, July 27th. We hope to see you there!

 

With my peace,
Carlo Serrano, Music Director