My Mouth Shall Proclaim Your Praise

(Posted with my choir members' permission.) Since I'm trying to help you figure out what to do, and why it's important, I tend to focus a lot on The Ideal. Just in case you think that The Ideal is somehow attainable, and therefore you are failing desperately since you can't seem to reach it, I'm going to tell you what it's really like. Good liturgy, just like good theater, involves staying in character. Mistakes get made, but you can't say "Oh whoops, I mean this instead" or it distracts from the liturgy. This is especially true when you're working with others.* On Holy Thursday , I completely forgot to put numbers up on the board for the congregation, and when I began to announce the opening hymn, I had to stop mid-sentence and flip through the book to find the number. Then at the end, I announced that we were going to sing Pange Lingua in English, then in Latin, even though I don't like our translation. We didn't have time for any Lat...

I have a Ritual Mass Bucket List. Before I am called into the Heavenly Liturgy, I hope to attend as many different ritual Masses here on Earth as I can, and this week, I got to cross another off my list: the Chrism Mass. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a Chrism Mass until a few years ago, and thus I shouldn't have been surprised that a majority of the people I excitedly told about it replied "The what? What's a Chrism Mass?" So, forgive me if I now make the opposite mistake and tell you all about it. The Chrism Mass is a special Ritual Mass that is supposed to be celebrated on the morning of Holy Thursday (but for pastoral reasons may be held earlier in Holy Week), at the cathedral, by the bishop. Priests of the diocese attend*, fully vested, in order to commemorate the institution of the Sacrament of Holy Orders by renewing their priestly vows in the same way that we the faithful renew our baptismal promises at the Easter Vigil. The evening Mass, the...

  Me, personally My name is Kathleen, and I’m the music director at a Catholic parish in a small college town in Southern California. During my 20+ years at this parish and throughout my whole lifetime of liturgical music, I’ve worn many different hats - organist, choir member, cantor, choir director, person who chooses the music, person who manages the music staff - so I can speak from many different perspectives. My experience is my main qualification - I am the owner of zero pieces of paper validation except for a certificate of completion of the kind of Child Safety Training I’m sure most of my target readership is painfully familiar with. But I’ve studied a lot, thought a lot, had a lot of discussions with a lot of thoughtful people, and tried a lot of different things, so I do hope that my experience and perspective will be helpful. I do have one publication to my name: a  hymnal for Catholic schools  that I helped edit for the  Institute for Catholic Liberal E...