My Mouth Shall Proclaim Your Praise

Christmas is one of those feasts where I have had a very hard time settling on the exact right music. Everyone wants to hear Classic Christmas Carols, and Christmas is a time when people crave the familiar and the comfortable. They aren't looking to hear the themes of the readings match up with the themes of the music, they just want to get their kids to Mass and hear the story of the baby in the manger and sing some songs and follow all of their cherished family traditions. But we're Liturgists! We can give them so much more, and we don't even have to jolt them out of their Holiday Zones. How can this be accomplished? The massive Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord comes in four parts: the Vigil, the Mass at Midnight, the Mass at Dawn, and the Mass During the Day. They all have their own special focus and character, and the readings and antiphons are different for each one. At Midnight, we get the narrative of the birth of Jesus from the census decree through to the ange...

 Hymn Title: The Church's One Foundation Tune Name: AURELIA Meter: 76 76 D Andrew Seeley writes in Golden Treasures  (the companion volume to Classic Hymns For Catholic Schools ): "Many of the traditional doctrines of the Catholic Church are shared by our separated brethren. This hymn [The Church's One Foundation], one of the richest in English celebrating the Church, was written by an Anglican clergyman in South Africa and is sung to a tune composed by the grandson of Charles Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church. But the reverence for the Church, the Scripturally-rich imagery, the connection with history and eternity make this an eminently Catholic hymn."* There seems to be a dearth of modern Catholic "hymns" about the Church that are actually Christ-centered. I suppose that the dreaded "Spirit of Vatican II" (which has very little to do with the teachings  of Vatican II) told us that we should turn our attention to ourselves and celebrate t...

 "He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Mt 18:2-3) Children are amazing. They begin knowing nothing except that they are needy, and over a remarkably short period of time, learn to eat, walk, talk, read, navigate relationships, dress themselves, memorize and repeat an astonishing quantity of information, and so on. For the most part, this is done simply by having things around for them to learn from, by being intentional in speaking to them, and by expecting them to participate to the best of their ability in every day life, correcting gently where necessary. No adult can possibly absorb as much as any average child - our crusty old brains still rely on the patterns acquired in infancy to process and integrate information. Our Mother the Church treats us as the children we are: she places us in a prepared environment  (a beautiful church), speaks to...

  Hymn Title: Crown Him With Many Crowns Tune Name: DIADEMATA Meter: SMD (that is, Short Meter, Double - 6.6.8.6. 6.6.8.6.) There is no better example of the power of hymnodal language than Crown Him With Many Crowns. A vigourous, commanding text wedded to a trimphant hymn tune, just begging for a trumpet fanfare, this gem is often found to be the victim of misguided modern verbal castration: cut, sanded, watered down, and just... weakened. However, here it is, in its original lyrical glory - note especially the third verse, my favourite: "Crown him the Lord of Love, Behold his hands, his side; Rich wounds yet visible above, In beauty glorified. No angel in the sky Can fully bear that sight, But downward bends his burning eye At mysteries so bright." And I can never resist a big dopey grin when singing the phrase "Creator of the rolling spheres / Ineffably divine." It's just too much. A real poetic masterpiece. And the music! A joy to the rational soul, the p...

 I've gone over some general guidelines for choosing music before, but after having talked to a few people since then, it seems like it would be helpful to have more detailed instructions. I don't have the same resources as you, so I'll keep it broad, but hopefully this will still help. Step One: Organize. Use a spreadsheet program or a word processing program to set up a monthly music planner. Include columns for the date, the Entrance, Offertory, Communion, and Recessional (also a Meditation slot, if you want - I just put mine in the Communion cell). Put the month and year at the top, and include the year of the liturgical cycle you are on, if you are feeling fancy. I saved a blank one as a template, so that every time I want to make one, I can click "create new" and choose the template from the list and away we go. (I'd share my template with you except that I use a mac for my planning computer and a chromebook for my blogging and typesetting, so who am I ...

It's February, so you're probably thinking about Lent, and you're probably looking through your resources, wondering "Why are most of my options for Lent so bad? " If you're tempted to just sing O Sacred Head Surrounded for six weeks straight, starting with Ash Wednesday, allow me to give you a little pause on that thought. If you've done any thinking at all about the role of music in liturgy, then you know that the Church has a pattern, and she has that pattern for a reason. (If you haven't done any thinking about the role of music in liturgy, it's time to start!) The liturgical cycle begins in the darkest part of the year, with preparation, readings filled with hope for the future but without any denial of the darkness of the current situation. Then, Light - at the turning point, when the balance just begins to turn back towards Day over Night, the Word Becomes Flesh. We make our way through the manifestation of Jesus to the world, the calling of...

 So much for the why.  (I mean, I have not by any means dealt exhaustively with it, but so many more qualified people have said it already.) Your job is to decide the What. Good news! There is an official, prescribed "What" to sing for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass! It's been very clearly and consistently laid down throughout Church history, and though the wording of council documents is often vague,  Vatican II didn't change that.  Once more for the people in the back: Vatican II did not substantially change the  church's directives  for sacred music in the liturgy. (except to allow the use of the vernacular language with the local bishop's permission) The implications of this are huge. There seems to be a general understanding that what the Vatican II documents said  is far less important than what a handful of people want the documents to mean , and that's why the state of Liturgy In The Church Today is kind of a mess. I have sat through liturgi...