Hmmm...the student body isn't singing at Mass???? Gee, I wonder why?

I attended the student Mass at my son's high school today.  It was the last Mass of the school year (save the baccalaureate Mass the day before graduation) and the seniors were the guests of honor (besides Jesus, of course).  Not expecting much (I have, after all, attended a few of these student Masses over the last four years and have not been impressed), I was utterly dismayed at the lack of participation in the ritual.  It was as if the students were just there to witness a really dull presentation rather than fully enter in to the beautiful mystery being unfolded before their very eyes.  It's not like it was all bad...the priest's homily was SUPERB...but for all its clarity and wonderfulness, Father's message was lost in the shuffle of the mediocre music and less than half-hearted worship.  Oh, and don't even get me started about the student who read the verses to the psalm in such a way to make the students laugh at the ridiculousness of his dramatic reading, ON PURPOSE!!!  However, the ultimate disappointment came right after Mass when the campus minister got up to speak to the student body and actually admonished them with a not-so-subtle dig on the way they don't sing at Mass.  Now, don't get me wrong.  She had a point.  The students looked bored because they WERE bored (and perhaps a little too imbued with that "I'm too cool to go along" attitude that in fact makes themselves very boring, indeed).  BUT...the lack of singing by the students was NOT due to their lack of  interest, aptitude, or [insert other appropriate noun here].  Uh...NEWSFLASH:   Mass planners (the campus minister, the Pastoral Arts teacher and the music director) take note...the students don't sing because they can't and/or they won't.  The music selections, meant for a solo recording artist, have too wide of a range, difficult rhythms, disjunct melodies that are hard to follow, harmonies and chord progressions that make every song sound the same.  The singers, all too many of them with inflated egos, are NOT good at what they do.  I understand that you have to take everybody in the Pastoral Arts class, but NOT EVERYONE SHOULD BE IN THE CHOIR.  If I've learned anything over the years, it's that people want to join in singing when the music is pleasing to the ear.  If you have too many choir members belting out of tune pitches over a sound system set so high as to deafen the congregation from hearing their own voice, guess what?  Oh yeah, that's r...i...g..h...t...  THE PEOPLE WILL NOT SING!!!  If you choose music that is too difficult to quickly pick up (especially if you are not teaching them the songs before hand), guess what?  Oh yeah, that's r...i...g...h...t...  THE PEOPLE WILL NOT SING!!!  If you pick out songs based on what you believe the teens will think is cool and the lyrics of those songs only speak to namby-pamby plain-jane vanilla squishy "me and Jesus" moments without having a strong theology firmly rooted in scripture and Tradtion, the teens will think the song is stupid and guess what?  Oh yeah, that's r...i...g...h...t...  THE PEOPLE WILL NOT SING!!!

And, let's just for a moment, take a look at what participation really looks like at Mass.  Some liturgists will foam at the mouth when they explain that unless someone is actively singing EVERY. SINGLE. SONG. there lacks "active" participation among the members of the congregation.  In reality, the participation should be measured not by some external governing board but by the individual themselves.  I mean, how do we ever know if someone is prayerfully participating on the INSIDE?  We can't know...and it really is none of our business what a person's relationship with Jesus is in any given moment during the Mass.  Yet, if we need to look to some external metric, then perhaps we can judge it by how well the congregation is entering into the responses and acclamations. If liturgy is truly the work of the people, then what's most important is for the congregants to sing, say, and pose in those moments where our participation CONSTITUTES THE LITURGICAL ACTION ITSELF (responding the the psalm, acclaiming our faith during the reponses to the Eucharistic dialogue, etc.).  Simply singing one of the songs in the "four-hymn sandwich" only ACCOMPANIES some sort of liturgical action and therefore is not as important as the liturgical action itself (and why we're not singing the Propers from the Graduale as called for as the primary choice in liturgical music at Mass is beyond me...but I digress; that's an argument for another time). 

If you (and by you, I mean well-intentioned but poorly formed campus ministers and music directors) want the student body to participate, first, analyze your own expectations of what "participation" looks like.  Second, become better catechized yourself...this way you can effectively impart to your students what proper reverence and adoration in the liturgy actually is and inform them of their important role in it so they can better (and more naturally) enter into the full worship of the Most High, the Lord, Jesus Christ.  

(Oh, as a side note, please, please, PRETTY PLEASE, tell the girls, especially those who are liturgical ministers at Mass, to dress appropriately.  It really is not nice to make parents who are visiting spend all that time worried like mother hens that any wrong move by any number of girls will result in a tragically embarrassing wardrobe malfunction.  Thank you.)

Best tool, Part II

A strong pastor and a parish that thrives on sacred tradition doesn't hurt either...

See what's happening at St. Peter's Church in Omaha, NE:  http://www.stpeterchurch.net/

For the video, click HERE.

Best tool for preaching the Good News? Live Authentically Catholic!

Sadly, we have lost the culture war using words.  Anti-Christian bias is on the rise, with no end in sight.  We have talked until we are blue in the face about the Truth and our rights to live in the Light with the laws of God as our moral compass...to no avail.  The persecution of those with Faith will continue in the U.S. and the world.  We can no longer make use of reasonable arguments to persuade those of little to no remaining reason that we Christians do not hate.

But, we have hope and we still have tools to evangelize the masses.

If we commit to happily, joyfully living authentically Catholic, our current society, like that of the people of ancient Rome, will come to want what we have.  Sure, there will always be those cockroaches that scurry in the Light, but most will be like moths...irresistibly drawn to it.  When we live like we believe with our faces toward the eternal goal of the beatific vision in the divine hereafter, the once-meaningful secular trappings of the now will vanish.  We've got to stop approaching this life as if it is all that there is for us.  Cast aside the burdens of the rich man who is completely wrapped up in attachment to his belongings.  I am not advocating the wholesale abandonment of material goods (unless this is your call)...just let go of having things (money, status, power, being "cool") give your life meaning.  Embrace God's plan for your life:  get married and have babies (or become religious or ordained if this is God's Holy Will), teach your children well, support vocations, share your wealth, shore up your relationships, make long-lasting memories, pray, read Scripture, go to Mass regularly, proclaim your faith, celebrate God in all that you do.  In other words take good care of your mind, body and soul and serve others.  In this, you will find infectious peace and joy, the kind that those on the outside will want for themselves and who will emulate instead of trying to manufacture out of worldly straw.

How much better it is for the lost one to fill the chasm in his soul with God's Truth and a life of true service than to live life pretending that he is a good man for being "tolerant" of others' and his own sinful passions?  Things constructed from the earthly realm are destined to rot, eventually, but the good things of Heaven do not pass away.  Ever.

The Serenity Prayer is most appropriate...

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  

Help me to live one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.  Help me to accept hardships as the pathway to peace, taking as Your Son did, this world as it is, not as I would have it.

Let me trust that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your Will.  May I be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next.  

Amen. 

Flicker of hope

I am utterly humbled by the power and glory of God.

As much as I would like to uproot my family from a parish that is wonderful in every way but one (if you've been reading, you know that "one" I'm referring to is poor liturgy), I am seeing hope, flickering like a candle flame, amidst the faithful people I have met and the small changes that have occurred in   people who don't know the Mass in a studied or scholarly way, but yet, by the grace of God, understand what authentic liturgy brings to the world.  I am also coming to see that perhaps our Lord has brought us to this particular parish not necessarily to be fed as we were at our former parish but to feed and be a catalyst for liturgical change (change, you know, from the "spirit of Vatican II" variety).

One family in particular whom we've met through chance (or more likely by divine providence) has shown us such support and in fact, says that we have given them the courage and knowledge they need to stand liturgically correct, that I'm beginning to see that we are meant to be at this parish, as much as it frustrates us.  We had this family over for dinner this past summer and formed quite a bond from our love of authentic worship and our dismay over a pastor who has an apparent disdain for the Magisterium and rubrics.  It was at this dinner that we started to commiserate over the liturgical abuses and the subject of holding hands at the Our Father came up.  It was here that I was able to catechize (though I didn't know I was teaching at the time) about proper gestures at Mass.  I had no idea that God was using me to influence this family.  Fast forward to last Sunday, after pretty much deciding that I couldn't take the liturgical abuse any more and that we had to leave, and here I am sitting with this family and I come to find out that they've decided not to hold hands during the Our Father but instead pray it individually hands clasped in prayer position (orans is OK, too, by the way, but does confuse people around you because they think you are extending your hands out for them to grasp).  They said they had the opportunity to reflect upon what I had told them about the "our" in "Our Father" being between us and Jesus, a vertical prayer, and not between "us and us" horizontally and came to the same conclusion as us about what the proper posture should be during that prayer.  They sit near us at Mass so that they are not alone in this gesture.  A thought occurred to me...If, as I believe the organic development of holding hands with others in a church during the 70's caught on one by one, then perhaps the gestures at Mass can be reformed to what Vatican II intended, and nothing more, one family at a time.  Brick by brick.

I am coming to know that many other families can sense that there is something not quite right with our liturgical practices at the parish but because they lack information, they ignore the uncomfortableness, thinking instead that there must be something wrong with them.   Enter the Sarrazolla's...we have the knowledge to instruct them (and have...at parties, at pancake breakfasts, at teen Bible studies, etc.).  Others have told me that they have started to do their own research about what I have opined and have come to the same conclusion after reading what the church teaches (I love Google!).

And, I believe that God has used us as the catalyst for the recent change from an illicit practice to the right one...I'm talking here about the Christological trope problem during the Agnus Dei.  I firmly believe that this parish would not have contacted the bishop for a correction if it weren't for the fact that I sent a memo issued by the USCCB telling the episcopate that they were to cease and desist the use of non-Lamb of God tropes to our parish music director.  Why do I think this?  Well, the USCCB sent out a memo back in August that the practice was to be abolished.  However, our bishop here did nothing (which is why our parish still was singing "Lamb of God...Bread of Life...Cup of Hope...etc.").  Enter in the Sarrazolla's once again.  I found the memo last month, thanks to Fr. Z's blog, and immediately forwarded it to my music director with the hope that we would be changing our practice from then on.  She went to the pastor who said we wouldn't change until he heard from the bishop (his typical motis operandi, for I believe this priest doesn't believe our bishop will actually change anything and so he would be able to continue his practices as he [arrogantly] sees fit).  So, our music director, begrudgingly ("why the big fuss, it's only words" as she says) contacted the bishop's office, who, in turn, did an investigation.  And, lo and behold, gee, the Sarrazolla's have been right all along about this and we must change.  A memo from our bishop's office went out to parishes earlier this week (it's about darned time, if you ask me) delineating the proper practice and we will now be singing only "Lamb of God" and none of the other Christological tropes.  Amen!  Thank you God for using us as an instrument for liturgical correction!

So, I'm thinking, of all the parishes we could have gotten involved in (and one in particular I wanted to become a member before we even moved because it more closely aligned itself with the great liturgical practices called for by Mother Church), we were sent to our current parish as missionaries.  Ok, God.  We finally see our purpose.  We will stay, at least for another couple of years.  Perhaps you can reward us with a better bishop and pastor for our faithful service?  Maybe I shouldn't have said that out loud...I may need to go to confession.

Next problem to tackle...getting Father to stop changing the institution narrative and say "for many."  This one may require a letter to the Congregation for Divine Worship...and perhaps a couple of YouTube video postings.  Stay tuned...