As a final installment in this music series of articles, I want to highlight a few more specific items from the Church’s teaching on sacred music. While reiterating the use of Gregorian Chant, the council fathers indicated that editions “be prepared containing simpler melodies, for use in small [i.e., parish] churches (SC 117).” This brings us to our use of the Source and Summit Pew Missal. While the music we sing at Mass (specifically, the antiphons) is not, properly speaking, Gregorian Chant, these compositions of simpler melodies more closely approach in movement, inspiration, and savor the Gregorian form, and as such are judged more sacred and properly liturgical (cf. TLS, 3). I am grateful for the work being done by the developers of the Source and Summit Missal, because they are pioneering the effort to revitalize the Sacred Liturgy according to the tradition of the Church. I want to share something from the pew missal that is easily overlooked, written on the inside of the first page of the book. Firstly, the developers cite their guiding directive from the Second Vatican Council: “The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time, it is the font from which all her power flows” (SC 10). This is a profound statement about the Mass, and it is worth sitting with for a few moments in wonder. Then they give their mission statement:
“The Source and Summit Missal is presented to Catholic parishes of the United States as a resource to help elevate the celebration of the liturgy to its rightful place upon the mountaintop of the Church’s life. There, it can serve both as the goal of all that we do and as the source of our efforts to evangelize the world and to illuminate it with the Light of Christ. May your use of this missal help you encounter Christ in His mysteries – the invisible realities that are made present to us through the words, chants, and the other sacramental signs of the liturgy – and help you perceive and participate in them more deeply and fruitfully. As the Church gives glory to God and is sanctified by heavenly grace in the liturgy, may it also form you as a missionary disciple who is sent forth to set the world ablaze” (my emphasis added).
This is beautiful because clearly, the goal of the Source and Summit missal is to offer parishioners a deeper experience of Christ’s presence at Mass (if you haven’t done so, please take time to look through it – there are so many good resources right at your fingertips!). From what I’ve shared in this series of articles, from an intellectual standpoint we can see that chant and antiphons are preferential. Yet, the struggle for some is that, affectively (in our hearts and with our emotions) we may struggle to feel that they are better – somehow, for some of us, we may feel like God is farther, that we are less included, but the goal is not to distance us from Christ and make harder our participation in His mysteries, but rather to draw us nearer to Him and help us to participate more fully in them. The entrance antiphon accompanies the action of the priest and people as he leads them up the “mountain of the Lord”. This requires us to imagine ourselves at Mass as pilgrims on a journey, because that is what we are; it requires us to visualize the sanctuary of the Lord as “God’s Holy Mountain”, because that is what it is, and it is where we, like the Chosen People, are journeying to encounter Him, a living symbol of that ultimate journey to our Heavenly Homeland, of which the Mass is a foretaste. Once we imagine that, we’ve adopted the proper spiritual posture for the Mass, and the Church gives us the antiphon, chosen from God’s Word, to set the tone for the journey. Remember: the antiphons are (generally) taken from Scripture, meaning this is God’s Word, Jesus Christ, addressing us directly. It is very personal, and it should touch our hearts. What is He saying to me? Is He challenging me? Is there a sentiment He wants to awaken within me? How am I responding to Him in my heart? Am I ready to go where He is leading me? And am I willing to be led there according to His will? And the communion antiphon can be even more powerful as a point of encounter, because as we literally receive the Word of God, Jesus Christ, in the Blessed Sacrament, we hear Him speaking to us through the antiphon in His own words. It is very intimate.
If we engage the antiphons with our hearts, recognizing that this is Jesus speaking to us at Mass in His own words, we will be able to “feel” His presence more. If we hear these things not as cold phrases being sung by some cantor or choir at some far end of the church, but rather as Jesus Christ, our Savior and our God, speaking directly to us in the depths of our souls, we will be able to enter more whole-heartedly into this form of prayer. I don’t want to belabor the point anymore, but I wanted to give some more assistance to help us claim this as something good, true, and beautiful. May God bless you in the week ahead, and may Mother Mary lead you more deeply into the Sacred and Merciful Heart of Jesus. I remain,
Affectionately Yours in Christ,
Fr. Hess
