The Church's Liturgical Music

Sisters and brothers. I'm probably the last person who should speak to music. I once played the guitar for a little while, but I wanted to talk to you about music and liturgy. Music in the life of the Church. You know, music in itself helps to express our desires, our emotions, our feelings, our beliefs even.

If you think about our reflections and our religious doctrines, they often show up in the hymns that we sing on Sunday.

If we look back at the history of human persons and communities throughout the world, music has always been a part of religious feeling. Along the way, we get to know our brothers and sisters in the Jewish faith and the Book of Psalms.

Jesus's prayer book.

The Book of Psalms was originally poetry and songs, some attributed to King David.

If you watch the House of David series on television, part of it is David oftentimes taking up his instrument and singing a psalm. It's not historic, but it gives us a good example of the way Psalms were very much a part of the way the Jewish people connected with God. It was a manner in which they prayed, and it added to their worship an expression of their deep-seated connection with God.

The Book of Psalms—you can find songs of praise, thanking God, acknowledging God's greatness, looking with awe at creation. There are psalms of procession, liturgical psalms, which would be much like our entrance hymn today or our offertory hymn today.

And there's Psalms of lamentation, psalms that reflect our emotions at the hardest moments in our lives, in moments of loss or rejection, of temptation or sin, asking God's mercy.

The Psalms then became the text of many hymns as the Church developed. Over time—and I'm not a music historian—but certainly we came through periods in which there was great hymnody developed for the Church and great instrumentation.

I want to talk about three instruments that are used in the Church very frequently.

The organ, the piano, the guitar. Because all of those, in some way, generate an emotional response. The organ is historically the great instrument of Church music. Its capacity to reach high and low and wide, and its expression, enables us to raise our voices in song and prayer in such a profound way.

In many churches and settings, the organ can be overpowering, as also organs are extremely expensive instruments today.

And so the piano has come to play an important role in helping us to pray in the way that the organ did, but using a smaller and a less expensive instrument, quite frankly.

Then there's the guitar. I grew up in the 1960s and 70s period of the Church, when the guitar entered the Church, particularly after the Second Vatican Council.

And, of course, there have been all kinds of musical experimentations in the Church, such as using guitars and drums, trumpets, and other instruments.

All of them are intended to help elevate our prayer. One of the things about music in the Church is all music within the liturgy should be intended to bring the assembly—that is, all of us—to bring and elevate and focus our prayer.

That's why so often there's a challenge to make sure that our musicians aren't performers, because musicians aren't performers. They're the guides for the assembly to draw us into prayer.

We in this parish are extraordinarily blessed to have great music, both with organ, with piano, and with guitars, at different liturgies, with different expressions. All of which lead us each week to greater renewal.

Reflection Questions:

1. How has music influenced your personal experience of prayer during Mass?
   
   

2. Which form of liturgical music—organ, piano, or guitar—most resonates with your spiritual journey, and why?
   
   

3. In what ways do the Psalms continue to guide and reflect your emotional and faith-filled responses to God?