Not our parish, but similar to how our choir renders it; I have no memory of the musical instruments that may’ve been involved, but only the rehearsed and rehearsed beautiful human voices to which one’s very bones vibrate. I can hardly wait!
I recall the first time I realized what a gift it was to hear male voices singing beside me in church. We girls came up through most of our growing years singing along to everything (except Linda Ronstadt — only Linda could reach those notes!), but not so much the boys.
I just closed my eyes one Mass (we sing a lot at Mass!) and heard the boys and men, and wished I could’ve thanked them — though that likely would’ve only embarrassed them.
My cousin and I sang Mass in the choir loft throughout our teenaged years, a time which saw the changes of the Second Vatican Council more and more and more, even unto the Novus Ordo’s music.
I don’t know about her, but I equally like the simple hymns which include all the compositions that horrified Traditionalist Catholics so much, they felt they had to dig up dirt on some of the song writers to properly scandalize us and tried to have their music removed from hymnals.
Ah, people. How to answer His prayer that we be one, even as He and the Father are one?
Through it all, we trust that when He bore that crown of deformed, hardened leaves that jammed into His sacred head with every blow of meanly intended reeds of scorn, He bore us, those thorns, up out of our dirtly crypts and to His woodly killing throne to pass beyond unto His reality, come the Third day. As Annie Dillard once said of the power we invoke in worship, “We should be wearing crash helmets…”
And as He said just on the outside of Lazarus’ tomb, and says it still,
Roll away the stone.
Amen. And amen.
❤️❤️
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Under the mask.. 