Blog by-the-Sea

Scripture We Sing

Some of the passages that I have underlined in my Bible caught my attention because I have sung them many times.  Here are a few of those with links to the music online:

The Lord said to Moses, Say to Aaron and his sons, Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel: you shall say to them,
The Lord bless you and keep you:
The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. (Numbers 6:22-26; set to music by Peter C. Lutkin and others)

As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?  My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me continually, "Where is your God?" (Psalm 42:1-3; set to music by Herbert Howells)

How lovely is thy dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!  My soul longs, yea, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.  (Psalm 84:1-2; music from Brahms' Requiem and other melodies).

Be Still

Hat tip Le Petit Placide.

The Beauty of Silence

Jeffrey Tucker has a post at New Liturgical Movement called "The Awesome Beauty of Silence".  It is about the beauty of a silent recessional at the end of a Requiem Mass at the ongoing Sacred Music Colloquium.

The Year Is Swiftly Waning

The end of the year couldn't come soon enough for me this year.  It has been a very difficult year for many reasons.  Among those are the obvious reasons of the current economic uncertainty that affects almost everyone right now in one way or another, and the difficult and sad situation with my cats that began with the death of one of my cats a little more than 5 months ago.  Also among those reasons are other things about which I have written almost nothing in this blog.

I can hardly wait to celebrate the new year, seeing in it hope that the year to come will be brighter, and seeing in it an opportunity to put part of the difficulty of the past year behind me.

Tomorrow is the last Sunday of the liturgical year.  Next Sunday marks the beginning of a new liturgical year with the first Sunday of Advent.  That gives me an earlier chance to put this year in the past, and to begin to look to the future.

The following hymn is a prayer at year's end, remembering also life's approaching end and God's grace for each year that passes.  It was written by Anglican Bishop William W. How, who also wrote the hymns "For All the Saints" and "We Give Thee But Thine Own," among others.  Titled The Year Is Swiftly Waning (See the Cyberhymnal), I thought it could be appropriate for the end of the liturgical year as well as for the end of the calendar year, and even for the gratitude of next week's Thanksgiving Day:

The year is swiftly waning,
The summer days are past;
And life, brief life, is speeding;
The end is nearing fast.

The ever changing seasons
In silence come and go;
But Thou, eternal Father,
No time or change canst know.

O, pour Thy grace upon us,
That we may worthier be,
Each year that passes o’er us,
To dwell in heaven with Thee.

Behold the bending orchards
With bounteous fruit are crowned;
Lord, in our hearts more richly
Let heavenly fruits abound.

O, by each mercy sent us,
And by each grief and pain,
By blessings like the sunshine,
And sorrows like the rain.

Our barren hearts make fruitful
With every goodly grace,
That we Thy Name may hallow,
And see at last Thy face.

An Interesting All Souls Day Video

This interesting Canadian video was posted today on Dailymotion for All Souls Day:

des Fidèles Défunts/All Souls Day
Uploaded by Catholique_Apostilic

Olivier Messiaen: Apparition de l'Eglise Eternelle

Michael E. Lawrence has a post at The New Liturgical Movement on Olivier Messiaen's composition with the YouTube video of a performance of that composition shown here.  In the post, Lawrence talks about the difficulty that some people have in appreciating Messiaen's music.  The composition is Apparition de l'Eglise Eternelle (Apparition of the Eternal Church).  In the video, it is performed by Daniel Roth on the Cavaille-Coll organ of St.Ouen, Rouen.

This is the centenary of Olivier Messiaen.

Ego Sum Panis Vivus

Here is a video of Palestrina's Ego Sum Panis Vivus, from the Church Music Association of America's ("CMAA") Colloquium in June 2007.   The CMAA's next Colloquium will be held June 16-22, 2008 in Chicago, with training especially in Gregorian chant and Renaissance musical tradition.  The words Ego Sum Panis Vivus mean "I am the bread of life."  I chose this chant to honor the traditional observance of the Feast of Corpus Christi, which is tomorrow.  In the U.S., it will be observed this coming Sunday.

 

Music from the Pope's Journey to America

Kathleen Battle at the White House:

Salvatore Licitra at St. Patrick's Cathedral:

Placido Domingo at Nationals Park:

Tozer Proven Right: Worship More Important than "the Program"

In 1948, Evangelical Protestant pastor A.W. Tozer wrote a short book called The Pursuit of God, in which he sought to bring to Evangelical Protestants the concepts of meditation and contemplative prayer found in the writings of the great contemplative writers.  In the course of the short book, Tozer quotes St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, and Frederick Faber, and he mentions St. Francis and Thomas a Kempis.  A "preacher" with the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, ordained without a high school education, Tozer's favorite sources were the Catholic mystics.  He was known for lying prostrate on his office floor in silent prayer.  Broadcasting on a Moody Bible Institute radio station, he brought his message to thousands of Protestants in the early 20th century.

In his Preface, dated June 16, 1948, Tozer expressed regret that, in many places "the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the 'program.'"  A word from the theatrical world, he complained, had carried into  the type of service that "passes for worship." 

While Tozer's books continued to be read and continue to teach the concepts of contemplation to Evangelical Protestants, the "program-driven church" has become increasingly prevalent among Evangelical Protestants over the past 30 years.

Interestingly, Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church -- one of the ecclesial communities that has led the way toward the program-driven movement -- recently acknowledged that the latest research shows that the program-driven church has not achieved its objective of helping people develop spiritually.  Out of Ur (the blog at the Christianity Today website) reported October 18 that Hybels acknowledged, at a recent leadership summit:

"We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."

Explaining Hybel's comments, the Christianity Today blog author states, "In other words, spiritual growth doesn’t happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships."

It thus appears that the latest research has proven Tozer's preface correct, nearly 60 years after it was written.  Hopefully, those few Catholic churches who have adopted some of the Protestant program-driven principles will take note.

Hat tip TitusOneNine.

Like a child at home

My Shepherd will supply my need, Jehovah is His name,
In pastures fresh He makes me feed beside the living stream;
He brings my wandering spirit back when I forsake His way,
And leads me for His mercy's sake in paths of truth and grace.

When I walk through the shades of death
    His presence is my stay,
One word of His supporting grace drives all my fears away;
His hand in site of all my foes doth still my table spread,
My cup with blessings overflows, His oil anoints my head.

The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days;
Oh, may Thy house be my abode and all my work be praise;
There would I find a settled rest, while others come and go;
No more a stranger nor a guest, but like a child at home.

- Isaac Watts, hymn: "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need," 1719.  Photo of children on the beach by me.

"The unity for which Christ lived and died is not an abstract ideal.  It is the result of hard work: suspending judgment, choosing others before self, forgiving, seeking reconciliation rather than nursing hurt pride.  In other words, it requires that we die to self in Christ.  The fruit?  The blessing of God's peace!"

- Magnificat, from evening prayer for September 25, 2007.

God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him.  The soul only enters freely into the communion of love.  God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man.  He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy.  The promises of 'eternal life' respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:

If at the end of your very good works . . . , you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed 'very good' since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life.

- Catechism of the Catholic Church 2002, quoting St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17; PL 44, 901.