OUR NEED FOR THE TRANSCENDENT

Mass of St. John Paul II

SEEING SHEPHERDS - Artwork by Daniel Bonnell.
Used by permission.
bonnellart.com

THE CURRENT SUNDAY EXPERIENCE

Depending on which parish someone attends, we can generally see that the average American Catholic comes and goes merely as a spectator. Many Catholics are bored or zoned out. They have grown up hearing the same words and the same music. They have been trained to know when to stand, when to sit, when to kneel, when to say “and with your spirit”, and when to genuflect. Their words and actions have become rote muscle memory, so much that Catholics intuitively genuflect before anything that remotely resembles a pew like at the movies or at a music concert.

And despite the engrained familiarity, Catholics have forgotten why they stand, why they respond. Amidst the routine Sunday experience - they have forgotten the person to whom they sing their love for, the King before whom they kneel. Instead of “lifting up our hearts” with the saints in Heaven, Catholics navel gaze. And when they leave the doors of the church committing to “go and announce the Gospel of the Lord” in word, they feel less empowered and instead feel exactly the same as when they came in.

Today, there is a clear separation between word and meaning, between act and intention. For many, singing “Kyrie, Eleison!” or “Lord, have mercy!” feels like empty phrases without any recalling of one’s begging before God, without any associated experience of how one has strayed away from the God of love and desires to return to Him. The tangible experience of love has been severed from the words “I love you”.

In essence, the most important event of our week, the culmination of our Catholic identity, has become all too familiar and therefore unknowable. We have forgotten how to worship God.

WE ALL WORSHIP SOMETHING

Yet we know in our bones that we were made for worship. Whether it is God, a career, money, a relationship - we worship what we believe fills us and completes us. We submit ourselves, we sacrifice, we devote our time and energy towards what matters most to us. Whether or not people admit it, humans are religious creatures. We know that we were designed for worship by the daily decisions we make everyday. Our aim, our golden snitch, becomes our restless search, our inner ache for lasting fulfillment.

However, lasting fulfillment can only come from the Transcendent. The word “lasting” lends itself, or should lend itself, to something outside of ourselves and impossible to attain by finite human beings. The Transcendent is supernatural, otherworldly, miraculous. And when we fail to believe in the power of the Transcendent, let alone believe in its existence, we seek for lasting fulfillment in other finite things.

In the book of Exodus, the Israelites had an encounter with the Transcendent. In their bondage, they encountered a God who freed them with miraculous acts: locusts and frogs, rivers turned to blood, seas split in half. And God reminded them that these acts were not to set them free for freedom’s sake, but to be free to worship. They were made to worship. But, when Moses departed for a time in the wilderness, the Israelites failed to remember the power of God and the miraculous that he accomplished for them. They quenched their innate thirst for worship by constructing their own idol: a golden calf. They congregated around the lifeless structure. They engaged in fleeting pleasures and debauchery amidst the despair of the desert.

Let us return to the current Sunday experience: familiarity and the loss of the Transcendent. We can see how many Catholics do not experience the Transcendent at Mass anymore. How often are we brought to our knees in reverence? How often are we moved to make amends, to forgive, to transform our lives, to cry from an experience of love? How often do we taste a peace that cannot be shaken? Unlike Moses, who before that mysterious burning bush removed his sandals in holy fear before sacred ground, Catholics just watch the Mass. They spectate. They do not feel like major players. They do not feel called or beckoned - they do not feel wooed by a lover.

When we cannot worship God in the Mass, we worship other things. Like the Israelites and their golden calf, we seek the Transcendent (the communal, the lasting, the out-of-body experience) in sports arenas, concerts, drugs and alcohol, pornography, and politics to name a few. We hunger for what is lasting, for what gives us meaning, for what brings us together as one.

But we become less fulfilled, more lost, and in greater want. We become empty and less human.

EXPERIENCE THE TRANSCENDENT AGAIN

A Composer's Response

St. Augustine claims that “singing is a lover’s thing”. Music and song are an outpour of who or what we worship. In the current Sunday experience, a fruit of the spectatorship is an empty, numb silence, and not the kind that belongs to reverence and contemplation. Catholics do not sing the responses. They have not fallen in love with God, and there is no song from their mouths. There is no beautiful exchange between the Lover and the beloved.

As Pope Saint John Paul II expressed throughout his entire pontificate, we are in desperate need of new expressions of the Gospel through architectural renewal, art, sculpture, and musical works. We know that Beauty has the power to reveal the glory and splendor of God. Beauty draws us into the Transcendent.

With God’s inspiration, I composed a Mass setting dedicated to Pope St. John Paul II. I discovered a strong desire for all people to worship wholeheartedly again, to experience the Transcendent.

Due to the extraordinary weight of the call to write music for the Mass, I spent several years studying the liturgical documents on music and shaping these musical ideas through several iterations. I wanted the music to be transcendent and epic, to capture the mystery that had been forgotten in today’s Mass experience. I wanted to help people enter in, to pray, and to fall in love with God.

G.K. Chesterton writes, “Our perennial spiritual and psychological task is to look at things familiar until they become unfamiliar again”. I believe that the call from the Lord to compose this music included the task of confronting this spirit of familiarity that leads to unknowing. Through this music, I want participants to not only sing the Kyrie, but to feel the Kyrie with their whole being! In the Sanctus, I desire for people to really experience singing with the choirs of angels as they shout, “Holy, Holy, Holy”! I believe that the experiential is what the Second Vatican Council meant by “full, conscious, and active participation” in the Mass - a participation of mind, heart, and body!

This was an immense challenge as a composer, keeping in mind many of the debates on what the way forward looks like for liturgical renewal - What does active participation actually look like? There are many opinions and personal attitudes on this issue in terms of what styles of music are considered sacred, what instruments are permitted, and how involved the congregation should be in the music- making.

Regardless of these tensions, I know that the Holy Spirit desires a renewal of Beauty in the Mass, and I am simply responding to this tension with what the Lord has given me in prayer. It is clear that the Second Vatican Council has a reverence for the rich tradition of music throughout the history of the Church, while at the same time calling for new expressions of Beauty. The Transcendent must be rekindled. There is a need for wonder that leads to reverence, humility, and transformation of the human person!

With this Mass setting, I incorporated the tradition of Gregorian chant with a unique harmonic language. I hope to “re-present” chant in a way that is fresh, relevant, and accessible to the faithful without reducing its quality and sophistication. At the same time, the music is not a direct mimic of Gregorian chant. It is new, not for the sake of being innovative, but out of the depths of my own art and gifts that the Lord has given me. I humbly pray that the Beauty of this music will speak for itself and that the fruits of this work are shown through true worship and a Church fully alive!