A central theme in today’s readings is perseverance in our prayer and our worship. The first reading might have been unthinkable to the faithful Israelites at the time it was written, it said, “The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, ministering to him, loving the name of the LORD, and becoming his servants—all who keep the sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant,” 

 

This would be unthinkable because only Israelites could be priests, in fact Gentiles couldn’t even go into the Temple and here it says “ministering to him” - that’s a technical term for being a priest, foreigners as priests just didn’t make sense.  But here Isaiah was prophesying it,  He goes on to say of the Gentiles, “them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

 

And here we are - technically I’m a Gentile, I’d guess most of you are too - here we are making a joyful noise in God’s house of prayer, praising God, offering the acceptable sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the altar, just as was prophesied.

 

In our Gospel, a Gentile, a Canaanite woman, came to Jesus with a request, and he was at first silent, then he seemed dismissive, and finally he granted her request.  He was testing her faith to see if she would persevere.  

 

Perseverance is important in our faith life, we come here every week to Mass, some people come every day, we often pray for the same things, seemingly without answer.  But we persevere in our requests, we don’t just give up, we know that the Mass is the highest form of prayer, and as I said last week, this is the best place to pray in that Hierarchy of places, here in God’s real and true presence.

 

Now within Mass there is a Hierarchy too.  The way to celebrate Mass is pretty specific, my big red book, the Roman Missal, has detailed instructions on most everything.  Which might be somewhat surprising since when we go to Mass different places we see so many things often done very differently.

 

Actually, just here at Nativity we have three completely different styles of Mass:

• The 4:15pm Vigil Mass is right in the middle, it is what has typically been done since 1969, some people call it the “Four-Hymn Sandwich” - it’s a sequence of four songs, entrance, offertory, communion and recessional, and those 4 hymns are the predominant music at the Mass. 
• The 6:30am Sunday Mass is on the lowest end of the Hierarchy, with the exception of Christmas and Easter, and once in a while when I sing the Doxology, there is no music… we call it the “Quiet Mass.”
• The 9:30am Mass is on the higher end of the scale, we chant the antiphons the Church gives us for the week and the Mass parts are mostly sung, I call this the “Principal Mass” because it is the closest to what the Church asked us to do at Vatican II.

 

So we have three very different offerings, and hopefully everyone can find one that facilitates their prayer and worship of God, that is what this is all about right?  Prayer and Worship.  And I think it would be good for everyone to experience the other styles when you have a chance. 

 

But, the Mass is really meant to be sung, and we know that because, well, my big red book is full of music for those parts.  At that 9:30am Mass I have been adding various parts as I learn them, and as I think people are ready to respond to them.  

 

I have talked about this before, but I will mention it again, the Church actually has a hierarchy of “which parts” should be sung.  At the top, often people think it is the Responsorial Psalm, a word that literally means “song,” or the Gloria, which was Jesus’ birthday song, right?

 

But actually the Church says, the most important thing to sing is the Dialogues, like, “The Lord be with you” - and you respond “And with your Spirit.” These dialogues are at the top of the “you should sing this hierarchy,” in fact I heard recently that if you aren’t singing the dialogues, you probably shouldn’t sing anything else.

 

Now another hierarchy is found in my instructions in my Red Book about “what” to sing.  At the entrance, the first choice and preferred method is to chant the Entrance Antiphon, and that is why we got those new “Source & Summit Missals” is because they actually have chants in them.  

 

The 4th option or choice is to sing a hymn, and as I understand it, that was given as a concession for those parishes that didn’t have good musicians.  But we have good musicians, and we can learn how to chant if we try.

 

And what about this “chant stuff”?  Chant is simply sung speech. Some think that Gregorian chant was swept out the door by Vatican II. But the real truth is that Vatican II preferred Gregorian chant.  And there is evidence that this is the way the Jews worshipped, chanting the psalms and possibly other thing, St. Gregory didn’t invent chant, he just codified it, he just put it into notes so others could read it.

 

Anyway, the Vatican II document Sacrosanctum Concilium (paragraph 116) stated that “the Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as especially suited to the Roman liturgy; therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” 

 

Pride of Place! 1st Place. In the instructions in my Red Book, which was written after Vatican II, (GIRM) paragraph 41 states that “Gregorian chant holds pride of place because it is proper to the Roman Liturgy.” (Side note: read these documents online if you want more information, they are freely available! Also read Sing to the Lord.)

 

About twenty years ago, the President of the Pope’s Institute of Sacred Music said: “Gregorian chant has been unjustly abandoned and its place in the life of the Church should be recovered.” 

 

And most likely that was in reference to Pope’s document Redemptionis Sacramentum which was released around that time frame, which is an instruction issued by the Vatican, developed to help stop abuses in the liturgy, and it reiterated the “right” every Catholic person has to experience truly sacred music in the liturgy. “It is the right of the community of Christ’s faithful that especially in the Sunday celebration there should customarily be true and suitable sacred music…”(RS 57). We are participating in a rich tradition that goes back all the way to the Israelites and their worship with Chant.

 

You all have a “right” to “true and suitable sacred music,” and I am just trying to allow that to happen.  Because quite honestly, I know I am not the best singer, and it is really difficult for me to sing the whole Mass, the 4:15 and 6:30 are way easier Masses for me to celebrate than the 9:30am, but I do it anyway, I practice, I work at it, because you have a right, and many people out their feel like their inheritance has been stolen for the past 50 years or so, and I am just trying to give it back, because it isn’t about me.

 

Now to that end, at the 9:30am Mass we have started this Men’s Chant Schola to facilitate that.  The word “schola” is Latin for “school” and it is basically just a choir of singers who lead the chant in worship.  My hope is that, besides increasing the sacredness and beauty, that it will help us all to learn how to chant better.  Personally, I learn music through singing, I have a hard time reading the music and doing what it says, but I learn through listening and hopefully you will be able to as well.

 

The plan is they will be leading us in worship on the 3rd Sunday of the month, so come and experience that style, we’re trying to build up to what the maximum of what the Church offers for us.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that we are so quick to just want to do the minimum, “What’s the minimum it takes to get to Heaven?” and now “What’s the minimum it takes to make this count as a Mass?” but I just don’t understand that attitude for God.

 

Is God truly present here?  Yes, I believe so.  So I want to act like it, I want to give Him the best we have, and this sacred music can help lift our prayers to a higher plane.  And truly we are so lucky, to have Church here, to have an unbloody sacrifice of Jesus in the Eucharist.  Back in the days of the Jewish temple the priest would sacrifice the absolute best cow they could find, morning and night, that would be worth like $3,500 in the morning and another $3,500 in the evening.  

 

But God has given us a better way now to worship and honor Him, and as many people have stopped going to Mass, I feel like it is worth trying to do the maximum in our worship, rather than settling for the minimum.  I did the math not too long ago and only about 15% of Dubuquers are going to Mass on any given Sunday.

 

I hope this helps to explain a little of what is going on with new books and new choir and lots of chanting at that 9:30am Principal Mass.  God calls us to persevere in our prayer and worship, even when He doesn’t respond in the ways we want, we still keep coming back to Mass to praise and thank Him for the saving work of Jesus Christ and all of the blessings He bestows on us.