I had known about his unfortunate illness, but I didn't realize how serious it was.
For better or for worse, Reign in Blood--much of the music for which Hanneman wrote--changed my life. I still listen to it sometimes. One time a while back I found myself listening to it on my little old iPod (which I have thanks to a gracious Yonkers bride who gave me an iTunes gift card) as I walked the path around the Collegio Internazionale San Lorenzo da Brindisi here in Rome. I stopped as I recalled how, twenty-one years before, my decision to become a catechumen had come out of a brooding daily routine that often included a nocturnal walk around the outer path of Connecticut College while Reign in Blood played in my Walkman. Maybe I'm boring. Maybe I know a classic.
Though at times the devil has gotten into it to stir up a vainglory that made me forget other, more important graces, it's still true that the music epitomized by what Jeff Hanneman gave us was indeed a remote preparation for greater graces God has given me, by making me realize that the ordinary thing, in this case the music that everybody else was listening to, wasn't what I really wanted.
Requiescat in pace. May his family and friends have strength and comfort in these days.
One of the curious things about living in a friary while still trying to learn the local language is that you don't really get to know the other brothers. Unless you somehow know of them on paper or by office or reputation, the language barrier prevents or at least renders difficult some of the ordinary mechanisms of acquaintance.
It's not a bad thing, but just is. It is, however, an interesting thing. My not knowing what I might have known by now about some of the brothers around me reminds me of the irreducible mystery that other people always are, and leaves me more attentive and grateful for what I do perceive.
For example, one of the friars I live with is an Indonesian, about the same age as me in religion. His project in life right now seems to be the study of Arabic. Beyond that, I hardly know a thing about him, apart from the diligence, kindness, and devotion I observe.
This past Sunday was my last Mass at the parish where I have been going since last year. Leaving this little 'help out' has thrown me deeper into the liminal space, the in-between time, that first crashed open when I got the call about the Rome job back in September and realized that I wouldn't be finishing the doctoral program at BC.
At the Mass one of the songs was Dan Schutte's Blest Be The Lord.
Music hooks itself into memory so deeply. For example, I can't hear the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication album without being taken back to another very liminal period, the six weeks or so in between my graduation from college and my first entrance into religious life. Though I have no desire to do so, if I were to listen to the albums House of Pain or the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk, I would certainly be taken right back to the cheap pool hall at University College Galway where I spent so many afternoons in the spring of 1993. Those were the only two records they had, and they alternated loudly and continuously. But a game of 8-Ball was only 35p, so what do you want?
Of course I would rather have a Graduale romanum or a Liber usualis in my hand than an OCP hymnal and even though Blest Be The Lord is pretty hokey, at least it's a psalm. But in any case it sure takes me back. At the Saturday vigil Mass at Harkness Chapel on the campus of Connecticut College, Blest Be the Lord was in very heavy rotation back in the fall of 1992 when I was a new Catholic. It will probably always remind me of the sense and feel of my neophyte days.
Hearing and singing this song at Mass on Sunday has stuck with me during this week. It has come into prayer as the gratitude for the way a liminal time, in its concentration of endings and beginnings, brings back the clarity and innocence of early inspirations. Grace uses the peculiar openness of the time to re-member the journey of self and the salvation God delights and desires to give.
You certainly hear some far out conversations in religious life. One of the brothers had selected Ducote and Daigle's "Remember Your Love" as the hymn for Evening Prayer, which of course led everybody, with the tune still in their heads, to sing Willy Wonka's "Pure Imagination" while we were doing dishes. I mean, listen to them; they're pretty close.
In the midst of all the fun of trying to remember the words, one of the brothers, the one washing the pots at the sink, was discovered in the dissent of humming "The Girl from Ipanema."
"I know that song! What is it?"
"It's 'The Girl from Ipanema'"
"Oh yeah! Wasn't that sung by somebody in a big hat?"
I'm always fascinated by the way words and phrases swirl about and reiterate and recombine not only in the mind but also in community. One brother articulates something, and the words or phrase can enter the general discourse of the community. Sometimes this can be constructive, giving the group a common critical vocabulary. Other times it can be destructive, as when we reduce each other to labels and explanations.
Anyway, that's not my point today. I was just thinking about how, according to this sort of phenomenon, a title from a few posts ago perhaps came to me from a song without my being aware of it. The song is "The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane" by Jeffrey Lewis:
The seventh rule (I hope you understand) Is not to look to deep into your soul Or you might find a hideous, hopeless hole Of hatred, hunger, infinite, idiot Mindless, meaningless, nothingness, nothingness, Nothingness, nothingness, nothingness, nothingness Nothingness, nothingness, nothingness, nothingness Nothingness And that's what I did
And every aspect of life that I selected Was instantly and brutally dissected I saw the horrible emptiness within The reasons behind everything And it was at that moment that I went insane.
That's the trouble with the ersatz spiritual experiences one might have through drugs, or with the endless journey of personal archaeology to which we are invited by the therapeutic culture: You arrive at the searing experience of your interior poverty, but with no good news on the other side.
The spiritual life, that is, a life lived in and according to the invitations of the Holy Spirit, reveals the saving discovering that our horrible interior poverty is not a cause for insanity or even sadness, but something to be embraced because it is exactly where God wills and delights to meet us in the burning love of Christ crucified.
The self-emptying of God who is Jesus Christ is the healing of our horrible emptiness within, the poverty of God in Christ condemned and crucified is the redemption of the poverty of our hearts.
Via autem non est nisi per ardentissimum amorem Crucifixi.
"There is no way but through the burning love of the Crucified." (St. Bonaventure's Itinerarium, prologue)
I was going to write a boring old post on some of the editorial wins (e.g. in-line proper prefaces, like for the Baptism of the Lord today) and fails (e.g. in-line music in the Communion Rite, which, let's be honest, won't get used much) in editions of the new English Missal, but let's have something fun instead. Like some encouragement from the forever wonderful Violent Femmes:
Rejoice and be happy when men revile you, just like our Savior told us to do. Rejoice and be glad when for His name's sake, they speak all manner of evil and against you they hate.
Blessed are you who are persecuted too, for righteousness and the
good that you do, if in the bread you put a little leaven, the Kingdom
is yours and it's the Kingdom of Heaven.
Rejoice and be happy when men revile you, just like the Savior told us to do.
Rejoice and be glad when for His name's sake, they speak all manner of evil and against you they hate.
Ye are the salt of the earth, if you're not salty, what are you worth?
Rejoice and be ye exceedingly glad for great is the reward in
Heaven to be had for the prophets they did persecute too, unjust though
it was, they came way before you.
Rejoice and be happy when men revile you, just like the Savior told us to do.
Rejoice and be glad when for His name's sake, they speak all manner of evil and against you they hate.
We are the salt of the earth, if we're not salty, what are we worth?
Rejoice and be happy when men revile you, just like the Savior told us to do.
Rejoice and be glad when for His name's sake, they speak all manner of evil and against you they hate.
Rejoice and be happy when men revile you, just like the Savior told us to do.
Rejoice and be glad when for His name's sake, they speak all manner of evil and against you they hate.
O.k. It's been noticed and noted that I sometimes start singing "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" for no (apparent) reason. I just need the world to know that it's this version in particular--which is quite apart from the original--that is permanently wedged in my imagination.
I have to admit it. I love to sing. So I was happy this morning when the choirmaster announced that for a communion meditation we would sing Adam of St. Victor's sequence for the Ascension, Postquam hostem et inferna.
It begins:
Postquam hostem et inferna spoliavit ad superna Christus redit gaudia angelorum ascendenti sicut olim descendenti parantur obsequia
"After despoiling enemy and hell, Christ returns to joyful heights, ascending as before he descended, attended by the angels."
That's very loose. As always, translation improvements are welcome in the comments!
One of my joys over this past year back in Boston has been getting to know the "Schola Amicorum" which sings for the Sunday Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the cathedral. When I have been free, I have enjoyed their hospitality and the chance to learn to sing a little chant.
I was there this morning. During a break from our practice (we rehearse in the bishops' crypt, which is just too cool) I was reflecting on why the old chants grab me so. That's when I noticed something funny within: Gregorian chant reminds me a little of the Misfits.
I remember first hearing the Misfits when I was about fifteen. The whole thing caught me right away; the classic rock and roll song structures, the campy horror shtick, and especially the loopy, crooning vocals of Glenn Danzig and later on (in the reconstituted Misfits) Michale Graves.
I've been singing along to Misfits songs for years. They are eminently singable. YouTube is full of kids covering them in garages and girls playing them on the ukelele. Really. Look for yourself. There are similarities with the chants for Mass: the looping phrases, the centering of phrases on long, drawn-out vowels, and the signature descending triads.
I only bring up this very random connection to suggest how God prepares us remotely to minister to his glory. Long before I had any idea of even being a Christian, God was using this crazy music to form my singing heart, and to put into my own musical imagination a sense of tone and phrasing that He would one day put to work for divine worship.
P.s. I would have posted the song from which I derived the title of the post, but I thought its name and subject too vulgar (not to speak of diabolical.)
Back on Ash Wednesday I remarked in a tweet how I had gone through the whole of the liturgical day without singing Tom Conry's "Ashes." I thought it notable because the song, at least in my catholic experience, is something of an anthem for the day.
Therefore I was quite amused with Fr. Guardian chose it for the hymn for Morning Prayer today; a Lent would not pass without it after all. I don't know why he pulled it out now in the second week of Lent; perhaps because it's snowing this morning here in Boston, giving the line "Though spring has turned to winter" a special poignancy.
I first remember singing "Ashes" in 1995 when I was working at St. Stephen of Hungary on 82nd St. in Manhattan (I can still see one of my good early influences, Fr. Greg, strumming his guitar in his gray chasuble.) I doubt that I sang it in 1996 when I would have gone to St. Mary's in New Haven, Connecticut on Ash Wednesday; they were using the GIA Worship hymnal, which doesn't include it, and it isn't the style there besides. Apart from that exception, I'm sure that I've sung "Ashes" on every Ash Wednesday up to--but not including--this one.
Generally speaking, I think it has a lot of musical virtues for congregational singing, and captures something of the spiritual mood of Ash Wednesday. I've heard it bashed theologically, but I think the case is a little overstated. Sure, the "create ourselves" line is a little troubling, but on the whole I think it's a good song, giving some depth to the central sacramental of the ashes and looking forward to Easter and the Resurrection off in the distance. The "we rise again" stuff, in my opinion, is just a way to accomplish this glimpse of the Resurrection, rather than any suggestion that our rising isn't a function of the Rising of Christ. Indeed, I'm happy with anyone who helps us to recall that the whole idea of Lent is our baptism into Christ's death and Resurrection, against all those well-meaning but misguided souls who try to give us 'themes' for Lent, some of which aren't even Christian.
The song is a good example of why we fight about liturgical music and the words that we sing: such words and images exert a powerful influence on the spiritual imagination. Speech--especially as song--is formative. That we can form words first mentally and then physically is one of the primary ways we exercise ourselves as created in the image and likeness of God, who speaks his Word from all eternity. What we say and sing forms--and can deform--that image. As one of my teachers likes to say, "Nobody walks out of church humming the homily."
There is a happy coincidence in the liturgy today: On the feast of St. Cecelia, one of the great patron saints of sacred music, we have arrived in our reading from Revelation at the scene of the saints singing the "new hymn" to God. (14:3)
We who desire to be devout people are regular singers. But sometimes I think we don't always remember to reflect on what a deep thing it is to sing a hymn to God. It's not just added ornamentation or solemnity, but something far more profound. Indeed, to sing a hymn to God is to imitate God himself and conform ourselves to Him.
What happens when we sing a hymn? A blend of truth and beauty emerges from our voice, from our body, mind, and heart. Thus, to sing draws us closer in con-formity to He Who Is Truth and Beauty Itself. In fact, God sings too. When a blended array of truth and beauty emerges from the Heart of God, we call this creation. So to sing a hymn or a text of the Sacred Scriptures is to imitate the creative Delight out of which everything is. That's why to sing automatically makes people joyous, or at least gives some relief from their misery.
I'm introducing a new tag which I've been considering for a while. It's called "Music Captures Prayer" and marks posts about songs that sometimes seem to express how I feel or what I am going through in prayer.
The other day I got into a conversation with someone on one of the standard conflicts of the parish ministry: music for funerals and weddings.
The conflict goes like this: the engaged who are preparing for their wedding or the bereaved preparing for the funeral Mass of their family member decide that they want a certain song in the liturgy. The pastor, priest, or music director objects, saying that such-and-such a song is not appropriate for divine worship because it is secular, sappy, vulgar, etc. Then the counter objection is made: on the contrary, this song 'mentions God' or is 'very spiritual.'
The first objection is easily dismissed. Just because a song 'mentions God' doesn't make it appropriate for the liturgy. Black Sabbath's "After Forever" (written by bassist Geezer Butler, a Catholic) mentions both God and Christ, and contains senses of eschatological urgency and counter-cultural belief in God that one rarely hears with such sharpness even in church, but this doesn't mean I want Ozzy to sing it at my funeral. For the blog, however, it's a fine inclusion. My funeral music is planned anyway, in a way.
The second objection, that an inappropriate song is 'very spiritual,' is a little harder. Here we are up against a flattening abuse of the term 'spiritual' which goes largely unchecked by preachers and pastors of souls. To the world, something is spiritual when it refers to the non-material life of the person, or the relation of the person to God or the divine in a very general way. For us Christians, however, the term is more specific. The 'spiritual life' and 'spirituality' refer specifically to the activity of the Spirit, the formal principle of the Church Who prays in her and as her both corporately and in her individual members.
But here's my challenge to pastors of souls and music directors on this issue. Who gets to decide which songs are suitable for the liturgy? Is it OCP or GIA? Who gave them this tremendous authority over the theological and catechetical formation of the praying assembly? If they, who are neither God nor the magisterium, can decide that a song is appropriate for liturgy, why not the couple preparing their wedding or the folks trying to mourn the loss of a loved one?
You see, I am begging the question. There is any easy way out of this problem, which is to begin to give up on the option of replacing the actual proper chants of the Mass with songs in the first place. Unfortunately, the option of replacing them has become so normalized that many priests no longer even recall that it is, in fact, a substitution.
Therefore, if pastors are unwilling to even investigate or begin to let go of this option become norm, and are also unwilling to try to preach a corrective against the flattening of the generic uses of 'spiritual' and 'spirituality,' then it's not fair to deny ordinary folks the option of substituting the music they think they want.
In his cover letter to Summorum pontificum, Benedict XVI calls for a "mutual enrichment" of the older and newer forms of the Roman rite. Thanks for Fr. Z for pointing out this tremendous contribution to that end:
I'm sure that I've shared in the singing of Dan Schutte's "City of God" more than any other single piece of church music, excepting perhaps the Sanctus from Marty Haugen's "Mass of Creation." With it's giddy activism and joyful sense of eschatological transformation, it's a classic. Besides, I'm pretty sure it substituted for the entrance antiphon (what a mercy from God was my ignorance of such things at the time!) at every Sunday Mass for the three semesters that I was a Catholic in college.
Singing it today at Morning Prayer, though, an uncomfortable lyrical parallel came to mind. Consider the second verse:
We are sons of the morning, we are daughters of day The One who has loved us, has brightened our way.
Now consider some 'horror punk.' This is the beginning of the later Misfits song "Speak of the Devil:"
Traded in my bible for a little black cat The time of Armageddon's here Some call me the son of the morning God knows I'm the angel of light
The reference is to Lucifer, who is indeed sometimes called the "Son of the Morning." This is an uncomfortable parallel for sure!
One of the greatest challenges I have with penitents--and with myself!--is those who struggle with discouragement over committing the same sins again and again. Often it's a habit of misusing our speech, such as lying or gossip or detraction, or maybe it's a sin against purity. It's the same confession over and over, and sometimes there comes to be a dullness and a frustrated boredom that is often more spiritually dangerous the sin itself.
What can be done in this situation?
First of all, we must remember to treat internal invitations to discouragement or despair as temptations themselves. But when it comes to the patterns of sin themselves, sometimes I think our troubles were described by one of those early MTV songs by Adam Ant: We are 'desperate, but not serious.'
We are desperate to do something about our trouble; we don't want whatever it is in our lives. But, for some reason, we have not yet found the willingness to fearlessly re-arrange our days and mercilessly refuse to make provision for our habitual fault. Maybe we need to avoid the occasions and near occasions of sin. Maybe we need to avoid certain places or people. Maybe what we really have is an addiction over which we have lost any hope of control and need to find the humility to ask for help. Our desperation tells us that we no longer want the misery of sin, but our failure to get serious reveals that we aren't yet ready to make holiness an absolute priority in our lives.
One of the spiritual practices that helps me get through daily struggles and difficulties is to recall how God redeems our gifts, personal histories, and even our eccentricities for His own purposes. This is one of the ways I try to work to stay grateful. Gratitude saves us from a multitude of sins and distractions. Here's an example from my own ministry.
Yesterday I had a large funeral Mass to offer, and the family had been very diligent about planning it. I wanted to try to make some extra effort for them, so I tried to sing some of the Eucharistic Prayer, which I had never done before. It wasn't anything grand, just EP III from the Memorial Acclamation to the Doxology from the simple notation (only three notes!) in the back of the Sacramentary. I was very nervous. It wasn't great, but it came out o.k.
After Mass I was thinking of the hours and years spent with the 'alpha female' music teacher in my elementary school, being put through the Kodály Method and standing there wondering what on earth could be the use of singing "Sol-Do-Sol-Do" over and over. I even remember the hand signals that went with it. But here I am, thirty years later, putting it to practical use for the glory of God, singing the Eucharistic Prayer. That's the way God works.
I just wanted to post a couple of pieces of Christmas music I have been enjoying during the Octave.
First, the introit of the Mass at midnight from Westminster Cathedral, which I first saw on NLM. I have been listening to this over and over; it's just so hauntingly beautiful to me, and illustrates what reverence and beauty could be accomplished if we just let go of this practice of substituting the actual antiphons and texts of the Mass with hymns and songs.
Second, from a Facebook post of a very old friend, Ronnie James Dio singing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. I think that's the great Tony Iommi on guitar.
I'm contemplating my next conversion: becoming a hockey fan. Not that I'm especially attracted to the game, but I've noticed over the years that hockey fandom seems to produce a remarkable amount of fun and catchy old-school punk rock. Who knew? If stuff like this is the soundtrack, it must be the right thing.
These guys are actually the great Nomeansno in disguise:
Then from Canada to Philadephia:
Finally, going back to some of the deep roots of punk rock, my brother Connecticutians, The Zambonis:
You stand outside church praying at the end of a funeral Mass, and as the piper gets a few bars into "Amazing Grace" you feel something stir inside. And it's only then you realize that you're waiting for the guitar and drums to roll in, because the version to which you are must accustomed is the arrangement by Dropkick Murphys:
