The Recovering Choir Director

Proper antiphons aren’t used for many reasons. First, they were rarely sung in mainstream parishes; there’s no history of doing so. Second, the low Mass four hymn sandwich was more or less superimposed on the 1970 Missal, so the history is hymn-singing. Third, they are one of many options, and not “prescribed.”

I’ve occasionally heard priests incorporate music of the day into the homily. I’m satisfied when they use the psalm.

I doubt that any but the most advanced parishes would ever use proper antiphons sung. Retooling from about 100 known hymns to perhaps double or triple the number of antiphons would be a substantial undertaking. Most good choirs would fret at spending so much time learning new music over a three-year period. And if the people will sing psalms or good hymns well, why bother when the option is given?

Most really good choirs like to learn new music, if it’s good.

“Most good choirs would fret at spending so much time learning new music”

Is that meant ironically?

I would think it is only bad choirs, (not to mention bad music directors, bad liturgists and bad pastors,) who are content with endless repetitions of the current, usually inappropriate, Top Twenty that one seems to hear everywhere.

Todd, I am not picking on you but what in
‘I can just hear Priests from my area speaking:
“Well… in the Introit, which was replaced with Gather Us In by Marty Haugen this morning, we hear the words…”‘ in your opinion describes a pirest referring to scripture in a bad way?

I have heard something very similar from a mission priest last year, very find preacher.
Not the exact words, but something to the effect that the psalm of the day, not the lovely one we all just sang, but the one called for by the lectionary is an interesting juxtaposition with the first reading….
He wrapped them together so well I think even the singer who had picked the other song must have realized that the readings and propers are actually chosen with some thought.
(Although he hasn’t changed his programming. We still seem to sing either “The Lord is kind and merciful” or “Shepherd me O God” every week.)

I read recently on an old thread on a blog about sacred music an amusingly apt description of the subtext of the aforementioned “Gather Us In.”
It was called the song where we remind God to respect our diversity.

While I am Russian Catholic, and therefore, the Latin hymnological terminology (e.g., introit, gradual, tract, etc) is somewhat alien to my perspective of worship, there is hardly a week that goes by without my priest, Fr. Alexei, making reference in his sermons to one or another of the riches of hymnography that we have in the East: for the Divine Liturgy, troparia, kontakia, prokeimena, and alleluia; and for Vespers, Matins, and the Hours, stichera, litiya, aposticha, kanons, and sessional hymns.

I believe that Fr. Alexei does this because he has realized the truth that the law of worship does supply the law of belief, and he wishes his flock to be fed with the riches of our faith.

This is not to say that the West does not have riches of its own. The propers of the Latin Church mentioned by our estimable host here contain riches that go back to the second century, and which have been quoted and used by composers from du Pres and Palestrina to Vaughan Williams and Durufle.

It is a pity that (as Todd has pointed out) these riches are not much used by RC choirs or congregations in this country. It is more the pity (as AAE has pointed out) that priests do not quote from them in their homilies.

Never in my country.

While we’re speaking on American hymnody, I was informed that very soon, OCP’s hymnbooks would no longer be welcome for use at Mass in my country, as our region produces our own collection of suitable hymnody for use. Unfortunately, last I checked, they aren’t encouraging the use of the Missal antiphons… yet.

“A good preacher should be able to make the connection seamlessly without assuming we needed a reminder we just heard it.”

Ummm, I think the joke was that the (hypothetical) priest wouldn’t be reminding us of what we’d just heard, but of what we HADN’T just heard, because the musicians or liturgist had opted NOT to do the proper but to substitute “Gather Us In” (talk about CLUNKY.”

And yet another. I wil stop with this one!

First Sunday of Advent A
Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 121: 1-2, 3-4, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:37-44

November 28, 2004
Monastery of the Glorious Cross, O.S.B.
Branford, Connecticut

There is movement in today’s liturgy: a great sweep upward and away from all that holds us bound and confined “in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Lk 1:79). This is the ecstatic movement of prayer, of all right worship: out of self, upward, and into “the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19). The entrance antiphon sets the tone, not only for this the first Mass of Advent, but also for the rest of the Advent season and, indeed, for the whole new liturgical year. “To you, my God, I lift up my soul” (Ps 24:1) or, as Ronald Knox translated it, “All my heart goes out to my God.”
The heart, in going out to God, leaves much behind and cannot look back. This is the law of prayer, this is what it makes it costly, sacrificial and, at the same time, unspeakably sweet. The things we leave behind are mere trifles but, oh, the hold they can have on us! The old self, fearful and anxious about many things, grasps at every illusory promise of security, clings to things, arranges them in great useless piles, looks on them caressingly and takes inventory of them. The loss of any thing, even the most insignificant, represents for the old self, the loss of control, the loss of power, and of comforting familiar pleasures. All of this in incompatible with the prayer that the liturgy places on our lips today: “All my heart goes out to you, my God” (Ps 24:1). The upward flight of today’s introit has nothing to do with cheap pious sentiment. It is an uncompromising call to detachment, to poverty of spirit, and to an obedience that is off and running with all speed, ready for the leap of hope.
The movement of the entrance antiphon emerges more clearly in the collect. “Almighty God, grant to your faithful, we beseech you, the will to go forth with works of justice to greet your Christ at his coming.” We ask God to give us “the will to go forth.” The nuance is significant. We do not have in ourselves the will to go forth. All our inclination is rather to hold back. The “will to go forth” is itself God’s gift to us. We ask furthermore for “the will to go forth with works of justice.” The works of justice are those that free the old self from the bondage to sin and demonstrate the liberty that comes from the Spirit. (Saint Benedict catalogues them for us in Chapter Four of the Holy Rule.) We go forth because Christ is coming. We go forth like the five wise virgins, bearing lighted lamps, to greet the Bridegroom at his midnight advent (cf. Mt 25:6).
The prophet Isaiah delivers the same message: “Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. . . . O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Is 2:3, 5). In the responsorial psalm, the movement upward and into God is revealed a joyful thing: “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go up to the house of the Lord’” (Ps 121:1).
The Apostle says that the movement upward and into God is urgent. The advent of Christ brooks no delay. “You know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone the day is at hand” (Rom 13:11-12). Again the call to detachment, a summons to throw off the things that weigh us down and impede our upward flight: “Let us then cast off the works of darkness” (Rom 13:12).
Lest we become discouraged at the cost of it all and fearful of the loss of the things that spin our cocoons of comfort, the verse before the gospel teaches us to pray with all longing and desire - “Show us, O Lord, your mercy, and grant us your salvation” (Ps 84:8). We ask God to show us his mercy while we are yet earthbound and immobilized by our fears. He shows us his mercy. Mercy has taken a human face. The mercy of God is revealed in the face of his Christ. It is the glimpse of that face, even from afar, that gives wings to the soul. “Ad te levavi animam meam. - To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul” (Ps 24:1).
The Gospel brings the face of mercy very close to us. The Gospel is the face of mercy all radiant in the midst of the Church. “Watch therefore,’ he says, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. . . . Be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Mt 24:42, 44). The hour of God defies every human calculation. “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night” (Ps 89:4). This is why, “from the rising of the sun to its setting” (Mal 1:11), the Church sends her priests to the altar to raise the mighty cry, “Sursum corda! - Hearts on high!” It is, in fact, the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist that keeps the Church in a ceaseless Advent.
The Eucharist draws us upward, out of ourselves. and into “the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19). “Hearts on high!” What does the Church reply today? “All my heart goes out to you, my God; to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul” (Ps 24:1). We have entered already into the great Advent movement. There is no turning back. “Make no provisions for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom 13:14). The Spirit comes to sweep the Bride into the embrace of the Bridegroom. Behold, he comes!