The Recovering Choir Director

(NB: This is a working draft of an article that may or may not appear elsewhere. Comments and constructive criticism encouraged.)

In a 2006 letter, Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin reminded us of the Second Vatican Council’s clear teaching about where the presence of Christ occurs during the Mass:

[T]he most sacramentally intense presence of Christ is His Real Presence under the signs of bread and wine; the second most sacramentally intense presence of Christ is in His proclaimed word; the third most sacramentally intense presence of Christ is through the priest, who is ordained to act in the person of Christ; and the fourth most sacramentally intense presence of Christ is in the assembly.^[1]

Let us focus on the second most sacramentally intense presence of Christ: His proclaimed word. Where is Christ’s word proclaimed at Mass? Certainly it is proclaimed in the reading of the Gospel. Christ’s own words are used throughout the prayers of the Mass. And because all of Scripture is the inspired word of God, the readings before the Gospel, the verse at the Gospel acclamation, and the Psalms also constitute Christ’s word.

The Psalms: Christ’s songbook, the Church’s songbook

The Psalms hold a special place among these occurrences of Christ’s word. We need a bit of background to understand why this is the case.

Jesus, the Word made flesh, was a Jew. As a Jew, he was bound to Jewish worship, tradition, and customs. Among these customs was the regular singing of the Psalms — all one hundred fifty of them. This fact is even more impressive when we realize that at the time of Christ, knowledge was transmitted orally. This means that the Psalms were memorized by each and every devout Jew — in other words, they were written on the Jewish heart, fused into the Jewish being.

When we realize that Christ Himself sang the Psalms during His earthly life, we begin to understand their incredible importance to the liturgical life of the Church. Christ, in reciting the Psalms repeatedly, ratified forever — with His own voice — their suitability for Divine worship!

The Church honors Christ’s own corporeal ratification of His songbook by reciting these Psalms during the Liturgy of the Hours, the Divine Office. In years past, those bound to the Office by obligation — clergy and many professed religious — would recite all 150 Psalms over the course of one week. After the Second Vatican Council, revisions to the Liturgy of the Hours resulted in the Psalms being recited in their entirety over the course of four weeks.^[2]

Unbeknownst to many Catholics — clergy and faithful alike — the Church also gives an honored place to the Psalms in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Psalms of the Mass and their proper places

Most people recognize the presence of the Psalms during the Liturgy of the Word as found in the Responsorial Psalm and many Alleluia and Lenten Gospel Verses. But in fact, they are and always have been much more present throughout the Mass — even if only on paper.

At Mass, the Psalms may occur at up to five distinct points:

• Entrance (Introit)
• Psalm after the First Reading (Responsorial Psalm or Gradual)
• Verse before the Gospel (Alleluia Verse, Lenten Gospel Acclamation, or Tract)
• Preparation of the Gifts (Offertory)
• Communion (Communio)

Whenever psalms are not used at these points, the Church uses verses from other parts of Sacred Scripture — most frequently from the Gospels. Much less frequently — perhaps a handful of times at most — will they use non-Scriptural texts. Regardless of whether the words are psalms, other parts of Scripture, or non-Scriptural texts of the liturgy, we call the texts and music that occurs at these five points the “propers” of the Mass since these change from week to week, each one being proper to its place during the liturgical year.

Propers of the Mass, Hymns at the Mass, and Hymns of the Mass

Let us take a look at what the Church asks us to sing at the Entrance for the First Sunday of Advent, which is an excerpt from Psalm 25. The source of this text is the Graduale Romanum, the official songbook of the Church for the Mass:^[3]

To you I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; let me never be confounded, nor let my enemies triumph over me. For all those who wait for you will not be put to shame.

Again, realize that Christ himself sang this Psalm — in its entirety, repeatedly — when He walked the earth. When we sing or listen to these Psalms, we engage Christ’s word in a very real way; one may even argue with some justification that we unite our lives with that of Christ when we sing or listen to the Psalms.

When a proper doesn’t use a psalm verse, it will usually highlight either an episode of salvation history or directly quote Christ Himself.

And every last proper is officially and undeniably part of the Mass.

In contrast, most hymns, while they may be Scriptural in inspiration, are not in and of themselves Sacred Scripture. Most are certainly not “liturgical” in the context of the Mass, and aside from the Gloria and the Sanctus, which are hymns of the Mass that are (or ought to be) sung regularly, the Church officially has not incorporated hymns into the Mass. At best, the lyrics of most hymns are a pious interpretation or meditation on the Word of God; at worst, hymn texts actively undermine Catholic doctrine. (It is a revealing fact that the Arian heresy of the fourth century spread through the use of hymns whose texts undermined orthodox Catholic teaching.)

Still, in common liturgical practice, the Propers at the Entrance, Preparation of the Gifts, and Communion are replaced by hymns. Why this has become a common occurrence is a question best reserved for another time, but it is an important question to ponder. Why have the Christ- and Church-ratified Psalms and other Scriptural and liturgical propers been replaced by hymns of varying content?

Lest I be accused of denigrating the singing of hymns at Mass, I contend that both liturgical propers and non-liturgical hymns that contain solidly and unequivocally Catholic content can be (and in certain cases, ought to be) used side by side — in fact, this is the practice that I aim to implement at the two churches I serve. Hymns can play an important role in addition to the singing of the propers. But hymns at Mass, being extra-liturgical by definition — i.e., not part of the Church’s official Order of Mass — really ought not replace the propers outright. And certainly, the hymns of the Mass — the Gloria and the Sanctus — ought to be sung without exception.

Our Word or Christ’s Word?

A perhaps provocative lesson may be found in the configuration of church interiors in recent decades — namely, the placement of the Tabernacle that holds the Real Presence of Christ. In many churches after the Second Vatican Council, the removal of God’s central location from His own house — His own house! — became and remains the source of much confusion, contention, and division. We go to church to worship God as the source and end of our lives, but all too often, a church interior fails to reflect this basic purpose. Worse still is the occurrence in which the celebrant’s chair is put where a centrally located tabernacle used to be; while the priest does act in the person of Christ, the most sacramentally intense presence of Christ is His Real Presence in the Eucharist. We effectively replace Christ — the perfect Man, the God-Man — with a sinful man, ordained and configured to Christ though he certainly is.

In a similar way, it is a sad fact that in many parishes, the process of selecting hymns to sing at Mass is the source of much confusion, contention, and division. But let us consider once again that hymns are not intrinsic to the Mass itself. We must ask ourselves: when we select hymns for the Mass — especially when they effectively replace the Propers, which are an actual part of the Mass — in what way do we obscure Christ’s word from being heard? Ought we not be learning how to sing Christ’s word rather than replace it with someone’s interpretation of Christ’s word? To what extent do we replace God-centeredness with us-centeredness?

Singing or listening to the propers of the Mass allows Christ’s Word to penetrate our being through our ears. Let us cultivate the desire to realize how and to what extent we have allowed “our word” to replace Christ’s word. When we realize that in our mind and heart, let us cultivate the desire to emulate Christ in the Church’s public worship by using, wherever called for and desired by the Church, the songbook that He used during his earthly life — the Book of Psalms — or other parts of His inspired Word and the liturgy He has given to us. When our desire to emulate Christ in worship is aflame, let us finally cultivate the desire to hear and sing, prayerfully and musically, Christ’s own song. In this way we will allow Christ to sing to us, through us, and with us — at Mass and beyond.