Pep Rally. The once venerable concept of "holy days of obligation" has become amusing. We have generally gotten to the point that we cannot schedule few enough masses on, for instance, the Solemnity of the Assumption, to fill the church more than twice (this only if we are in a parish with a Catholic school that can fill it once.) The overextended and undercommitted citizens of America's "me" generation resist "obligations" in which they have no personal investment like our parents and grandparents resisted communism. It's not a symbolic statement of mass disobedience or disenchantment with the church: it is simply benevolent disinterest.
This situation that may be the thorn in Cardinal X's side is a blessing for full, conscious, and active participation. While the normally singing Sunday assembly may have its fullest voice "diluted" by massive numbers of blessed observers on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday, no such phenomenon dulls the thunder of an assembly gathered on All Saints' Day or, God help us, the Solemnity of Mary (why not New Year's Day, for crying out loud?) Folks who bother to come to mass on the holy days tend to be there now not out of guilt or desire to be seen so much as a deepening sense of immersion in the Catholic Christian ethos, a desire to be a part of celebrating time with others of like spirit.
All of this is doubly true of the Triduum celebrations. With no law on the books to badger the consciences of people into attending mandatory and therefore excusably lifeless liturgies, the celebrations of the Triduum mysteries attract greater and greater numbers of Catholics, and the celebrations are indeed intensified, as Music in Catholic Worship promised, by the faith of the participants made visible in full, conscious, and active participation.
This produces a great responsibility for the liturgy preparation team and the music ministry. We can pretty well assume that if people wanted to be entertained, they would have gone to the mall or rented a movie rather than coming to Mass when its not a Sunday. People who line up for half an hour to stand or kneel and kiss a cross at a Good Friday service are people who are serious about their faith, who have an inkling about the importance of ritual, and who reflect enough on the meanings of their own lives to connect with other people publicly to proclaim those meanings. These people do not need to be cajoled into singing. Mostly, we only need not dissuade them from singing by asking them to sing silly or irrelevant music, or texts that don't touch them where they live. They need to be exposed to music that will engage them as human persons living in a specific time and place, persons in relationship to the story of a God and a people that stretches to the beginning of recorded history. Good music well performed across the spectrum of ministries focused upon energizing the assembly will invite them to sing, will challenge them, even seduce them into singing. But we will let ourselves be seduced by the Muse that danced before the Holy One in the beginning; and God will make of our worship an act of love and therefore of death and healing. Music of the Lie will create spectators at a pageant and mourners for a dead god who rises once a year in the springtime; no new life will emerge from such an event except for the grass that always finds its way up through crumbling pavement.
The Triduum mysteries and the whole celebration of Easter are about amazed people who find tombs empty today, about people who have their sight restored today and about the people who give them what they have, neither silver nor gold. The celebrations are about people who experience life shared around a table today and people who sweat blood and go under the lash and release their souls in doubt and agony to an absent God today and then return to tell about it. The experience of liturgy therefore must reflect the seas that have parted for fugitives today and the stones rolled back and the strangers who imparted meanings and then disappeared and all of us doubters who have had to discover what real presence is, what real peace is, what it means to be created again, or born again, or to rise from the dead. And the experience is for us who need to touch the wounds, and who haven't got a clue about where Jesus is going or how to get there.
Lets choose our ritual music, psalms, and songs with care. Every sound, every metaphor, can be a doorway between the world where everything dies and the world of possibilities, between the world of illusions and the reign of God.
General Comments. You know that the Triduum, stretching from the Mass of the Lords Supper on Thursday to the Solemn Vespers of Easter Sunday constitute one great feast, the ritual fulcrum upon which Church time is centered, days on which lex orandi is par excellence lex credendi, days upon which we remember and act on Gods self-revelation as our source of liberation from all enslavement, stretching from the corners of history to our instincts for self-preservation. The Sundays of Easter form one great feast, a new-creation week of eight Sundays.
The choices of ritual music can play a significant part in connecting the Sundays as a single feast. Festive eucharistic acclamations, augmented with choral descants or additional instruments can be especially helpful, not just on the first Sunday of Easter, but through the Solemnity of Pentecost. The Gospel Acclamation, repeated after the gospel and perhaps even during the gospel proclamation, can do the same. The Alleluia refrain of the plainsong hymn "O Filii et Filiae" is a good choice, but should be played with energy and drive like the carol that it is. For an example of how a whole gathering rite for Easter might be shaped around the singing of the Glory to God and the sprinkling rite, investigate Gary Daigle's "Glory to God and Sprinkling Rite" on the GIA recording, Praise the Makers Love.
Here are some more ideas on a day-by-day basis through the Triduum and Easter season. Blessings on your work through this holy season.
Solemn Celebration of the Lord' s Supper
Focus for Music Planning: When preparing the music for tonight, focus on finding a good hymn for the foot-washing, a familiar and warm setting of the eucharistic prayer and/or acclamations, a strong and unified communion rite including the music of the Fraction Rite and procession to communion (think of the musical relationship between We Remember and other movements of Mass of Remembrance as an example), and a well-known and singable eucharistic piece for the procession with the Eucharist. Composers have helped to turn the corner on communion music from adoration-type hymns to remembering-community-service focused texts. This is not the night to forget the difference.
Proper Psalm: Psalm 116 "Our blessing-cup is a communion in the blood of Christ."
**These songs might be appropriate throughout the Triduum.
Solemn Celebration of the Lord's Passion and Death
Focus for Music Planning: Plan an acclamation for the assembly to sing during the Passion at several intervals, maybe Dying you destroyed our death... or some other text that reflects Johns theology as well as being familiar to the assembly by heart. The intercessions can be arranged so that the response of the assembly to each petition is sung; i.e., the deacon or another minister reads the invocation Let us pray...., after a pause the cantor sings, Let us pray to the Lord:, and all respond Lord, hear our prayer. A sung amen can follow the Presiders prayer as well. Vary the music during the veneration of the cross between choral pieces like Pie Jesu by Webber and Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus and songs that assembly can sing well, like Schutte's Only This I Want and Holy Darkness. The song during the communion procession could be the same as was sung last night, something like We Remember or Bread of Life.
Proper psalm: Psalm 31, "Father, I place my life in your hands."
See above selections, and:
The Fire/Light Proclamation: Consider a creative singing of the Exsultet that involves the assembly, maybe with Marty Haugen's Light of Christ (GIA) or Roc O'Connor's Behold the Glory of God, published by New Dawn. There is also Everett Frese's adaptable version published by NPM. The point is, nothing will get the vigil off to a worse start than an interminable and bad presentation of the Paschal light.
The Liturgy of the Word: Pace is very important here, because this part of the liturgy needs to be both reflective and celebratory. Since this Liturgy of the Word is frequently celebrated in the dark or by candlelight, well known responses and instant familiarity are necessary. Dialogical proclamations (using assembly acclamations) of the longer readings from Genesis and Exodus can help keep everyone focused on the Word. No need to be afraid of this: remember that the whole assembly is the primary minister of the word; in a primal sense, we proclaim the word together, through ministers. The psalms are proclamations of Gods word and are, as human songs of response to God in the real world, embodiments of our having received that word more deeply into our hearts.
I suggested above using the Alleluia from O Filii et Filiae through the Easter season, and it could start tonight. I would be happy to share a setting of this Alleluia arranged as a gospel acclamation with verses from Psalm 118, as well as an Easter gospel that is proclaimed by Deacon, cantor, and assembly together, if you would like to look it over. Write to me, care of Hosanna magazine.
Liturgy of Baptism. You'll want an engaging Litany of the Saints (many have caught on to John Becker's version [OCP] for the procession to the font, as well as an acclamation for the blessing of the water [maybe a refrain of Glory and Praise to Our God or We Praise You.] Most importantly, you should prepare an acclamation for each baptism, and its still hard to beat Howard Hughes's You Have Put on Christ, although other acclamations are available, especially in David Haas's resource collections Who Calls You by Name (GIA). Some communities are also reserving the singing of the Glory to God until the sprinkling rite that follows the renewal of baptismal promises.
Eucharist. Hard as it is, we have to prepare for the possible letdown after the first three movements of tonight's liturgy are over. After all, the goal of initiation is participation in the Eucharist, so we should be building toward a climax! It makes sense to use the preparation of the gifts as an entr'acte between the Baptism Liturgy and the Eucharistic Prayer and Communion rite. We use instrumental music, like a flute duet, during this time. Then, follow the same form as I mentioned above for the Liturgy of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. Let the choir or organist/musicians do the recessional music tonight, so that people can begin to be together in joy right after the final Alleluias have been sung.
Music planners: take your cues about focus from last night, with special emphasis on the gospel proclamation, the renewal of baptismal promises, and of course, the eucharistic prayer.
Proper psalm: Psalm 118 Alleluia or This is the day the Lord has made.
Seasonal psalms (in addition to psalm 118)
Proper Psalm: Psalm 118, Alleluia, or Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love is everlasting.
Song Suggestions:
Proper Psalm: Psalm 16, Lord, You will show us the path of life.
Song Suggestions:
Proper Psalm: Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.
Song Suggestions:
Proper Psalm: Psalm 33, Lord, let your mercy be upon us, as we place our trust in you.
Song Suggestions:
Proper Psalm: Psalm 66, Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Song Suggestions:
Proper Psalm: Psalm 47, God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy; a blare of trumpets for the Lord.
Song Suggestions:
Proper Psalm: Psalm 27, I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.
Song Suggestions:
Proper Psalm: Psalm 104, Lord, send out your spirit and renew the face of the earth.
Song Suggestions: