…I found a book at our “free store” that really struck me. It was the autobiography of St. Anthony Claret (get it, especially if you are a “professional” evangelizer!), whose feast day is today. He was something of a mix between Fulton Sheen, John Vianney, and Oscar Romero – he conquered the art of mass media evangelization, worked non-stop to the point where he was manifestly aided by extraordinary graces, and in the meantime managed to build up industry wherever he went to support the impoverished and uneducated.
Well, this past weekend I hopped on a plane to Barcelona to pay the saint a visit.
Barcelona is great. It is fun, not too expensive, and super Gothic. There is actually even a neighborhood called the “Gothic Quarter.” But we’ll come back to that.
After finally figuring out how the train station worked (which took over an hour), I headed out into the foothills of Catalonia toward Vic, the apex of my pilgrimage.
The architecture, as I described to a friend in the USA through some very expensive text messages, was “low medieval, quaint, and Catalonian,” but most of the structures in the old city are probably only early 18th century. It felt like I had gone through a time machine nonetheless. I mean, where else do you find a statue of St. Joseph and the Christ Child over a dentist’s office (left photo)?
Notice the similarity between this church and convent/rectory and the mission churches in the southeast of the USA.
The place was pretty packed with churches, but none were open Saturday except the cathedral. But not even a vigil there! I guess everyone gets up early on Sunday.
Alas! I had arrived. And sadly, this church too, would remain closed the whole of the day. Evening prayer outside would have to suffice. Horseshoes, hand grenades, and pilgrimages, right? And I have an excuse to return now, too!
I spent a good deal of time at the cathedral instead.
The Diocese of Vic has a pretty proud ecclesiastical history. They are actually even operating a whole episcopal museum near the cathedral.
The nave is large and dark, nothing too extraordinary, though the pillars are rather thick. What I found so distinctive about the interior was the mural of the stages of the crucifixion (as distinct from the Stations) which covers the entire upper wall, on all sides. Behold, a few samples.
It calls to mind El Greco, doesn’t it? But there is a touch of something else.
I discovered a new saint, buried in an exquisite side chapel: St. Bernat Calbó, 13th Century Bishop of Vic.
It turns out St. Michael of the Saints (17th Century Trinitarian priest) is also buried in Vic, which is his hometown. Double reason to go back… I only found out as I was writing this post!
Lettuce pray.
Back to Barcelona. Sunday morning I went to the cathedral for the 10:30 Mass, in Catalan (the main language of the region). But first I stopped in this church, which I think is the “Basilica de Mercé” though I could be mistaken. (Use your best Catalan skills to translate.)
Finally I got to the cathedral, which is actually NOT Sagrada Familia, despite what you may have thought. More on that place in a bit. First, feast your eyes on this…
They were being persnickety about pictures in the main nave – which I approve of – but I snagged a real keeper of what are undoubtedly the coolest choir stalls I have ever seen.
The picture does not do these babies justice.
There were several side chapels, a few of which looked like this (pardon the tilt, I shot through a grille):
The cathedral is also home to St. Eulalia, a 3rd century martyr, aged about 13!
I went to the harbor for a bite to eat, then I was off to Sagrada Familia for a Holy Hour… On my way I bumped into a guy who saw me at Mass way back at the cathedral – I was wearing a shirt with my Alma Mater on it, and he recognized it. (A small, American, Catholic, liberal arts college is not usually an international attention-grabber, but this was not the first time this had happened to me, believe it or not.) Had a nice chat, in English!
The fact that construction is still ongoing since the 19th Century adds a touch of mystique.
Antoni Gaudi was a genius. We will have to do a whole article on him, or even just on Sagrada Familia. Take a look at just a little of what is going on in this place’s exterior:
Unfortunately, all visits to the main nave are ticketed, including for Mass, which is not on a schedule anyway. AND THEY WERE SOLD OUT OF TICKETS. I did go down for free to the lower church/crypt, but it was packed and Mass was going on (and without a chasuble… grrrrrrrr…). So it was not very conducive to mental prayer, unless I was going to Mass for the second time. I went back upstairs for a walk around, then figured I’d go back to the cathedral for an hour – but THAT WAS NOW BEING TICKETED TOO. I’ve heard of “pay to play,” but “pay to pray” was a new one. Where is Pope Francis when you need him?
And with that, I returned to Rome, mostly a happy camper.
Among the many crises we are facing today in the Church in the Western world is the obliteration of Christian art. One might immediately be inclined to ask, “How did we get here?” Indeed… How exactly did we go from Dante and Michelangelo and Mozart to having trouble differentiating churches from communist buildings?
As interesting as the answer might be, that is not the point here: the point is that however it happened, it happened – and now we have to fix it.
We can’t blame others for the void which we ourselves now allow to exist. No, it is NOT the “spirit” of Vatican II’s fault that we have not done more. No, it is NOT some inherent fact that Christian art can’t be popular today and so isn’t worth doing – good Christian art continues to be one of the major forces in global tourism, and since good Christian art always glorifies God, it is always worth doing. If you build it, they will come. Beauty is captivating in every generation. The human spirit is ever aspiring to the transcendent, and since we are in the unique position of having the fullness of supernatural truth, we are also in a unique position to reveal the fullness of supernatural beauty.
It is simply a matter of the diffusion of responsibility… “Someone else will do it.”
Well guess what? We are still able to complain because not enough people are doing anything about this crisis! You and I are the problem with the world of art, to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton.
Put on sackcloth and ashes over the fact that Tolkien and O’Connor are gone, and there hasn’t been anyone like them since. Well, if you are a writer, stop churning out fan fiction and start planning the next great Catholic epic – or short story.
Don’t like the Year of Mercy logo? If you draw or paint, what materials did you offer your parish to supplement (or replace) that image in flyers and the like?
Whine all you want about the Gather hymnal. If you are a musician, what are you doing to contribute to the solution? Do you at least help at your parish?
Moan and groan til the cows come home about the rock people in Noah, the liberties taken in Exodus: Gods and Kings, or, saints preserve us, the acting and writing in almost all films made “by Christians for Christians.” If you are a filmmaker and aren’t looking to break in to help, then guess what: you are part of the problem!
There is an interview with Barbara Nicolosi over at Aleteia. It is provoking – how exactly do we fix the mess of Christian film, both in Hollywood and in the indie scene? How do we raise the standard?
The answer is clear: good artists need to go there. The world of art, and film especially, is a 21st century mission territory. You don’t need to go to Sudan or Borneo to do the work of evangelization – you can just go behind a camera… or in front of a canvas.
In all this trouble, there is little more frustrating than the persistent “response” genre of Christian YouTube… What the digital world needs isn’t a couple of witty poems countering some kid’s mediocre ecclesiology or spiels about how wacked-out Buzzfeed’s idea of Christianity is. What the digital world needs is…
TO SEE THE GOSPEL FIRST.
If all the digital world gets from us is apologia and defense, there will never be a real kerygmatic moment… It is as if we have forsaken the sword to take up the shield alone. We need to be first, forcing the responses and defenses. This is especially true in the digital world, where few people bother to look into responses, as thoughtful and artsy as they may be. Clicking is hard, after all, and to click a second time so that you can actually be challenged to think? Whew, that is a lot to ask of the average millennial.
Our material needs to be seen before the Devil’s. And what we put out there needs to be worthy of the call.
The pen has always been mightier than the sword. So too has the paintbrush, and now the camera and microphone are as well. If we continue to allow the world to be polluted both with the dangerous art of secularists and modernists and with the even more dangerous art of untalented or misguided Christians who harm the Church’s credibility in the eyes and ears of those who so often encounter our art without knowing the soundness of our doctrine, we may as well have set loose the next great heresiarch. This is a real battlefield that we have been put on, and the law of the land is, “Fight or die.” Right now, we are dying.
If you are a struggling artist, you are finding out there’s not much money to be had anyway. Why not make all your non-money doing something for the Lord? He might just deign to bless you in this life and the next for your labors. If you are a successful artist, then why not turn your expertise toward God, the highest object of all? We are in desperate need of your talents… Don’t bury them in the world. Come join the fight!
Sincerely,
-CRM
Featured image: The Battle Between Israel and the Amalekites, Nicolas Poussin
A young priest sets out into the countryside to journey to his new assignment… He is not quite sure how to get there, but in the evening, while walking in a field he finds two boys. They tell him he has just crossed into the parish boundary. Father gets on his knees and prays in thanksgiving for being sent there and in preparation for the work he will do in the little country town. The first and most important job, he would find out, will be to eradicate “the scourge of dancing.”
Of course we are speaking of the one whom they called “the saint” even during his lifetime – St. John Vianney, the Curé of Ars. We are not speaking of Rev. Shaw Moore, the antagonist of Footloose… Although the two might have gotten along, ecumenical issues aside.
Dance is commonly assumed to be an art form and a generally good way to recreate. Such assumptions are in fact so deep that the suggestion that it might be better to do away with public dances is seen as rigid, cruel, “medieval,” etc. One can only imagine the reactions of North Dakota’s teens to then Bishop Aquila’s decision a few years ago to ban dances (and pajama days) in one of his Catholic schools in the Diocese of Fargo… Maybe even some parents and faculty were upset. But would they have told John Vianney that he had been “too rigid” after he finally conquered the last of the dancers in the tiny village of Ars, which by that point had become the brightest beacon of holiness and civility in all of France?
The Abbé Trochu, in his famous biography of the saint, notes that, while St. Francis de Sales “wore gloves” when treating the topic, Vianney did not. “Go on! Dance! Dance all the way down into Hell!” Thus spake the saintly curé from the pulpit, time and time again. After decades, Ars was perfectly obedient to its pastor and was much happier for it.
Imagine the efforts it would have taken to accomplish the same feat in a 21st American century town even of normal size by today’s standards.
The people of Ars were not having dainty upper-crust waltzes, but neither were they “grinding,” “twerking,” or doing any other kind of categorically pornographic actions, which no reasonable person would think to call morally acceptable. They were simply dancing like country folk, having some drinks, and then getting too familiar with each other. The saint saw that this was not an accidental relationship, and he thought “the dance” to be the single greatest occasion of sin in Ars.
Note that it was seen by him as an occasion of sin, not necessarily a sin in itself, except perhaps inasmuch as a certain recklessness therein could be an expression of a lack of due care to avoid offending God. So, the question remains: can a Christian dance?
It depends.
The downfall of dance is usually what is touted as its greatest quality – the ability to arouse and express the passions. It is violent, it is sensual, it is angry, it is sad, it is joyous, it is whatever you need it to be. It intensifies all these things and shows them to others, while “freeing the spirit.” That’s the point. And that’s the problem.
In expressing the passions haphazardly, one can lose a grip on reason and be drawn to wherever that passion leads. The main problem is with sensuality.
First of all, we can, without hesitation, discard the utterly obscene motions and actions that have no other purpose than to sexualize the participants. These are not only done out of inordinate desire for the pleasures of the body, but they are also scandalous. Scandal here means a “stumbling block” to the spiritual lives of others – to cause sin in them. We are bound to avoid causing sin in others inasmuch as it is possible while not neglecting other duties. Nobody has ever had a duty to do anything like one would find going on at the average American high school dance. And it can never be good art, if art is the good expression of something good to express.
Secondly, we must examine the motivations and circumstances of those dances which are less clear. Should a desperate bachelor engage in a romantic tango with a beautiful woman he’s just met? Perhaps this will be a real challenge to him interiorly, urging him to go further and further… The same may hold true for her, which he must be careful about as well. Such a dance loosens the foundation on which chastity rests.
But what about a professional dancer who is so used to these movements and is so concentrated on his craft that he is greatly fortified against temptations? It seems the difficulty begins to disappear. And if a man is dancing with his wife, certainly there is no problem.
The case becomes different according to the abilities and circumstances of those involved, and according to the capacity of a dance to evoke problematic urges.
What would John Vianney think of the teens of Bomont jumping on the Kevin Bacon rock-n-roll-will-free-your-soul bandwagon? If we are honest – which we are here to be – we must say that he would probably be just as indignant as he was when he arrived in Ars, if not more so. He would think Rev. Moore was a wuss and a bad leader for finally caving. He would go to his bedroom, scourge himself to a bloody pulp, not eat for a few days, then start preaching, if his approach in Ars is any indication.
While the final scene of the film doesn’t have anything too bad (especially since these kids who have apparently never danced before are actually professionals), it is the culture and ideas which are introduced by the habitual loosening of inhibitions in social settings with the opposite sex (that often also involve alcohol) which sends up red flags. It is the dark cloud on the horizon: there is not yet a storm, but one is coming. Just as well, the spirits of angst and rebellion are not spirits from God, but they are exactly what Kevin Bacon’s character and the whole idea of rock-n-roll are about.
There are ways to “cut loose” and socialize that do not involve the dangers of “the dance.” Running, golfing, hiking, and yes, even spelunking are all appropriate alternatives. I simply can’t imagine John Vianney giving a sermon against spelunking… Can you?
“But wait!” some will say. “There is that scene where Bacon’s character goes before city council and throws down some verses from Scripture about how great dancing is! Ha. Game, set, and match, you Jansenist clown!” Unfortunately, we will have to save the detailed examination of the Scriptural treatment of dancing for another post. For now it will suffice to say that the Holy Bible decidedly does NOT encourage us to “kick off our Sunday shoes” so that we can do the worm to impress our friends.
Here is a challenge to those who have charge of Catholic schools: take a good, long look at the reality of what is going on at your dances, and whether it is worth the spiritual risk.
A while back a professor commented to my class about the cover of a recent edition of The Word Among Us. He noted that the title was “The Gospel of Encounter,” and yet it featured something rather opposed to such a notion… A woman who actually “turned away from the Vicar of Christ,” as he put it, to take a selfie. (It’s the June 2015 issue.)
You have no doubt experienced the frustration of such things before, if you’ve ever been to Notre Dame, the Holy Sepulchre, or any major church or shrine. A lot of people are there just to snag photos.
I was recently at the Holy Father’s Sunday Angelus address, which is held weekly in St. Peter’s Square. Yes, it makes sense that people would take a picture or two, yes, it makes sense to have two large television screens with live streaming due to how far away the Pope’s window is. But what I noticed was something very odd and disconcerting: many people were taking pictures of the screens.
They were taking pictures. Of pictures.
“Little Johnny, look at this photo here, it’s from 40 years ago.”
“Oh boy, what’s it of, grandpa?”
“It’s a picture of some footage of the pope.”
“Wow, golly gee, that must have been special. But can’t I just look up the real thing on YouTube?”
“That’s not the point – I saw this footage in person.”
“I can too, grandpa, here it is. If only you had seen the pope himself!”
“I did, but the screen was just as interesting.”
Why aren’t people satisfied with a postcard from a famous church? Certainly, it’s not the 50 cents it costs, because people are likewise not satisfied with the professional quality footage that is now taken at every papal event and then immediately uploaded for the whole world to see. Is it really necessary that it’s on YOUR phone? Why not just soak in the experience instead, so that it’s actually in YOUR brain?
“I just want to remember it,” people will say. Well, first of all, if you need to take a picture to remember something, it couldn’t have been that spectacular, so why do you want to remember it? And you can’t remember something you never really encountered in sincerity anyway. The “flesh and blood” of the experience must be primary, the digitized “word” of the experience must be secondary.
In focusing too much on getting a picture, one immortalizes a moment that he never had.
God can’t be experienced directly in this life, only in the next life in the fullness of the Beatific Vision, where we will behold the Divine Essence “face to face.” For now it is always, as St. Paul says, “dimly in a mirror.” (1 Cor 13:12) Why are we so intent on adding yet another piece of glass to hide Him from ourselves?
Many years ago I traveled to Quebec. I was in some reenactment Native American village (or is it Native Canadian?), where my group was told by the guide that absolutely no pictures were to be taken of the masks inside one particular hut – that if this law was broken, our cameras would be too. Why? Because there was a belief that developed that taking a picture somehow steals the soul away from the object… It desecrates it, profanes it, sucks its life out. While we know that masks don’t have souls, and that cameras don’t half-kill what they capture images of, perhaps this is not far off from the truth, but in the opposite direction: taking pictures of the sacred, if done irreverently, is bad for the photographer’s soul. It half-kills the experience he could have had. It has profaned and desecrated his relationship to it.
Now, there can be good photography of the sacred. There is plenty of it, actually. But good sacred photography is never done out of vanity, out of “touristic” motives, out of bandwagon-hype. Such would be, in some small way, a sacrilege. If a Catholic walks into one of the great churches of Christendom, forgets to genuflect, and starts grabbing pictures of the statues, hasn’t he sort of missed the point? And how much of an excuse does he really have?
Perhaps some person or place really speaks to you, and after having authentically encountered it you desire to catch a picture. That is quite a different phenomenon, as you have already genuinely engaged with what you now encounter through lenses, mirrors, and a screen. The Word became flesh, after all – He certainly did NOT become a digital picture.
In the meantime, let’s all sit back, relax, and actually experience the incarnational nature of our Faith, rather than neurotically re-immaterializing it.
Post by: Eamonn Clark
Main image: CTV’s coverage of the Papal audience of May 25, 2016
Check it out. Coming soon to a theater and/or film festival near you. It looks very good, don’t you think? These men are the real deal… no nonsense, not a shred of clericalism, and very pious yet available to those they serve.
There’s a bigger and better review for your hungry eyes here.
Can we have more of this? It’s just great… Even though it is a bit like putting makeup on a horse, this is really, really good makeup. The horse almost looks pretty.
“I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord.” But if you can’t figure out what that chord was, maybe just try singing. God made your voice, after all.
With roots going back to ancient Judaism, singing is an integral part of Christian worship. St. Paul tells us to “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart” (Eph 5:17-19). One would guess that musical instruments would be helping to make this melody, adding another musical layer and aiding proper pitch, tempo, and rhythm.
Aulos Player
However, the Fathers of the Early Church came down very hard against the use of any musical instruments in the liturgy. For example, St. John Chrysostom says rather forcefully that “where aulos-players are, there Christ is not.” By exploring their reasons, we’ll uncover some theological underpinnings to the Church’s use of chant in her liturgy.
Hebrew Psalter, 15th century AD
Jewish Roots
“Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!” (Psalm 150:3-6)
Although the Temple at one point was known for its loud instruments, Judaism itself cast aside musical instruments in the wake of the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. When the Romans left Jerusalem devestated, the Jews dispersed throughout the Roman Empire abandoned their harps and lutes, as they had once done in the Babylonian Exile 600 years prior:
By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, remembering Zion; on the poplars that grew there we hung up our harps. For it was there that they asked us, our captors for songs, our oppressors, for joy. “Sing to us,” they said, “one of Zion’s songs.” O how could we sing the song of the Lord on alien soil? (Psalm 137: 1-4)
Like the Babylonian Exile, the destruction of the Temple fundamentally changed Jewish worship, and the “lute and harp” lost out.
Another reason musical instruments lost out was that pagan cults were known for playing musical instruments. And since the early Jews had a real fear of obfuscating the sacred and the profane, the association of musical instruments with paganism was enough to render musical instruments unclean.
When the Early Church looked for guidance in how to conduct their worship, they seemed to follow suit. But the Church Fathers didn’t stop with just condemning the use of musical instruments in the liturgy of the Church; they went on to condemn them in other aspects of secular life. For example, St. John Chrysostom calls musical instruments “the devil’s great heap of garbage.” St. Augustine adds: “The pipe, tabret, and harp here associate so intimately with the sensual heathen cults, as well as with the wild revelries and shameless performances of the degenerate theater and circus, it is easy to understand the prejudices against their use in the worship.”
Because of this great aversion to musical instruments, early Christian liturgical music was exclusively vocal. The liturgy would be sung but only in a subdued fashion, using a form of singing called “cantillation” that resembled speech more than song.
St. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 AD)
Patristic Interiorization
“He who sings, prays twice” – this aphorism often attributed to St. Augustine is actually a distillation of his commentary on Psalm 73:
For he that sings praise, not only praises, but only praises with gladness; he that sings praise, not only sings, but also loves him of whom he sings. In praise, there is the speaking forth of one confessing; in singing, the affection of one loving.
Perhaps better distilled as “Only the lover sings,” singing adds to our praise the element of love, the internal disposition of the heart. The act of singing, involving the mechanisms of the human voice, expresses that love of God or, even, is that love of God. Something much more profound is happening in the song of the lover than a mere doubling of prayer.
But what about musical instruments?
Although Jewish and Christian worship changed, the Old Testament did not. How did the Early Church contend with the many instances of musical instruments in the Old Testament? The Church Fathers interiorized the external musical instruments featured in the psalter. Chief among the Church Fathers in that area, St. Clement of Alexandria writes on Psalm 150:
The Spirit, to purify the divine liturgy from any such unrestrained revelry, chants: ‘Praise Him with sound of trumpet,’ for, in fact, at the sound of the trumpet the dead will rise again; ‘praise Him with harp,’ for the tongue is a harp of the Lord; ‘and with the lute, praise Him,’ understand the mouth as a lute moved by the Spirit as the lute is by the plectrum; ‘praise Him with timbal and choir,’ that is, the Church awaiting the resurrection of the body in the flesh which is its echo; ‘praise Him with strings and organ,’ calling our bodies an organ and its sinews strings, for from them the body derives its coordinated movement, and when touched by the Spirit, gives forth human sounds; ‘praise Him on high-sounding cymbals,’ which mean the tongue of the mouth, which, with the movement of the lips, produces words.
Far removed from the “unrestrained revelry” of pagan culture, the human voice alone sufficed for authentic praise of God. All the references to musical instruments are made into allegories for the human body, each signifying different aspects of our physical anthropology.
But more than just our bodies, God made the whole human person – body and soul – in His image, capable of praising Him in melodious song. The early monk Cassiodorus writes that “the notes previously observed as issuing from musical instruments are now seen to emanate from the rational bodies of men.” Connecting this to the Incarnation, St. Clement of Alexandria writes:
The Word of God, scorning the lyre and cithara as lifeless instruments, and having rendered harmonious by the Holy Spirit both this cosmos and even man the microcosm, made up of body and soul – he sings to God on his many-voiced instrument and he sings to man, himself an instrument: “You are my cithara, my aulos and my temple,” a cithara because of harmony, and aulos because of spirit, and a temple because of the word, so that the first might strum, the second might breathe, and the third might encompass the Lord… The Lord made man a beautiful breathing instrument after his own image; certainly he is himself an all harmonious instrument of God, well-tuned and holy, the transcendental wisdom, the heavenly Word.
The Word of God became flesh – with human lungs, lips, tongue, and voice – and continued his eternal praise of the Father, now as one of those “beautiful breathing instruments.”
The definitive departure from “lifeless” Davidic musical instruments made room for such interpretations of the psalms. With this anthropologizing and allegorizing of the psalms with the elevated anthropology of the Incarnation, we have the beginnings of a theological foundation for liturgical chant.
Theology of the Unassisted Voice
When the Word became human flesh in the Incarnation, the study of human nature became a study of God – anthropology became a theology. Likewise, the study of the human voice reveals in some way the mystery of Christ. According to Dom Mark Kirby, the human voice in the Church’s liturgy prepares “in a kind of renewal of the mystery of the incarnation, an acoustical body for the Divine Word” (“The Psalmody of the Divine Office,” 17-18). In this way, liturgical chant is a participation in Christ’s mediation to the Father, as manifested in the Incarnation.
Here (with some help from Dom Kirby) are some theological musings on several aspects of the unassisted human voice.
Breathing: Within the Trinity, “the breath of God is indissociable from the word of God, and the word of God cannot be uttered save in a communication of the breath of God.” (“Toward a Definition of Liturgical Chant,” 15). Breathing thus images the action of the Holy Spirit in singing. In a cappella singing, pauses for breathing are left unfilled and exposed. Through the breathing necessary for supported singing, “the human person, fully alive, expresses likeness to God. Breath, life, and word constitute an inseparable triad in the divine economy of creation and redemption” (Ibid.). Together, the co-incidence of breath and word resonate in the human heart, the inner sanctuary of the temple of one’s body, where one prays to the Father in secret (Matt 6:6).
Memory: Unlike visual art which is stretched spatially, music is stretched temporally, requiring the human memory to link words across time into a coherent discourse. “Liturgical chant,” according to Dom Kirby, “being heightened discourse, engages the memory of both singer and hearer, becoming a disclosure, in time, of the timeless mystery, a contemplative unfolding of the Word” (“Toward a Definition of Liturgical Chant,” 14).
Communion: The prayer of the Christian is never solitary; every prayer is uttered in union with Christ and in communion with His Church. Chant captures this aspect of communion. The propers, antiphons, and psalmody chanted in the sacred assembly make present that communion of persons, all praying ecclesially with the voice of the Church. Chanting the prayer of the Church together leads to a uniformity without homogenization, a unity without loss of identity – each unique voice aids the others in a common song of praise. Even when chanted alone, the prayer of the liturgy is united with the prayers of all the faithful from the rising of the sun to its setting, stretching throughout space and time.
16th Century Chant Manuscript – Psalm 89: “I have made a covenant with my elect: I have sworn to David my servant. Alleluia.”
Silence: Chant begins and ends with silence: “the context of liturgical chant is, before and after anything else, silence. It originates, with the word, in silence. Like the Word, it ‘springs from the silence’” (Ibid., 20). More than merely assisting prayer, chant is prayer. In fact, chant is a participation in the highest prayer of Christ’s mediation to the Father. As such, chant should not feel rushed or busy, but must rather be irrigated with silence. The pockets of silence are little Mount Horebs wherein we hear the “still small voice” of God (1 Kg 19:12). This prayer does not need musical instruments filling in the gaps of singing and supporting the sound of the human voice with additional melodic layers. Rather, in liturgical chant, the exposed and vulnerable human person encounters the Father most authentically in silence.
What Next?
In chant, the human voice alone carries the word and expresses the fullness of the human person – body and soul. Chanting the text without accompaniment, one’s voice, one’s prayer – one’s whole person – is exposed to God. Chant is thus a full, conscious, and active participation in the prayer of the Church in the liturgy.
As the Church spread throughout Europe and the influence of paganism began to wane, musical instruments lost their negative associations. No longer seen as “the devil’s heap of garbage,” the Church began to reintroduce instruments into worship. With a little help from Charlemagne, the pipe organ became a prominent feature of medieval churches. As a “breathing” machine operated by bellows, the pipe organ was seen as an appropriate mechanical approximation of the human voice.
St. Cecilia (d. 230) anachronistically depicted playing the organ
But before the organ became a staple of church construction, the initial vacuum created by the Church Fathers’ opposition to musical instruments was filled by a theology of the unaccompanied human voice. Even though the Church no longer fears a connection to pagan worship, it was that initial aversion that occasioned the development of a robust theology of the unaccompanied voice – a theology whose praises are often unsung.
Such a theology became the basis for the great depositum orandi – deposit of prayer (to coin a phrase) – in Gregorian Chant. To this day, Gregorian chant is still “specially suited to the Roman liturgy” and “should be given pride of place in liturgical services” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 116).
Like the Early Church, the negative cultural associations of some contemporary genres of music ought to be taken into account in developing liturgical music fitted for the worship of the Father through, with, and in the incarnate Son. But more importantly, we ought not to turn our back on the larger theology of chant rooted in the Incarnation.
There is a charming story told about St. Bernadette, the Lourdes visionary. After the apparitions were well over, people wanted to know what Mary looked like, especially to construct a statue for the Grotto. She gave a sculptor as many details as she could remember, but the result dissatisfied her: “That is not Our Lady!” She was then brought all kinds of paintings – Our Lady of This and That, and whatnot. None of them matched her memory. Finally, she picked up a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. “That is the Blessed Virgin!”
Our Lady of Perpetual Help
The “non-realism” of icons, at its root, is a sign of respect for the mystery of the holiness of the subject being depicted. It leaves something to the imagination, as if to say “it is impossible to depict the reality, you must go find it for yourself.” It is revelation through negation, perhaps what we could call a “weak apophatic” mysticism. The medium also allows for one to emphasize certain features of a subject as a symbol.
Icons are never “drawn” or “painted,” they are always “written,” like a word. The goal is not to capture the reality so much as it is to start one down the right path to a real encounter with the subject, and ultimately with God. There is great value in this. We would find it odd to have a devotional picture of someone posing as the Blessed Mother… We do not find it odd to have an icon, which is “less realistic” but is still somehow much more accurate, as St. Bernadette would affirm.
One might call to mind many scriptural corollaries to this – the ubiquitous treatment of “seeing God” as difficult or impossible, the veil over Moses’ face, the gradual progression from Law to Spirit… And, if you pay close attention to the Gospels, almost no miracle of Christ takes place in direct visibility – it’s always in the midst of chaos, in a storm, in a cloud, inside a body, etc. This is why a scene like this – while well done in other ways – might feel a little “off”:
If this is what His miracles looked like, He may as well have flown around Jerusalem (Mt. 4: 5-7) and been done with it.
This whole issue of the delicacy of mystical imagery is particularly poignant in film, where actual people who we know are not “real” become stand-ins: they do the walking, talking – all of it. Sometimes this is helpful. But no matter how good an actor or director is, you know that “this is not how it actually looked, and that’s not actually Jesus/Mary/etc.” If you want an “authentic picture,” you have to do more work in a way because you need to deconstruct what is being shown and then stick to a mostly shapeless image in your mind.
For these reasons, I want to suggest that the art of animation gets a largely undeserved bad rap, or is at least not given enough serious attention.
This is an absolutely wonderful bit from The Prince of Egypt. The film has a pretty killer soundtrack, but the step back from the “big orchestra” pieces here is particularly effective. The lyrics are a play off of the song which is sung by Moses and the Israelites after the crossing of the Red Sea. Most important, however, is the symbolic imagery – notice especially the moment at 0:38, as a type of the Crucifixion. All of this achieved through “a kid’s medium”… Still very moving, no?
Compare and contrast with the same scene from a live-action film (go to about 1:14:00):
Here is another example of religious animation done extremely well, telling the story of Bl. Joan of Aza giving birth to her son, St. Dominic:
This short wouldn’t work nearly as well if it weren’t animated. Think about it. There’s an ethereal character to it that allows for the strange to be beautiful in a way that live-action characters would render impossible. (It would end up looking more like this, which wouldn’t seem right.)
These are just a few examples. But it is clear that the “unreal” can achieve certain goods that the “real” can’t, especially with spiritual realities which are distant (or “unreal”) to our intuitions.
In art class in elementary school, we often thought the goal of painting, drawing, etc. was to make the work look as similar to the subject as possible. Maybe this attitude never quite left some of us. And maybe it’s time it did, especially if we are using art to evangelize or catechize.
Not sure if she was inspired by the first song, which is a classic “negro spiritual,” but “Ghost” is in no danger of falling into the abyss between “pop” and “Christian.”
Christian Renaissance Movement 