HOULD WE SING holy, beautiful, dignified, and inspiring sacred music at Mass? Yes, because this is the very least we can do for God. To help illustrate this, I must talk about our daughter Carmen, who just turned two. Look at what God does for children: He forms them so perfectly. Their little bodies know just how to grow from the moment they are conceived (I believe their spinal chords have a lot to do with this).
Reader’s mind: “Wait a minute . . . say what?”
Why do I mention my daughter? Please let me explain. Tonight, as I was reading her bedtime stories, she exhibited more knowledge than ever. She speaks in complete sentences, knows the name of everything, uses the various parts of speech, syntax, grammar, and verb conjugations correctly (for instance, plural vs. singular), knows things we never even taught her, and can repeat any word she hears. Friends, this is marvelous. Our Heavenly Father “programmed” all these things in such a marvelous way. My wife and I did not “create” Carmen: God did. My wife and I are not responsible for the miracle of her little body, which is perfect in every respect down to her little tiny fingernails: God is. While my wife and I are Carmen’s parents, we’re not responsible for creating her perfect parts: eyes, mind, spinal chord, stomach, ears, and so forth. God did that, and (as I have already mentioned) God designed children to slowly learn and grow in a marvelous way. It is simply overwhelming to witness: I apologize that my poor writing skills are unable to do justice to such wonders.
For this reason, we must never say, “I cannot be bothered to spend half an hour studying the music for Sunday’s Mass.” We must never say, “I refuse to spend time preparing the music for the Eucharistic Sacrifice.” We must never say, “It would be unreasonable for God to expect me to actually make an effort to prepare the music at Mass.”
After all, God has already done the hard work!
To make a long story short, when we contemplate God’s wonders, and the daily miracles He works, it becomes easier for us to realize how lazy and complacent we can be when it comes to serving Him.
UPDATE: By the way, Carmen somehow remembers the titles of books she hasn’t seen in months. Why can she pronounce these titles so clearly now, although she has not heard them pronounced in months?
