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Views from the Choir Loft

Growth in Holiness

Fr. David Friel · September 4, 2011

The memorial of Pope St. Gregory the Great is one of my favorite feasts each year not only account of his patronage of music, but also on account of the beauty of the Collect given in the missal for his Mass.

It reads, in part: Ut de proféctu sanctárum óvium fiant gáudia aetérna pastórum. This clause is well rendered in the current English translation in the Sacramentary: “May the growth of your people in holiness be the eternal joy of our shepherds.”

I have been inspired by the beauty of that prayer from at least the time I began praying the Divine Office, the year before I entered the seminary. It takes on a new beauty for me, however, as I encounter this Collect as a newly ordained priest. In the estimation of Holy Mother Church, my eternal joy, as a chosen shepherd, should be the growth in holiness of the people entrusted to my care. How much I have experienced this already, in so short a time as a priest!

I wish the people of my parish could see things for a day as their priest sees them. I wish they could watch themselves coming up to receive Communion and be edified by the devotion on their faces. I wish they could experience their confessor’s fulfillment when he grants them pardon and peace through absolution. I wish they could feel the excitement of receiving a phone call from a woman interested in RCIA. I wish they could know their spiritual father’s joy when he hears the school children praying and singing to God.

Watching the people of my parish grow in holiness has been exhilarating already. It must be like a biological father watching his son or daughter excel in music or basketball or mathematics. It is the exhilaration of watching one’s charge become what he or she is supposed to be.

And we are all supposed to be holy.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Fr. David Friel

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel served as Parochial Vicar at St. Anselm Parish in Northeast Philly. He is currently a doctoral candidate in liturgical theology at The Catholic University of America.—(Read full biography).

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Quick Thoughts

Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“…I started down the road of the liturgy, and this became a continuous process of growth into a grand reality transcending all particular individuals and generations, a reality that became an occasion for me of ever-new amazement and discovery. The incredible reality of the Catholic liturgy has accompanied me through all phases of life, and so I shall have to speak of it time and again.”

— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

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