Views from the Choir Loft

Ascension

Fr. David Friel · May 9, 2013 ·

HAT, EXACTLY, does the feast of the Ascension of our Lord celebrate? As folks who live in the space age, this holy day can seem a little arcane to us. So, what does it really celebrate? It celebrates the fact that our home is not on Earth. Our true home is in heaven.

Bishop Sheen once said that “the Ascension of Christ is the assurance of our own ascension into heaven after the Last Judgment.” So, yes, we certainly have hope that one day we, too, will be taken up into heaven. But, we actually don’t have to wait until we die.

Is it possible for our bodies to ascend into heaven right now? No. Our bodies will have to wait until we die. But a person is not merely a body. A person is both body and spirit, and it is the spirit that drives the body.

Our minds and our hearts do not have to wait to ascend to heaven. Even now, while we live & breathe & walk this Earth, our minds and hearts can be lifted up to heaven. This is what we should be doing every time we attend Mass and, in fact, every time we pray. St. Francis de Sales describes prayer as “an ascent or elevation of the mind to God” (Treatise on the Love of God, Book VI, chapter 1). St. Paul tells us: “Set your heart on things above, not on things of Earth” (Colossians 3:2).

Is that what you do when you come to Mass? Do you let your mind & heart be raised up to God? Do you set your heart on things above? Or do you let yourself be weighed down by your body and by the distractions of the here-and-now?

Our Lord ascends today into heaven, where we hope to follow Him in the Resurrection of the body on the Last Day. In the meantime, have we allowed our spirits to ascend to Him in prayer?

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel served for five years 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 in Washington, D.C.

Could Pope St. Pius X Sing?

“On 12 March 1908, the complete publication of the Roman Gradual was issued by the Vatican Press. On that very day, Dom Pothier solemnly presented the first copy to the Holy Father. A witness of the audience says that Pius X wished to be the first to see the new book; he opened it at random, at page 128 of the supplement pro aliquibus locis—it was the Introit of the new Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Pope sang it with perfect taste to the last note.” (Catholic Choirmaster, February 1915)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Julius Bas Accompaniment

A very prolific harmonizer of Gregorian chant in the early 20th century was Mr. Julius Bas. He often uses a very strange technique, wherein he employs rests to eliminate the Alto, Tenor, and Bass voices. Consider what he did with “Lumen ad revelationem” here:

* JPEG • Lumen ad revelationem

It seems quite lazy, and I’ve never seen anyone else use such a technique, although Dr. Peter Wagner often switched to parallel octaves when he ran out of ideas… (Yuck!)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Hitting wrong notes

Fr. Valentine Young, OFM, used to say: “The organist can play 1,000 correct notes and one wrong note—and the only thing people will care about is the wrong note.” Last Sunday I hit some wrong notes, and felt bad. Then I remembered a story about Rudolf Serkin and started to chuckle. Charles Rosen (or was it Leon Fleisher?) told the story of Serkin playing a Beethoven Sonata in front of a large audience. The theme is all in octaves; but Serkin hit some wrong notes, and played parallel 7ths instead. This so unnerved him that every time the theme returned, he played the entire thing in parallel 7ths! We must remember that even the greatest hit wrong notes. Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, Sviatoslav Richter, Egon Petri—they all hit wrong notes, which we can hear on recordings. (Josef Hofmann was an exception, but he was super-human so he doesn’t count!)

—Jeff Ostrowski