IN A LETTER DATED A.D. 423, St. Augustine writes to a convent of nuns…of which his sister had formerly been the prioress! He chastises the nuns for their grumblings about the new prioress, and suggests some rules that will help to restore order amidst the chaos brought on by new leadership in the community.
In particular, with regard to singing, Augustine says:
“In the psalms and hymns used in your prayers to God, let that be pondered in the heart which is uttered by the voice; chant nothing but what you find prescribed to be chanted; whatever is not so prescribed is not to be chanted.”
For us church musicians, such a remark should both give us pause and offer us encouragement. It should give us pause because, if we “[ponder not] in the heart [that] which is uttered by the voice,” we become “only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). Rather, let us ask St. Augustine’s intercession that we – who spend so much of our time immersed in the texts of the sacred liturgy, and especially the Psalms, as Augustine was! – be “doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22).
Secondly, as for the encouragement, it is first of all a relief to know that “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)! St. Augustine wrote this letter exactly 1,600 years ago, and still today we are fighting to have chanted “what [we] find to be prescribed to be chanted” according to the mind of Holy Mother Church, rather than merely whatever music is trendy or superficially emotive. Let us beg the prayers of this great saint and Doctor of the Church, that through his intercession, the Lord would grant us, who work to make the liturgy suitably beautiful for the glory of God and the good of souls, the grace to be – as Augustine says elsewhere in the same letter – “persons enamored of spiritual beauty, and diffusing a sweet savor of Christ.”
St. Augustine, pray for us!
