HE PRACTICE of posting on social media one’s list of liturgical planning for a particular Mass can be somewhat vacuous. Such displays were very popular a few years ago and have thankfully subsided to a degree. Although I admit they can be helpful to read if looking for ideas for programming. The list itself conveys little otherwise. Criticizing a music director for their list assumes they have complete autonomy — an extreme rarity. Music Directors have bosses to answer to. While connected to the Universal Church, musicians minister to local communities with history, proclivities, and dare I say local politics.
A list says nothing of the cultivated sound, nothing of the arrangement, nothing of personnel, and nothing of its prayerfulness.
HOLY WEEK IS BIGGER than all of this. Holy Week looms larger than musicians and clergy however inspiring. Entering in silence and lying prostrate before the altar on Good Friday ensures both musicians and clergy alike are subservient to the Father who loved the world so much, He gave His only Son. We are subservient to the Son who suffered and died for us out of immeasurable love, and to the Holy Spirit who is our advocate always. That Holy Week overshadows us all is a deep lesson and a great blessing.
I AM NOT GUARANTEED another Holy Week choir to direct. I have been greatly blessed to have directed choirs for thirty-three Holy Weeks — every year since 1992 including a televised Holy Week in 2020 without a congregation, as many of us did. For these many years I give thanks. I remind myself not to take this for granted. I am grateful to do so while making a living. Make music like it is your last time. Every time.
HOLY WEEK IS ALL-CONSUMING in myraid ways, many quite mundane. I like to joke that my administrative assistant and I share an office and a social security number. This arrangement is typical in a parish, and is not terribly unusual for some high profile positions, especially after COVID with shortened budgets. I am accustomed to it. The result of this is few days off, sometimes weeks without a day off keeping up with administrative work while performing the usual duties. Meanwhile, I’m grateful when I look at some of the stellar singers under my direction. Several have incredible national and international credentials and accolades, sightread impeccably, yet they must work another day job to make a living, an injustice. Meanwhile, they are among the most qualified people to do what they do, and we depend wholly on them. Despite managing another full-time job, they are singing throughout Holy Week, which includes added responsibilities and services at a cathedral. Likewise, brilliant volunteers who also sightread most adeptly give up time with family and juggle full-time work throughout the week. I am deeply grateful for them.
Another blessing of the all-consuming nature of Holy Week is that through such immersion, we are living the scriptures. As Cardinal O’Malley indicated during his Chrism Mass homily: “Someone once said that we don’t work on the Bible. It’s the Bible that works on us.”
Therefore, so does Holy Week work on us.
THERE IS “FALLOUT” and recovery from Holy Week as a positive result. It is not merely physical but deeply spiritual and emotional as we struggle with whatever crosses we bear in life. We all have them, hidden and otherwise.
I was further reminded by my friend and colleague Michael Strong, without the Cross, there is no Resurrection. Without Resurrection, there is no hope, and without hope there is no future. I think of Thomas Tallis’ setting of Aquinas’ O Sacrum Convivium. Tallis spends a disproportionate amount of his setting on the final words “nobis pignus datur” — a pledge is given to us. That pledge for us is the future glory because of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. It seems Tallis is trying to send us this message.
At the Easter Vigil and on Easter Sunday, we renew our baptismal promises. Throughout Holy Week we renew our faith — as Aquinas writes: “recolitur memoria passionis eius” — the memory of His Passion is renewed. And this is what we also do each and every Sunday. This is never to be taken for granted.
I AM SHARING FAR MORE PERSONAL NOTES here than usual, which I try to avoid. (The irony and hypocrisy is not lost on me, nor you I am quite sure.) However, I am compelled given the great emotion derived from this sacred time.
Throughout various key moments of Holy Week, I do experience spontaneous flashbacks of many previous Holy Weeks usually including the twenty-nine of them I spent at Saint Cecilia Parish in the Back Bay of Boston (twenty-seven as Music Director). One moment this year that sparked such recollection was singing Pange Lingua in the Holy Thursday procession to the Chapel of Repose. I was just a few steps behind His Eminence Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley in the procession. This is in itself a privilege, not because of his position and stature, but because of who he is and his example. (This Holy Week is also savored as he approaches the age of eighty. This surprises many as he has the energy of someone much younger.) Despite this lofty proximity, reminiscences of past Holy Thursday processions came to me with the many beautiful people with whom I was privileged to pray and make music. Such spontaneous sparks of memory are not infrequent. It is always comes back to the people, never to be taken for granted.
Meanwhile, my son was on the other side of the Charles River deeply cognizant that he was singing his last Holy Week as a chorister at the Saint Paul’s Choir School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was intent that it go well on these holiest of days. This meant a great deal to him. I give thanks to God that he feels this way. Such is the ephemeral nature of our precious time praying and singing together — never to be taken for granted.
NEW MEMORIES ARE IMPRINTED upon my soul such as the bi-lingual Masses at the cathedral that have bring so much joy with joined communities and cultures. Witnessing seventeen baptisms at the Easter Vigil is a joy and privilege on this holiest of nights. Furthermore, so is working with great volunteers without whom Holy Week could not happen as beautifully as it did. We rely on them. They put up with me! They get a few years off purgatory for that.
FINALLY, IN THE “AFTERMATH” we must remember, the Easter Season is fifty days — longer than Lent for good reason. Another privilege not to be taken for granted: It has often been expressed to me by the Elect, that they felt the music at Mass “accompanied” them in their faith towards receiving the sacraments at the Easter Vigil. Likewise, we accompany the neophytes during the period of mystagogy and beyond. For them the journey has just begun, not ended.
Holy Week, in its all-encompassing nature sometimes keeps those serving away from family and even dealing with personal emotions. I experienced the loss of my mother days after the Rite of Election and just prior to the second Sunday of Lent. (Yes, liturgical musicians track time according to the liturgical calendar, and not by actual dates!) I have written often of my mother, as she and my father were spiritual beacons. Among other topics, we could talk endlessly about the liturgy. Since my father passed, my mother and I spoke nearly every day. Yet she most certainly accompanied me, my sisters, their children and mine throughout this Holy Week. I am hardly alone in experiencing such loss. So many do.
This only reinforces our call as believers that as we pray in the Apostles Creed that we believe in “the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.” God created us in order to have eternal life with him. Jesus died and defeated death so great was His love for us.
This Holy Week, I am nothing but grateful to God, the beautiful people I am blessed to pray with, and for those we are privileged to serve. We share the joy of resurrection regardless of our crosses. We do this together as a Church. Deo gratias.
Soli Deo gloria
Oremus pro invicem
