HE BUZZ of the day is not only rapid technological advancement, but artificial intelligence and what ‘bots’ can seemingly create. I say “seemingly” because what’s taking place isn’t actually creating, but a simulation of human creation through algorithms. Amidst the speed of this development, I find myself being tempted to drift from (and sometimes actually drifting from) primary things—i.e. the tangible human experiences that ground me in reality and draw me closer to God.
This Can’t Be Good • Artificial intelligence bots, social media algorithms, and digital interfaces increasingly mediate our interactions, sometimes replacing person-to-person relationships with “curated” simulation. It’s amazing what these bots can do. No doubt, we’ve all played with them a little to see what our inputs can produce. We initially desired curation for the purpose of a more “personal” experience. However, curation has become something so dominant, it may be hard to tell chicken from egg. Is the curation I experience from me (a true reflection of what I want), or shaping, nudging, and moving me based on what someone else wants for me due to the monetizing of experience? This shift pulls one away from the physical world as well – it’s textures, sounds…and silences. I move away from real communication that shapes me into a better person. The problem is that in persons, we find God.
Primary Things • Primary things matter because they change us. A conversation with a friend may reveal empathy. When I walk in the woods with my children, we’re stirred to awe by the simplest things: animals we encounter, growth we see, or the stream my kids can’t help getting into on a summer day. When I “porch sit” with friends in the evening and end up in a three hour conversation over a bourbon, that experience stays with me the next day—not just because it made me a little more tired, but because it was epic (albeit in a small way). These experiences aren’t just pleasant; they’re transformative, reorienting our behavior and opening new ways of seeing the Divine. Unlike sterile output from an AI-generated playlist, real things engage our senses and spirit in ways that echo in our lives, fostering communion with God and each other.
Something Powerful • Our parish choir here at Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception stands as a powerful example of what I speak. Every Sunday, my family and I really want to attend no other Mass than the one the choir is singing at. Their voices, rising in sacred chant and hymns (not dictated by an algorithm, but born from tradition and human effort) isn’t background noise to fill silence: it’s a prayer. It elevates my soul during the Mass.
Banishing Distraction • The sound of their harmony, rooted in centuries of worship, pierces through all the distraction I face when I try to enter into Mass—which isn’t always easy. I still have small children (though my oldest is grown and married), and they easily distract, as do the many other sights: e.g. the faithful filing in, finding their seats, and navigating their own way through settling in and entering the Mass. Once the choir begins, it becomes a sort of “song for the soul.” Unlike technology’s fleeting distractions, this music lingers well, sits in my mind as wine sits in the mouth, shaping my prayer and drawing me up. SAINT AUGUSTINE, in his Confessions, wrote of sacred music’s power in this way:
“I feel that our souls are moved to the ardor of piety by the sacred words more piously and powerfully when these words are sung than when they are not sung.”
For him, plainsong isn’t mere decoration or “liturgical furniture” to be gawked at. It is interacted with and stirs the soul’s deepest affections, aligning them to prayer. Similarly, Saint Basil the Great praised psalmody, noting:
“When, indeed, the Holy Spirit saw that the human race was guided only with difficulty toward virtue, and that, because of our inclination toward pleasure, we were neglectful of an upright life, what did He do? The delight of melody He mingled with the doctrines so that by the pleasantness and softness of the sound heard we might receive without perceiving it the benefit of the words, just as wise physicians who, when giving the fastidious rather bitter drugs to drink, frequently smear the cup with honey. A psalm implies serenity of soul; it is the author of peace, which calms bewildering and seething thoughts. For, it softens the wrath of the soul, and what is unbridled it chastens… A psalm is a city of refuge from the demons; a means of inducing help from the angels, a weapon in fears by night, a rest from toils by day.”
Their wisdom reveals a truth we risk forgetting: sacred music isn’t just art (though it be the highest): it’s a conduit to Divine Communion.
I find that our choir offers us something primary, and I need to intentionally seek the primary things now, for what I’m offered most easily comes to me in other secondary, processed forms. I have found truth in PROSPER OF AQUITAINE‘S adage: “As I pray, so I believe,” to which later theologians added: “then so I live.”
Vivant res primariae, nam ut canto, sic oro.
