St. Maria Goretti - Pastor's Note

Welcome to our celebration of the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time! We gather around the Altar of the Lord today, on the Lord’s Day, to celebrate His Resurrection and the New Life that He calls us to live. Every Sunday is a “little” Easter. It is so good to be here together to bring our prayers and our praise to our God as a community.

Here at St. Maria Goretti, we are blessed with some really good music to help us to pray together. We have so many great musicians who share their gifts and talents with us every weekend. Many times, when I hear the “live” music that is being led up front and the high quality of what’s being sung and played, I am in awe at our music. I couldn’t even find a CD that sounds as good as what’s being played and sung live every Sunday right in front of us. Liturgical music is different from other kinds of music. The Catholic Church has a very rich, and very old, and very eclectic history of liturgical music. We pray and we sing and we listen in a variety of different ways at different times of the liturgical year. St. Maria Goretti’s music expresses that richness and diversity. Our music at our Sunday evening 5:00 PM Mass is more contemporary, praise and worship music. Our music at both our Saturday evening 4:30 PM and our 10:00 AM Sunday Masses is more traditional, or at least a traditional/contemporary mix. And both of the groups that lead our music at our Sunday 8:00 AM Mass, do so with a nice blend of the contemporary and the traditional. You don’t have to be around our Parish very long before you learn the musical “personalities” of each of our four Sunday Masses. And many choose which Mass they will attend based upon how the different music at the different Masses, helps them to pray and to meet God in their lives. And that’s alright. It’s why we have a variety of different styles, traditions, and choices. We should go to the Mass and pray where we are most comfortable, and where our minds and hearts are most raised to God.

Music is an extremely important part of the Mass. Wasn’t it St. Augustine who said that “He who sings prays twice”? God likes our singing, even if He didn’t give us the best voice or perfect pitch. At Mass, all of us, musicians and non-musicians have a responsibility to sing and take part. This is true at every Mass that we attend. We are still supposed to sing EVEN when we don’t like the song, or it’s not our favorite style of music. The music is still part of our liturgical prayers as a community, and all of us should be doing our part, to make it the best that we can give God. I know that there are some people who really like to sing. And I also know that there are many people who don’t like to sing. Full, conscious, active participation at Mass requires that ALL OF US at least try and sing together at Mass. That means that we must pick up the hymnal and look up the song, if we don’t know it. That means that even if we sing like a moose, and I definitely put myself into that category, we still need to sing and hope desperately that the people around us are better than we are. That means that we need to be teaching and modeling singing at Mass for our children and young people. I recently asked one of our high school Freshmen why he wasn’t singing at Mass, and he told me he doesn’t sing because his Dad doesn’t sing. That’s not a valid answer first of all. But I wonder if that father knows what he is doing to his son?

Singing at Mass is also service and sacrifice. No, they aren’t always going to sing our favorite song or hymn at Mass. And that’s hard for us today, because today we are used to instantly listening to only what we want to, when we want to. The I-Pod revolution hasn’t helped liturgical music. Our portable playlist and music files on our computers enable us to listen to only what we want at any given minute. We don’t wait for our favorite song to come on, on the radio anymore. We don’t wait for 8-track or cassette tape to get to the point where it plays the song we want to hear. We are used to our favorites instantly! At Mass, we’ve got to be a lot more patient with one another and with the community. We’re dealing with a lot of requirements and expectations and traditions. Hopefully, our patience and our sacrifice will lead us to learn to appreciate a lot more music than just our favorites. What if you don’t like the music in Heaven? We’re going to be listening to it for a long time, so maybe we’d better all learn to like more of a variety of music, just in case.

In addition, we are all grateful to all of our musicians, as we are to our lectors, our Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, our servers, and our Ministers of Welcome. We don’t need to clap for our musicians at the end of Mass. They aren’t putting on a performance. They are doing a ministry. We can all say ‘thank you’ after Mass, if we really thought they did a great job.

Have a great week! Keep a song in your heart. Pick up the hymnal or song book the next time you don’t know what we’re singing. God bless you!

In Christ,

Fr. Kevin

Prayer travels faster when said in unison.