Holy Week

This year feels different to me. I am not afraid of Holy Week this year. In years past, I was shaking in my boots over getting the choir prepared to sing on Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday AND Easter Sunday. I didn't feel competent. I was afraid that I would choose the wrong music and it would all blow up in my face. Well, THAT didn't ever happen so why worry any more? I s'pose this marks the culmination of many years of being in the business of liturgical music and maybe, finally, I've come of age as a church musician. Or maybe I just see that I have competent, willing, delightful people working with me and it's not all up to me anyway. On Sunday, the choir sang a very, very difficult rendition of What Wondrous Love for the prelude. They sang like angels! We'd been practicing it for weeks. Their dedication to the music has been inspiring. We share the liturgies on Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday with the Vietnamese community (they have their own masses on Sundays) so their choir sings some of the hymns, too, during those liturgies. It takes some of the pressure off, plus their music is so beautiful. It's wonderful that the two communities come together on special occasions!

I think this also marks my spiritual growth over the past year. I recognize more fully that it is a great privilege to be able to do what I do. To praise God through musical endeavors is a blessing. AND, the fact that I now have a meeting with the bishop scheduled in a couple weeks makes everything else pale on the intimidation scale.

I love that I have a meeting scheduled. However, old insecurities have been knocking on my door/mind. What if I waste his time? What if...what if...what if? For heaven's sake...I tell myself that, if I really believe the new religious community is God-driven (which I truly do believe), how can I waste the bishop's time? He's part of God's plan for the community, too, if even in just a small way as to pray for the community or to meet with me once to help give me direction. And, from what I can tell, he's trying very hard to do God's will in his life, too. So, now, I pray that it will be a very fruitful meeting for both of us.

Another Lent is almost history. During previous Lents, I was acutely aware that Satan was nipping at my heels, trying to put enmity between a loved one and me. Those times were fraught with great struggles! Blessedly, all of us came out of them still intact, relationship-wise! I always breathed a sigh of relief when we got to Holy Saturday. This year, a close friend and I had an email exchange one morning that could have degenerated into grave misunderstanding. Instead, my friend brought love and compassion to the discussion. It became a moment of grace. The Holy Spirit was watching over us. It was beautiful. I no longer focus on Satan and his dirty deeds during Lent. I focus on how I might sacrifice more, how I might love more, how I might be a light in the world more. Yes, I am aware of him but I try to spend no energy or thought on him. He doesn't deserve my attention.

Yes, this year, this Lent, has been different...

it's a blessing!

Last week, I had the great privilege to play for morning Mass and a funeral on Tuesday, a funeral on Thursday, morning Mass on Friday, evening Mass on Saturday and 3 masses on Sunday...eight masses in 6 days! It was my heart's delight to be able to do such a thing!

A Sister once told me that I command people to sing at Mass. I joked that I didn't know if that was a compliment or not. We laughed and she said it WAS a compliment, that people in the congregation really sing when I cantor and play. I told her people probably sing in self-defense, hoping to drown out MY singing. However, I was thrilled by her words because it is my goal to entice the congregation to sing praise to God during Mass as a community of joy-filled and faithful people. Of course, this is not without its foibles. I've been known to teach whole congregations to sing hymns wrong (oops!), realizing much later what I'd done. (Is youth or nervousness a good excuse?) It was a good lesson in humility, to be sure!

It is the greatest privilege of my life to be able to honor God through promoting congregational singing at Mass. It took me a long time to stop being nervous about it. While I'm no longer nervous about playing, I do see it as a weighty responsibility. It behooves me to be prepared, to make sure I know the hymns without making noticeable mistakes, to be the best musician I can be so that I do not distract from the prayer. (I have heard bad musicians at Mass and they were a HUGE distraction!) I also do not want to approach my job, thinking I am "performing". I never want a spotlight to be on me during Mass. Everyone's focus must always be on our dear Lord and His Sacrifice, which is re-presented during Mass. I try to always think of myself as a servant--serving God, His people and the Liturgy.

I joke that I want to die right after receiving Holy Communion while I'm playing the Communion hymn. Of course, my resulting fall over the keyboard would create a loud cacophony, which would NOT be conducive to prayerful contemplation on the part of others...It definitely would be something memorable!

I find it interesting that I sort of fell into this work. I didn't start out majoring in music in college. It just naturally happened because of my interest in learning music theory. Despite the mandatory practice schedule of 4 to 8 hours a day while in college, I didn't become a stellar technician but I have always loved to play for Mass. Looking back, I see that working my way through college by playing the organ for 3 masses at an air base chapel was an opportunity to find my way to a lifelong career.

I love how the Holy Spirit inspires our choices in life! As I've gotten older, I look back on my life and marvel at that. God is good!

more on suffering

Here is the Meditation of the Day for this past Tuesday in the periodical Magnificat for the Gospel of St. John 5:1-16:

It's entitled "Do you want to be well?" by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (+1691) who as a young man was a soldier in France who later became a French Carmelite friar.

"I will not ask God to deliver you from your trials, but I will ask Him earnestly to give you the patience and strength needed to suffer as long as He desires. Find consolation in Him who keeps you fixed to the cross; He will release you when He judges it appropriate. Happy are they who suffer with Him. Get used to suffering, and ask Him for the strength to suffer as He wants, and for as long as He judges necessary. The worldly do not understand these truths, and I am not surprised; the reason is that they suffer as citizens of this world and not as Christians. They consider illnesses as natural afflictions and not as graces from God, and therefore they find in them only what is difficult and harsh for our nature. But those who regard them as coming from the hand of God, as signs of His mercy and the means He uses for their salvation, ordinarily find great sweetness and perceptible consolations in them.

I wish you were convinced that God is often closer to us in times of sickness and suffering than when we enjoy perfect health...Place all your trust in Him, and you will soon experience the benefits we resist when we trust more in medical remedies than in God.

Whatever remedies you may use, they will only work to the extent that He will permit. When suffering comes from God, He alone can cure it, and He often leaves us with physical illness in order to cure our spiritual illness. Find consolation in the sovereign doctor of body and soul."

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I love the idea that our afflictions in this world are graces from God, the means for our salvation. For, after all is said and done in our lives, the only goal, the one that truly matters, is that we be in heaven with our dear Lord one day. It is a consolation, then, to know that our suffering is meant for the good of our souls.

I hope someone will remind me of this when I am called to suffer one day...Human nature, being what it is, would incite me to complain and feel sorry for myself.

children of God

Most parents hope that their unborn children will be born healthy. They voice it: "as long as s/he's healthy!" I've been thinking about that. What if their children aren't healthy? By whose definition do we deem a child healthy anyway? If the child is less than our definition of perfect, is he or she less worthy to live? When you think about it, we have some nerve, trying to order a "perfect" child. Our openness to God's will should include embracing whatever children He lends us in this world, in whatever shape they come to us.

I get very upset when I hear of someone who is considering abortion when it is found that there is something "wrong" with her unborn child. Oh, she can rationalize it by saying she wouldn't want the child to suffer but I don't believe that is the true reason. She doesn't want to be bothered or put out in any way. She wants to live the way she wants to live, even at the cost of her child's life. How inconvenient it would be to have to deal with a child with infirmities! It makes me sick to my stomach if I think about it long enough. We're killing our children, in part, because our world sees them as worthless if they have any sort of problem.

Do you know there are fewer and fewer people with Down Syndrome because over 90% of them, when diagnosed in utero, are aborted? Do people not understand what a gift this child can be to his or her whole family, indeed to everyone who encounters him or her?

I heard a story recently of a young man who bags groceries at a supermarket. He has Down Syndrome. Everyone queues up in his line to get their groceries bagged because, in one of each customer's bags, he places a little handwritten note of encouragement, a thought or prayer for the day, something to uplift the reader's spirits. Can you imagine how different life would be for those people without him?

In my life, my cousin David taught me the value of a life that, from a superficial perspective, could be judged worthless. He is 5 years older than I. He is profoundly mentally disabled. I remember his mother feeding him baby food when he was 16 because he didn't know how to chew. (He may have lost all his teeth by then...I can't just remember this detail.) He was toilet-trained but I don't think he could do much else for himself. He did not talk and did not understand a lot of what was said to him. At times, he made his desires known by grunting and squealing.

My most vivid memory is of David getting out of the car when his family would arrive at our cabin and making a beeline for the lake. He'd stand in shin deep water for a very long time. When he got out, his feet and legs would be covered with leeches. His mother would be there with a salt shaker to get them off. He LOVED the water.

His parents' and his older brother's devotion to him are how I learned to be compassionate and kind to people who are different than I. His family protected him from harm (leeches, notwithstanding!). They loved him. I could see how much they loved him. The difficulty of caring for him was never an issue for them. I never, never heard one word of complaint. Joyful suffering is how I would describe it. David gave them an opportunity to be less self-centered and closer to God in the process of his life and they took it, gladly. How very blessed they were, when I think about it.

When his parents got too old to take care of him, they found a wonderful group home, about an hour away, for him to live. He's happy there. He has a routine. He has wonderful caregivers.

His mother, my aunt (who, by the way, is going to be 90 this year!), told me not long ago that, when she visits him, he knows her. He smiles and laughs. David's brother has been asking her to move where he lives down South but she told me she won't do that as long as David is alive because their visits are important to him. (I have no doubt they're important to her, too.) This is motherly devotion at its finest.

You might want to say it was a heartache for his parents for him to be the way he was born. On the other hand, he taught our entire family many, many life lessons just by being alive. And, I bet, if you were to ask his parents, they'd tell you they'd willingly do it all again. Abortion would never have crossed their minds.

As I've said before, every single one of us comes to this world with something to share. Playing God by aborting His people changes that forever.

suffering

I heard a talk on suffering and reparation for our sins yesterday. The speaker talked about how we can offer all our suffering to our Lord in reparation of our sins. We all have pain at some point in our lives. We can use that pain for good...to suffer for others' souls or our own. How do we do that?

The speaker talked about little sufferings we can bring on ourselves. For example, we might fast; we might give up a favorite TV show for a while, we might be kind in return to someone who has done us wrong. Then, there are sufferings that come along in our lives over which we have no control. These we don't consciously wish to suffer but we do have control over how we react to them. Is it possible to view them as joyful experiences? If we see them as opportunities to grow in faith or to lessen the effect of purgatory or lessen it for someone else, shouldn't we embrace all the suffering we can have? In our culture, we are told to alleviate pain. We take drugs for it. We pray it goes away. Sometimes we wonder why, in this day and age, SOMEONE hasn't come up with the solution for what ails us. It seems odd to thank God for pain and, yet, there are great rewards in suffering and we SHOULD be thanking God.

Purgatory is a reality...the question is: do we want to suffer in this life or in the next? From what I understand, purgatory is no picnic in the park and, from what I've read, the pain suffered there is much more intense than the worst suffering here on earth. We can lessen our time in purgatory by doing reparation now. If this is so, why wouldn't we want to embrace ALL the suffering we can while we are here on earth?

Another angle to this is, when someone dies, as I understand it we cannot say definitively that that person is in heaven. (We leave all of our deceased loved ones to the mercy of God.) Of course, there are exceptions to this: declared saints of the Church, children who are baptized and have not committed any personal sin. If we really think that a person is in heaven, we will cease praying for that person just when he or she may need our prayers the most. We must pray for our dead. We must offer our suffering as a way to help others and ourselves get to heaven. Bottom line: we must be willing to suffer for important spiritual reasons.