The God Samaritan (C15O)

Your friends are supposed to make you feel good about yourself, but there’s always some do-gooder in the crowd whose role in life is to expose you for who you really are. The do-gooder du jour is Les Selage, my friend in Florida, who in wrote this in a posting in an email group to which we both belong:

I hear a lot about welcoming all, and that's such a good good thing. But are we really praying that all will be welcome or that everyone else change their habits to align with ours? I'm really comfortable welcoming same sex couples and the divorced and remarried....even the homeless and poor. I'm less good welcoming people who hate music at Mass, or don't like me, or get offended by a lack of panty-hose on an EMHoC. 

So there it is, along with today’s Scriptures, pointing the accusing finger at me as I’m listening to the gospel and thinking of Greg Brown singing Iris Dement’s haunting gospel song “He Reached Down” at a concert I saw him give. I do try to do my part. Sometimes maybe I play it safe, maybe too often, but I don’t feel like the priest or Levite in the story until someone starts playing with who the Samaritan is. I don’t ignore (all) the panhandlers, I try to keep my eyes open to human need and respond to it as I can, as long as the Samaritan is someone who is, well, not a Samaritan. To me, everyone I help, in whatever oblique way, is a potential friend. But once you play the Samaritan card, that the person who helps you is your enemy, whose generosity exposes my prejudice for what it is, well, I’m not as righteous as I thought.

Characteristic of the Jewish-Samaritan rivalry in first century Palestine, a hatred which had its origins probably in the division of the kingdom and was exacerbated by syncretism during the Babylonian captivity, the exclusion of Samaritans from the rebuilding of the Temple by Nehemiah, and the surrender of Samaria to Hasmoneans John Hyrcanus and Antiochus Epiphanes, were, for instance, occasional desecrations of each others’ holy places (with human bones, for instance) and the throwing of garbage and animal feces into each other’s living areas. In an essay on the whosoever.org website, April O’Flaherty writes that “So intense was the antipathy between the two groups that Samaritans refused to even provide overnight shelter for the weary pilgrims. They would rather hurl epithets and rocks at one another than share a meal or part of land with their ‘enemies.’” We’re all familiar with this kind of prejudice in one form or another, urban whites and blacks, or Chinese, or Hispanic, blue voters and red voters, capitalists and communists, Israeli and Palestinian, Orange and Provos, Serbs and Bosnians, Jews and Muslims and Christians. You can’t miss it, and some of it is as ugly - or worse - as this tiff at which we get a glimpse in the gospel.

Along comes Les with her painfully insightful little zinger, quoted above. So who’s your Samaritan? I’m having a hard time with some priests these days. A lot of bishops I could leave in a ditch. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Catholics with one-issue orthodoxy. People who bash Hillary Clinton or the Obamas for their looks, or tell lies about them, and who ignore the facts. People who bash Michael Moore because he doesn’t look like Tom Cruise.  OK, that’s probably enough Samaritans. (And believe me, I'm not so narcissistic as to think I'm not the Samaritan for a lot of other people.) Today, in fact, there are only 40-50 families of real Samaritans left, so my list outnumbers the real thing. That’s vaguely disturbing.

And so, here comes Les again, reminding me that if I can’t love these people, these folks who had me on Lisinopril, if I can’t spend my life binding their wounds and slowing down to help them then, well, I’m just a noisy boom, or clanging cymbal, and all my pretty words are just words, and not symbols of anything of substance.

There is something in this story that suggests to me that the Samaritan is God, and it’s me in the ditch. I don’t want to have anything to do, really, with this Lover who loves me in a way that keeps offering me a complete change of heart. Maybe it’s the bending over to help the guy on the ground that reminds me of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, which in turn is a visible manifestation of the invisible reality of the paschal mystery, God reaching down from heaven to take the form of a slave. This isn’t rocket science, we hear the book of Deuteronomy tell us, but rather,

No, (my command) is something very near to you,
already in your mouths and in your hearts;
you have only to carry it out. (Dt. 30:14)


Somehow, it’s supposedly already in there, the invitation to turn and the courage to do it. Or maybe I have it backwards; in a way, this is even more upsetting and jarring: maybe it’s God in the ditch, the God whose power is complete self-gift, and I’m the Samaritan, God’s sworn enemy, and it’s my job somehow to jump over my own loathing and minister to his wounds. Or I’m the priest and the Levite, too, sometimes. But once in a while, or once and for all, at some moment I can’t see yet, the cry of the Wounded One from the ditch is a song I’ve heard before, and its woe is strength upon which I might even draw the strength to bend down myself, and make things better. 

I don’t know. I’m still back there grousing at the priest, and the bishops, Republicans, well, it’s a long f*cking line, isn’t it?

After all that, I can’t help but think of one of my favorite Greg Brown songs, “Lord, I Have Made You a Place in My Heart,” which explores the love-hate between the God-Samaritan and me, between who I might be and who I am, so well that I think Greg has been intercepting my emails. I leave it with you as your meditation on the Samaritan and you. I hope you can figure this thing out. Maybe we can help each other some day on the Jericho road.

"Lord, I Have Made You a Place in My Heart"


by Greg Brown


© 1994 Brown-Feldman Music





Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart


among the rags and the bones and the dirt.


There's piles of lies, the love gone from her eyes,


and old moving boxes full of hurt.


Pull up a chair by the trouble and care.


I got whiskey, you're welcome to some.


Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart,


but I don't reckon you're gonna come.





I've tried to fix up the place, I know it's a disgrace,


you get used to it after a while -


with the flood and the drought and old pals hanging out


with their IOU's and their smiles.


bare naked women keep coming in


and they dance like you wouldn't believe.


Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart,


so take a good look - and then leave.


Oh Lord, why does the Fall get colder each year?


Lord, why can't I learn to love?


Lord, if you made me, it's easy to see


that you all make mistakes up above.


But if I open the door, you will know I'm poor


and my secrets are all that I own.


Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart


and I hope that you leave it alone.


The God Samaritan

Your friends are supposed to make you feel good about yourself, but there’s always some do-gooder in the crowd whose role in life is to expose you for who you really are. The do-gooder du jour is Les Selage, my friend in Florida, who in wrote this in a posting in an email group to which we both belong:

I hear a lot about welcoming all, and that's such a good good thing. But are we really praying that all will be welcome or that everyone else change their habits to align with ours? I'm really comfortable welcoming same sex couples and the divorced and remarried....even the homeless and poor. I'm less good welcoming people who hate music at Mass, or don't like me, or get offended by a lack of panty-hose on an EMHoC. 

So there it is, along with today’s Scriptures, pointing the accusing finger at me as I’m listening to the gospel and thinking of Greg Brown singing Iris Dement’s haunting gospel song “He Reached Down” at a concert I saw him give. I do try to do my part. Sometimes maybe I play it safe, maybe too often, but I don’t feel like the priest or Levite in the story until someone starts playing with who the Samaritan is. I don’t ignore (all) the panhandlers, I try to keep my eyes open to human need and respond to it as I can, as long as the Samaritan is someone who is, well, not a Samaritan. To me, everyone I help, in whatever oblique way, is a potential friend. But once you play the Samaritan card, that the person who helps you is your enemy, whose generosity exposes my prejudice for what it is, well, I’m not as righteous as I thought.

Characteristic of the Jewish-Samaritan rivalry in first century Palestine, a hatred which had its origins probably in the division of the kingdom and was exacerbated by syncretism during the Babylonian captivity, the exclusion of Samaritans from the rebuilding of the Temple by Nehemiah, and the surrender of Samaria to Hasmoneans John Hyrcanus and Antiochus Epiphanes, were, for instance, occasional desecrations of each others’ holy places (with human bones, for instance) and the throwing of garbage and animal feces into each other’s living areas. In an essay on the whosoever.org website, April O’Flaherty writes that “So intense was the antipathy between the two groups that Samaritans refused to even provide overnight shelter for the weary pilgrims. They would rather hurl epithets and rocks at one another than share a meal or part of land with their ‘enemies.’” We’re all familiar with this kind of prejudice in one form or another, urban whites and blacks, or Chinese, or Hispanic, blue voters and red voters, capitalists and communists, Israeli and Palestinian, Orange and Provos, Serbs and Bosnians, Jews and Muslims and Christians. You can’t miss it, and some of it is as ugly - or worse - as this tiff at which we get a glimpse in the gospel.

Along comes Les with her painfully insightful little zinger, quoted above. So who’s your Samaritan? I’m having a hard time with some priests these days. A lot of bishops I could leave in a ditch. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Catholics with one-issue orthodoxy. People who bash Hillary Clinton or the Obamas for their looks, or tell lies about them, and who ignore the facts. People who bash Michael Moore because he doesn’t look like Tom Cruise.  OK, that’s probably enough Samaritans. (And believe me, I'm not so narcissistic as to think I'm not the Samaritan for a lot of other people.) Today, in fact, there are only 40-50 families of real Samaritans left, so my list outnumbers the real thing. That’s vaguely disturbing.

And so, here comes Les again, reminding me that if I can’t love these people, these folks who had me on Lisinopril, if I can’t spend my life binding their wounds and slowing down to help them then, well, I’m just a noisy boom, or clanging cymbal, and all my pretty words are just words, and not symbols of anything of substance.

There is something in this story that suggests to me that the Samaritan is God, and it’s me in the ditch. I don’t want to have anything to do, really, with this Lover who loves me in a way that keeps offering me a complete change of heart. Maybe it’s the bending over to help the guy on the ground that reminds me of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, which in turn is a visible manifestation of the invisible reality of the paschal mystery, God reaching down from heaven to take the form of a slave. This isn’t rocket science, we hear the book of Deuteronomy tell us, but rather,

No, (my command) is something very near to you,
already in your mouths and in your hearts;
you have only to carry it out. (Dt. 30:14)


Somehow, it’s supposedly already in there, the invitation to turn and the courage to do it. Or maybe I have it backwards; in a way, this is even more upsetting and jarring: maybe it’s God in the ditch, the God whose power is complete self-gift, and I’m the Samaritan, God’s sworn enemy, and it’s my job somehow to jump over my own loathing and minister to his wounds. Or I’m the priest and the Levite, too, sometimes. But once in a while, or once and for all, at some moment I can’t see yet, the cry of the Wounded One from the ditch is a song I’ve heard before, and its woe is strength upon which I might even draw the strength to bend down myself, and make things better. 

I don’t know. I’m still back there grousing at the priest, and the bishops, Republicans, well, it’s a long f*cking line, isn’t it?

After all that, I can’t help but think of one of my favorite Greg Brown songs, “Lord, I Have Made You a Place in My Heart,” which explores the love-hate between the God-Samaritan and me, between who I might be and who I am, so well that I think Greg has been intercepting my emails. I leave it with you as your meditation on the Samaritan and you. I hope you can figure this thing out. Maybe we can help each other some day on the Jericho road.

"Lord, I Have Made You a Place in My Heart"


by Greg Brown


© 1994 Brown-Feldman Music





Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart


among the rags and the bones and the dirt.


There's piles of lies, the love gone from her eyes,


and old moving boxes full of hurt.


Pull up a chair by the trouble and care.


I got whiskey, you're welcome to some.


Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart,


but I don't reckon you're gonna come.





I've tried to fix up the place, I know it's a disgrace,


you get used to it after a while -


with the flood and the drought and old pals hanging out


with their IOU's and their smiles.


bare naked women keep coming in


and they dance like you wouldn't believe.


Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart,


so take a good look - and then leave.


Oh Lord, why does the Fall get colder each year?


Lord, why can't I learn to love?


Lord, if you made me, it's easy to see


that you all make mistakes up above.


But if I open the door, you will know I'm poor


and my secrets are all that I own.


Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart


and I hope that you leave it alone.


Satan, Sodom, and Rene Girard (C14O)

If you're looking for something juicy, you came to the wrong place. 

There was so much in the readings Sunday, and I know I don't have time to do any of it justice, but I felt I had to at least put my two cents in. One worthy possibility is just about whether to use the long or short form of readings. If you heard the short form of the gospel Sunday, you wouldn't even have heard the two lines of the gospel that turned my ear. But I'll save the long-short issue for another day.

Let's start here: After that first reading, psalm, and (coincidentally) second reading yesterday, our ears had to be ready for some good news, right? From the end of Isaiah, an oracle of restoration for Israel after return from exile, when Jerusalem will be as fecund as a nursing mother bouncing babies on her lap, and prosperity flowing like a river down her streets. The psalm urged that "all the earth cry out to God with joy" because of God's history as a liberator for Israel. St. Paul closes the letter to the Galatians "in his own hand," refuting again his detractors' insistence that adherence to Mosaic law and practice was required of Christians, against Paul's preaching of the preeminence of the cross. Restoration, liberation, freedom from the constraints of the past in the new way: these set up our hearing of the gospel.

So in the gospel narrative, Jesus sends seventy-two disciples ahead of him into the villages with instructions about announcing the good news, with instructions on how to ask for and receive hospitality from people of good will. Their message is his message: "The kingdom of God is at hand." They receive authority over sickness and demons. They are warned that not everyone will be happy to receive them. To everyone, their message is to be the same: "The kingdom of God is at hand." Just invite, and walk away from the inhospitable. When a Samaritan village rejected them, the twelve had wanted to call down "fire from heaven" on them (as Elijah did with his detractors), and Jesus rebuked them. In his instruction today, he tells the disciples just to shake the dust off and move on. Your offer was made in peace, Jesus is saying, and the reign of God is here in any case. And then, "it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town."


Did you wonder what Jesus in the gospel meant by that? When we think about Sodom and Gomorrah, we think of moral bankruptcy, and I'm pretty sure most of us think about sex.

"Sin City" is the place where anything goes. But that's not the way the Bible understands Sodom and Gomorrah. Take a look at Genesis 19 again. This section is part of Abraham's story, and his hospitality to two strangers has resulted in a promise of a son to him and Sara in their old age. Instead of welcoming the the guests of Abraham's kinsman Lot, who happened to be the same two "angels" who had visited Abraham, they demanded to have sex with them. Sex is not the issue, apparently, since Lot is quick to offer his daughters as a substitute. The breach of hospitality to strangers is the issue.  Ezekiel (16: 49-50) spells it out: “Now this was the sin of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.” In Hebrew writing is redundancy is the style: “detestable things” here refers to “they did not help the poor and needy,” as “haughty” refers back to “arrogant.” 

The awakening to this view of Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin ought to help us to see that God’s wrath, which so many say came upon those cities for sexual aberration, was rather visited on them for their abuse of strangers. Listening to the gospel Sunday made that little bell go off in my head. We still are pretty sure that morality is almost entirely about what other people do in their bedrooms. If Catholics and other lectionary/Bible religions in this country would learn to hear the prophetic counter to this, that morality is economic justice, hospitality toward and protection of strangers, and that the practice of true religion is intrinsically tied to these behaviors ("mercy, not sacrifice"), it would be a good step toward public policy reform. There are moral issues for us to deal with in our wallets, workplaces, and borders that require some attention lest it become “more tolerable for Sodom” than for our towns.

So there's one piece of good news: the empire of God is a place of hospitality and invitation, without recrimination on those who refuse it. It's coming anyway. And refusing it will be its own punishment: the "kingdom of this world" will ultimately wreak its violence upon those who choose it. But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.

Apparently, all of the seventy-two returned safely and elated, joyfully recounting their success over the cosmic enemies of God just as the twelve had done after their missioning in chapter 9, about which we heard over the last couple of weeks. As they recount their successes in the towns, Jesus utters that second strange line that can't help but arrest our ears and imagination: "I have seen Satan fall from the sky like lightning."

Philosopher-anthropologist-theologian Rene Girard catches the meaning of this in his 1999 book (2001 in English) I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Je vois Satan tomber comme l'éclair). In the peaceful announcement of the reign of God, which is a clear choice against the violent mimesis of the kingdoms "of this world," he sees the end of Satan's rule over the earth. Now, by "this world" I don't mean that the reign of God is not in the world that we know, quite the contrary. In Girard's view, the mimetic violence that has stoked the machinery of civilization since people first came together runs on its own

energy by allowing people to control each other's desire for perceived goods by controlling the outlets for escalating violence through scapegoating. By means of "religion" and political structures, we attach blame to certain people, groups, or nations, and concentrate our rage about ourselves toward them. Our violent urges are transferred from within society to the scapegoat, and by marginalizing or destroying the scapegoats, our need for violence is temporarily satisfied. 

Girard sees the ministry of Jesus as offering a way out to us, first by his exposing the scapegoat mechanism as fraudulent and self-destructive. Faithful to his own calling to a vision of peace and justice, he endures the jealousy and hatred of both temple and civic authority, and eventually becomes the scapegoat in the process Girard describes. But God will have none of it: he raises Jesus to life, thus showing that the "victim" was innocent all along, and that the civilizing forces that killed him were guilty. Unlike the murderers, however, the judgment of God is sown into the world peacefully in the example and teaching of Jesus. Invite. Eat together. Don't try to be the greatest, but serve one another. Put away your sword. Be perfect, and imitate (make the object of your mimesis) God, who makes the rain fall and sun shine on the good and the bad alike. Love your enemies.

This is the meaning of the message the disciples were sent into the towns with. "The reign of God is at hand." Jesus rebuked the twelve who wanted him, like Elijah, to call down fire on their enemies. Even in today's passage, when the disciples rejoice that they are able to cast out demons, Jesus gently admonishes them to rejoice rather that their names are written in the reign of God, and not that they have power over the demons.

This is the new Jerusalem, where prosperity pours over us like a river. This is a new creation, where the adherence to laws and precepts is doesn't bring salvation, but rather salvation is through the cross of Jesus, which exposed the lie of his enemies. The meaning of the cross is that "you were called for freedom (to) serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

The gospel is certainly good news for the scapegoat, and in the morass of civilizing violence, any of us is likely to be put into that sorry place on behalf our angry, hoarding world. If we can learn to desire the good of other persons, rather than what we ourselves want, we can, with Christ, begin living here, in this world, in the reign of God. For that, "let all the earth cry out to God with joy."

Guest Response to "So you think you wanna write liturgical songs?"

IT’S THE SONG, STUPID!

by Michael A. Cymbala

I couldn’t resist responding to Rory Cooney’s thought-provoking blog that appeared on May 3, 2012 entitled, “So, You Think You Wanna Write Liturgical Songs,” and I thank him for giving me the opportunity to offer my comments as a guest blogger. I would like to comment on two items drawn from Rory’s blog; first, the “new technology,” (the world of the web and, in particular, recorded and printable downloads) and secondly, the present day so-called “glut” of liturgical music. 

As we all know the new technology has not only had an effect on the realm of recorded music but on the rest of the world as well. Business has been affected beyond what

Mike Cymbala.
I'm guessing this wasn't taken in Chicagoland.

anyone could have imagined and liturgical music publishers were not immune to the new wave. While the church community might be “behind the curve,” as Rory would say, for the purpose of this discussion I would like to suggest, “be careful what you wish for.”

I recall a time when liturgical composers were upset that their music was not available on iTunes and in downloadable printed forms.  Well, it is now. I recall when emerging web-based companies were formed and created by people who had great faith in the possibilities of the web to revolutionize the liturgical music industry. Some of the newly formed companies promised, “instant availability and free of charge for all”! They were actually serious, never realizing nor considering that no real form of compensation was included, making it next to impossible for producers to realize a return on their investment, and never considering any form of compensation for composers. “It’s free, it’s free, and instantly available to the entire world, it’s free, it’s free!” they joyfully proclaimed. What were they thinking? 

And I recall some very well intentioned and enthusiastic folks who came of age when the new technology was all the rage and who held Al Gore’s new invention in high regard.  It was as though they had discovered a new tool that could do anything and would revolutionize the liturgical music industry.  Can we all agree that the end result might not have produced what was hoped for?  

From the business perspective, while printed catalogs and free-of-charge 800 numbers may be purchase avenues of the past, have the new web pages increased business? Have online product information and sound bites increased sales or profits? Is more new liturgical music getting published any faster?  Has the small-boutique-niche-market, that is liturgical music, increased in size due to web access? Did the new technology help attract more participants to attend more conventions, workshops, choral festivals, or concerts? Are webinars picking up any of the reduction, in the live participation, that might have taken place at these events? Are church musicians any more qualified or educated or better paid than they were prior to the invention of the smart phone? It seems the liturgical music industry just isn’t as vibrant as it used to be. Why? 

While I personally might not have been as up-to-date with the new technology as others were, I was definitely intrigued by it all. I was happy to see a new and, for the most part, younger generation coming on the scene with a gift to offer that had never before been available.  They chuckled while folks in my generation struggled to attach a document. One could only assume that a new day was dawning that would take our industry to new heights with a new generation leading the way.  Are we there yet?  

I came of age in the post Vatican II era when a new vernacular liturgy was introduced followed by a modern day, 40 or so year, renaissance of newly composed music for liturgy in a wide variety of styles which was subsequently published, distributed, and absorbed into the hearts of English speaking Christians world-wide.  Along the way, after the rise and fall of many composers and publishing houses, composers and publishers were fairly compensated for their endeavors. I’m not suggesting that anything perfect happened, but it was all accomplished without downloads, web pages or digital anything…not even email. I think it’s fair to say that the generation who struggled to attach a document did enjoy some rather grand accomplishments long before the advent of the word processor.

And please don’t get me wrong; I am not knocking the new technology. On the contrary, I am using it, even as I write, reaching the world with my favorite feature of all…  spellcheck!  The instant communication alone that the new technology offers is marvelous. The sharing of information has redefined education and even saved lives. New industries have flourished. We all can be thankful that future historians will have this new tool to verify and consider facts and figures, and I suspect it will be difficult to write people out of history. However, I, for one, am disappointed, and with good reason. The music industry, both secular and sacred, does not seem to be sharing in the benefits. It sounds as though Rory might agree with me. The music industry is not what it once was and one can realistically conclude that technology did contribute to the present day situation.  We have definitely turned a page and there’s no turning back. But, I think the day has arrived to reevaluate or maybe there’s more than just one reform that needs some reforming.

Likewise, I am not pointing the finger of blame at publishers. Unfortunately, there seems to be a natural tendency to blame publishers for just about everything. For some reason they tend to be one of the natural dumping grounds for the world’s problems. But in this case, I contend that publishers are just as much a victim, of the present day situation, as are the composers. However, I will add that if the industry can turn itself around, it will most likely be the publishers that will need to find a solution. 

Beyond technology, what else might have contributed to the downturn in this sacred musical world we so love? Has the enthusiasm factor run its course? Are the music file cabinets just too full? Is this another case of “mission accomplished”? Is enough enough? Is the new technology even a factor in this discussion? Perhaps it’s the economy; stupid? And last but not least, a subject for another day, the general decline in church attendance with all the many reasons that may be the cause.

What seems to be missing in the liturgical music world right now is a thirst for new material.  In the past decade or so, singers of liturgical music have settled into a basic repertoire that, at least for the time being and for better or for worse, seems to satisfy the majority of music ministers and the all-important folks in the pews. I cannot remember the last time I attended a liturgy where the musician mounted the cantor stand or ambo and lined out a new song. “We are going to learn a new song today” used to be the opening words of most Sunday liturgies.  These days it seems the first and most important criteria for planning music at a liturgy is choosing something the people know and know well.  There are those who even prefer something the folks can sing by heart and let’s face it, both of the above approaches are usually good things resulting in the best possible participation.  The downside, however, is the subject at hand.  There just does not seem to be a whole lot of interest in new songs resulting in some frustrating days for songwriters and likewise the slowing down of a very creative era. 

While we cannot create a thirst for new music, it would seem to me that there has got to be a way that both composers and publishers can put the new technology to better use.  I suggest that yesterday’s young new technology devotees, who may have grown a bit and now have the benefit of more experience, take up the challenge and re-evaluate the future use of technology in the liturgical music-publishing vineyard. Perhaps they are trying to do just that; I certainly hope so. I myself don’t have all the answers, but perhaps together we can all find new ways to economically produce, market, and distribute new liturgical songs in a new way that creates some interest and excitement while ensuring a just form of compensation for both the artist and the producer.  We must keep in mind that, most importantly, the people of God deserve to have the best and are worthy, and in need, of singing fresh and thought-provoking new material that enlivens their worship and faith ever anew. Believers often learn and sustain their faith through song. The scriptures tell us to sing new ones, not a bad idea.  

There are some liturgical songs that have appeared through the years, that were just too good to ignore or “too big to fail,” as folks might say. I always thought that there was something “pretty” about the most popular titles, something that touched people’s hearts, something that made people stop, listen, think, and then, quite naturally, just sing along.  Rory’s “Canticle of the Turning” is but one good example.  Seasoned composers need to face the fact that the bar is currently a lot higher and publishing dollars are no longer flowing like milk and honey.  No doubt they already know this.

Even though there may currently be a glut of liturgical music, I would like to offer a particular word of encouragement to young unpublished composers: the most popular and widely sung songs, as well as the most enduring songs, that any liturgical composer writes can usually be found among his/her earliest attempts. There seems to be a certain charm about the music in the first few collections composers write that is always hard to match or top. Maybe this is reason enough for younger writers to keep trying. I have always said: “It’s the song, stupid!”  To the new aspiring composers I will add: “Keep trying and writing; nothing can stop a great new song.” 

To take this conversation to another level, in closing, I will add that what I found most interesting about the CNN article, mentioned in Rory’s blog, was the many comments that followed. I saw little, if any, sympathy for either the music industry or the recording artists… “Off with their heads,” and “Let them eat cake”… respectively.  So if composers and/or publishers are looking for sympathy, it seems as though none is forthcoming from the general public. Another item that hit home for me, from the comments on the CNN article, were the many comments to the effect that there just isn’t any great new popular music in the works. Here we ponder a matter of opinion. We must remember that the conversation regarding what new music is “great” is very much an ongoing conversation. I cannot remember a time when new music was not evaluated, critiqued, praised, and often criticized. As we observe the current state of liturgical music it is only natural that we question the quality of the music liturgical composers are currently offering and look for examples of newly composed texts and tunes that might likely become mainstream. This is indeed a worthy topic for discussion.  May this ongoing conversation continue. 

Here’s a link to an article on the piracy issue.  A New York ad agency created an intriguing ad campaign that met the piracy issue head on. I believe that this type of imaginative thinking, and marketing approach, might well benefit the liturgical music world. 

Copyright © 2013, Michael A. Cymbala. All Rights Reserved.

Michael A. Cymbala is an independent consultant and writer with over 30 years experience in pastoral music making and publishing.

Harry Potter, fake Latin, and the quest for mystery

Dominus tenebrarum vobiscum?

We've been big Harry Potter fans in my family. On our recent trek to Nebraska to visit UNL with Desi, he read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the entire trip, and then came home and started another one. He already has them all memorized from listening on CDs as a child, and from bedtime reading by his mom. But all of us have read all the books and seen all the movies. J.K. Rowling is a kajillionaire partly because of us. 

And if you’re a Catholic, you’re at least marginally aware of the hubbub that has barely abated around Pope Benedict’s 2006 motu proprio allowing the reintroduction of the 1962 version of the Latin Mass back into the stable of licit expressions of the Roman Rite, side-by-side with the Latin text of Paul VI’s Novus Ordo and its more widely used vernacular translations. This, in turn, has awakened a fascination with Latin: not studying it so much as dropping it into writing to connect with the fad. Blissfully unaware of conjugation and declension, Latin noobs leave their pseudo-intellectual droppings everywhere, unassisted by spellcheck that hasn't been programmed for ancient languages.

Not surprisingly, I think these two events are related; not directly, but through the human search for transcendence.

We humans hunger for transcendence. We want to be more than ourselves. We want there to be more to the universe than what we can see and experience, and for the most part, we want it to be wonderfully benevolent. Because there is evil in the world, for the sake of a benevolent ineffable, we're willing to accept what's unseen and evil as part of the universe as well.

That leaves a couple of possibilities. There either is a beyondness to things, and an unseen world that might include an uncreated Creator, or there isn't and we're making it all up. If there is, then, because it's unseen, we can either have a good idea about what is out there for us, or we can attach ourselves to counterfeits of the unseen. If things are unseen and outside the world of empirical evidence, they have to reveal themselves in some way to us to let us know who they are. Failing that, we just make them up, more or less in our own image and likeness, with power that we wish we had.

I think the fascination with Harry Potter (and throw in vampires, zombies, and aliens), the love-hate thing people have with horror films and even just slasher films that make us voyeurs over death, high art, and Latin are all the result of our hunger for transcendence. We want to be better than we are, we want to think that the universe can save us from ourselves through the deus ex machina of magic. If we can't understand it, there's a good chance it's better than we are. (This is a natural consequence of the Enlightenment, don’t you think? Knowledge is power, understanding is control.) Harry Potter's spells are pidgeon Latin and other languages (expelliarmus; reducto; lumos; patronus; crucio; impedimenta; avada cadavera) because they belong to the world of the occult that is safeguarded by shamans who know the language.

The high art thing is connected but off on a different track, and I don't want this to be completely unreadable. I'm definitely not saying that Bach and Verdi are not transcendent, only that the pursuit of art as transcendence is a dead end. Art is a finger pointing at the moon, but it's not the moon itself. Furthermore, it's not the only finger pointing at the moon. Furthermore, the moon gets its light from elsewhere, so let's not go there. High art does not either result from nor engender value living. As Nathan Mitchell carefully and with nuance pointed out in recent articles in Worship magazine, the same Germans who were putting Jews, Poles, homosexuals, and religious into the ovens at Dachau and Auschwitz were listening to the work of Wagner and Beethoven.

The only genuine transcendence is agape, the kind of love that has transcended the ego and need for reward and notice, and gives itself without desire or hope for repayment. And it's not a sacrament of love, either—it's genuine self-gift, and there's no substitute for it, including the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a kind of rehearsal of it, and a keeping the memory alive by acting like we are children of one father, equals, people who are bound to remember someone whom we believe to be the actual Word, the revelation of the Beyond-in-itself, the incarnation of the invisible God. What we believe about the Eucharist as divine presence notwithstanding, or that it is a foretaste of a banquet that is both present and eternal, it is not a substitute for agape, it is a sacrament of agape. What I mean is, without the life of Jesus, with its meals that demonstrated solidarity with victims of prejudice, religious bigotry, nationalism, and so on, without that day-to-day table ministry that so infused his life and the life of his disciples that it became identified with his presence, the Last Supper truly might have been the last supper. What infected that ritual meal, whether it was a seder or a sabbath meal or just one leading up to pesach that year, was the life that preceded it, every meal shared with him for the previous thousand or so days. It is that entire complex of meals that is the origin of the Eucharist.

However, it's much easier for us to believe in the rigmarole surrounding the ritual than it is to actually love other people and advocate for them and for a world that is free of hierarchies based on power. It's easier to believe that a ritual in a dead language that defies the understanding of the uneducated (yes, education is for the privileged) and does not invite their complicity is real transcendence than to look for it in loving human interconnectivity. It's easier to believe in the transcendence of complex music than it is to join in the chorus of the great unwashed singing their democratic songs.

Ultimately, we are required to get back to loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and wealth (this is closer to the meaning of “strength” in Deuteronomy), and loving our neighbor as ourselves. The problem we have is transcending the self on behalf of the other, or the Other. But it is in doing that that we are part of the paschal mystery, and only God can enable that. Meanwhile, we can be distracted from God's intentions for us by imagining that with a few magical words and pious incantations, whether from the Liber Usualis or at Symphony Hall, we can participate in the transcendent world. Can’t get rid of an enemy, or see in the dark, or find an ally in a fight? Maybe a few words of Latin can fix things for us. Can’t conquer poverty, stop war, feed the hungry, or welcome Spanish-speakers into your country? Maybe a few words of Latin will make the troubles go away. Can’t seem to summon a sense of God in your community by surrendering to the mystery of agape that holds the body of Christ together? Maybe some incomprehensible incantations by a shaman will make you feel better. That’s what we tend to do - substitute the counterfeit for the real thing. What we want is community; what we settle for are parishes. What we want is love; what we settle for is piety. What we want is mystery; what we settle for is incomprehensibility.

The trouble with seeking beyond the created world for transcendence is that the sole Occupant of the transcendent world is coming in this direction. God, being agape itself, can’t help that. That’s the meaning of the incarnation. There is no substitute for God, though the counterfeits are legion. The search needs to go on down here, focused on the self-gift of Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God. In the memorable pre-2011 words of the Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation, “You gave him up to death so that we might turn again to you and find our way to one another.” Ultimately, finding our way to one another is the only transcendence there is. 

Ecce! As promised in the gospels, that is where we encounter the reign of God as well. Taste and see. No Latin or magic required.

The New Colossus

I just have to say today, launching the July 4 holiday, that it was a homilist at St. Anne's who introduced me to the entire sonnet by Emma Lazarus which appears on the Statue of Liberty in New York. Most of us are familiar with the second half of it, but I don’t know how many, like me, have missed hearing the first part, which is stunning in its language and imagery. Furthermore, the title of the poem, “The New Colossus,” either never made an impression on me, or I had never heard it, before then. Of course the title hearkens back to the Colossus of Rhodes, a wonder of the ancient world that straddled the Mandraki harbor of the Greek city of Rhodes in the third century BCE. Lazarus wondrously contrasts that statue and all it stands for with the values represented by Bartholdi’s sculpture of “Liberty Enlightening the World.” I just wanted to post her beautiful sonnet here in case you might not have read it for a while. 

I think I wrote in a post about a month ago a little section about Liberty from the recent book  Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World, by Matthew Goodman. Even then, in the mid-19th century, Congress was deadlocked for years and unable to appropriate enough money for the base of the statue, which was being given as a gift to the nation by France for the centennial. Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of The World, the paper for which Nellie Bly wrote, published an editorial that changed the fate of Lady Liberty. "(By) urging the American public to donate money towards the pedestal in his newspaper New York World, Pulitzer raised over $100,000 in six months—more than enough money to ensure the pedestal's completion. As an article published in New York World on March 16, 1885 argued,

We must raise the money! The World is the people's paper, and now it appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money. The $250,000 that the making of the Statue cost was paid in by the masses of the French people- by the working men, the tradesmen, the shop girls, the artisans- by all, irrespective of class or condition. Let us respond in like manner. Let us not wait for the millionaires to give us this money. It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America, but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America.

The article's appeal was so popular that by August 11, 1885, the World collected over $100,000 in donations - most donations being about $1 or less. Roughly 125,000 people contributed to the completion of the pedestal thanks to Pulitzer's crusade." (Source)

Read Ms. Lazarus's sonnet aloud, and feel the strength of the poet’s language, and how her sentiments, as fresh as tomorrow’s news, are a challenge to America over 125 years later.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

—Emma Lazarus, 1883

Emancipation from instinct (C13O)

The apparent duality in the 2nd reading Sunday from Galatians can be a turn-off to the modern ear. The
false dichotomy between flesh and spirit to us who have been raised on the incarnation and the sacredness of creation might make us want to turn away from Paul’s exhortation. But listening to the reading Sunday, I was struck by his message. What I heard was not a warning about the eternal war between body (flesh) and soul (spirit), but a song to the freedom that arises from the life of agape in Christ, and as startling a summary of “the whole law and the prophets” as Jesus himself gives us in the gospels. Finally, what I heard was a doorway opened up for humanity to be freed from the clutch of instinct, the inborn need for self-preservation, a doorway that agape itself opens between the natural and supernatural world, transforming self-preservation into other-preservation, and mirroring the paschal mystery, the very life of God.

Freedom is hard. We want our golden calf; we want the certainty of the soup-pots of our slavery. We flounder in freedom. We desire it with all our hearts, and yet, the challenge of really loving people, being attentive to them, living to serve their needs, is daunting. The rewards are a dream; in fact, to love is to live beyond desire for reward. What we want is the law. We want to see the obstacle course for what it is, to know the hoops there are to be jumped through, which ones have fire around them. Strategizing the obstacles gives us a sense of accomplishment, negotiating them gives us a sense that we earned a reward. But no one can legislate the heart. We can’t get to agape by way of law. Agape is an open invitation, there is no coercion in it anywhere. It is a response to grace, an act of thanksgiving, intimacy, and solidarity.

St. Paul is addressing an ongoing argument between Jewish Christians and others in the Greek diaspora churches about the necessity of conformity to the Mosaic law to be a follower of the Way. He has been a passionate advocate of the freedom offered to the believer in the Holy Spirit, in fact, he has fought and won a battle with Cephas (Peter) and James over this very issue and similar ones in what we call the Council of Jerusalem. Grace leads Peter around at last to the same conclusion: there is no need for non-Jewish Christians to be circumcised or have special diet like their Jewish counterparts, because in Christ there is no more Jew or Greek, slave or free,man or woman. Everyone is a new creation. In the middle of his argument with the church of Galatia, we heard these words:

For freedom Christ set us free;
so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters.
But do not use this freedom 
as an opportunity for the flesh;
rather, serve one another through love.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, 
namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But if you go on biting and devouring one another,
beware that you are not consumed by one another.

I say, then: live by the Spirit 
and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. 
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other,
so that you may not do what you want.
But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.


In the Spirit, then, the law is broken asunder and what we are left with is “just like” (in Jesus’s words) the ancient prescription of the Torah: “love your neighbor as yourself.” The freedom given by Christ is to open up every possibility of serving one another, unhindered by legal, ritual, even ethical prescriptions. Ethics is replaced by doxology - being beloved children of one Father calls the believer into awareness about the other, that the other is equally beloved of God, and entitled to the same benevolence of life and land as the self or anyone else. 

What the flesh wants, Paul seems to be saying, is to save itself. What the flesh wants is to love itself first and primarily, but the Spirit is calling us to love the other in that primal way. Preempting the instinct for self-preservation, then, the Spirit allows us to love with agape, the life of God, which allows us with Christ to enter into the paschal mystery and, instead, choose other-preservation. This is nothing more or less than true love, the image of the invisible God, the Spirit at work in us enabling us to become divine. It is in this sense that the “flesh” is opposed to the Spirit. The flesh wants a counterfeit of life, it can only see up to the end of its nose. The Spirit wants to give a life that is infinitely richer, but can’t be experienced from the outside.

This is why it’s so important for us to live the faith - so that “others will see the deeds you do and give your Father praise.” The invitation to love, the experience of being loved, is an entry point into the paschal mystery. No one can appropriate that to self - it has to be given freely, then received. It’s as though St. Paul is saying, “Stop trying to lay the burdens of law, restrictions, rules, on each other! You’ve been freed of all that. Love each other the way you love yourself. Don’t be slaves to a law that can’t save you.”

There are all kinds of ways this speaks to me, certainly within the ecclesial reality. While it has repercussions in the area of worship, it is not primarily a directive about worship, because public worship is less than 1% of the time we spend (most of us) in our lives. To “serve one another in love,” to “love your neighbor as yourself,” takes practice, and another thing it almost certainly takes is reflection, unless your gift is acting in love, and some people seem to have it. It’s hard to know when we’re acting out of self-interest and when we’re acting on behalf of the good of others, and patterns of behavior can be hard to decipher unless I take the time to reflect on what I do when I’m with other people and measure it up against the call of the gospel.

Leaving the past behind, including the old self that died when Christ claimed us in our baptism, is the task. “Ya gotta serve somebody,” Dylan wrote, “it may be the devil, and it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.” We can serve the counterfeits of life, or even avatars and microcosms of life, but until we serve Life itself, there will be something missing. Dated as it sounds today, the finale of Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin allows the dissolute son of Charlemagne to discover, like so many did after the wild experiments of the 1960’s, that “If I’m never tied to anything / I’ll never be free.” The love of the Spirit, agape, allows us to leave even self-preservation in the past, and to live for others, “that they might have life, and have it in abundance.”