Caught Up in God

I’ve heard many good sermons and homilies in my life. I’ve also heard a lot of boring and inept ones. But of them all, gripping and deadening alike, I confess that I remember almost nothing.

On the other hand, I remember countless hymns, every word of every verse of some of them. That probably has something to do with singing them over and over, whereas I only hear the homily once. However, I am convinced that there is more to it than that.

Wedding music to words imparts a power that lyrics are hard put to achieve on their own. This is a power:

• that encourages us, often without our realizing it, to let our guard down;
• that has the potential to touch us when nothing else can;
• and that can lead us to a holy silence.

Letting down our guard

There is something about music that encourages vulnerability — either to good (see “Thin Places”) or to evil.

As for the latter, the Anti-Defamation League says that “hate music has been instrumental in the formation of a white supremacist subculture….Hate music helps bring haters together into a shared community.”

Are hymns dangerous? They can be, if they come out of a theology that corrupts the gospel; but it is my impression that hymns may be theologically safer on average than sermons or homilies. For one thing, hymns are subjected to a sifting over the decades and the centuries that most homilies don’t have the opportunity to undergo. With hymns, the weevils don’t make it through the sieve of time, because they do not resonate as truth deep in the hearts of the faithful. (There are wily exceptions, of course, which do manage to slip through.)

Songs as recent as the late twentieth century are being submitted to this triage. Some of the worst have already been sifted out of the repertory. Thankfully, we now have fewer of the let’s-all-believe-because-the-sun-is-shining 1970s type of song. (What about when the sun is not shining, when we are laid in the dust by sorrow or pain?) And no longer do we hear the parish folk group singing “Puff the Magic Dragon” at Mass. (Yes, indeed, I really have heard this!)

It remains to be seen what will endure from today’s praise songs or Christian rock music.

Sometimes music can reach us when nothing else can.

Years ago, when I was preparing for a program called “Hymn-Singing and the Mystical Pilgrimage,” I ran across the following personal reflection on a web page. (I wish I could give proper credit, but the site no longer exists, and the entry was anonymous.)

In the early hours of my ordeal with brain cancer, waves of pain and large doses of morphine scrambled my thoughts. At the time, the most gracious and well meaning message from those wise and loving counselors could not penetrate the fog. Nevertheless, the following hymn is what the Spirit brought to mind and the words of which are still my comfort and strength.

The hymn was “My Jesus I Love Thee.”

And paradoxically, for some people music can lead into silence. It can even help create a space within that is quieter than no sound at all, a space where we can more easily enter into the loving silence of God.

On that note, and after many words, I will myself be silent.

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
(Psalm 104:33-34)