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 [...]

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“I’ve never had a religious experience,” she told me. The young woman speaking was a good friend of mine from graduate school. She was intelligent and very gifted, working on her PhD and singing in a well-known choral group. Not only had she not had a “religious experience,” but, as I already knew, she didn’t [...]

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I’ve just downloaded from iTunes a recording of Marilyn Horne singing the Lord’s Prayer. Listening to it is enough to send shivers down your spine, and its beauty bears witness to what St. Augustine said: cantare amantis est — singing belongs to the lover. My mother also liked to sing, but was not what you [...]

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