Wonderfully Awful

The music at daily Mass is awful.  I know I’ve said so before, but I’m surprised by it every morning.  Some mornings it makes me cringe, and others it makes me smile.

Catholic Mass is not about the music.  It’s about the Sacrifice.  It’s about the Eucharist.  The whole of the Mass is designed to build into a crescendo at the Consecration.  The Eucharist truly is the source and summit.

Because the music is not the focus, it becomes instead a personal prayer sung out loud.  This is evident nowhere more clearly than at our local 8AM daily Mass.  On the mornings I don’t cringe, I listen intently to the wonderful noise of it all.  50-60 people, many deep in prayer, singing out their personal love and longing for our God.  It is the sound of faith, the noise of love.

I have often heard the Catholic Church criticized for not encouraging its members into a personal relationship with Jesus.  I would vehemently disagree.  I hear those personal relationships, the private love songs, the plaintive cries, every morning as I stand in my pew. 

Love isn’t a quiet thing.  It isn’t orderly.  It very often isn’t even pretty to look at or hear.  Unless you are the one who is loved.  Every morning, the faithful gather together and lift their hearts to their Almighty Father in love and trust.  If you know how to listen beyond the discordant notes, you can hear it, too.  It is quite simply the most amazing thing I have heard in years.  It is the sound of a people reaching out to their Creator full of the knowledge that they are loved and heard.

Musically it may be an awful mess, but in love and faith….it sounds pretty close to perfect to me.