The Power of Sacred Music...

I believe that one of the most important ways to communicate the Gospel is sacred music. It has an immense power to draw us into another realm and makes us desirous of something more than our ordinary life on earth. Especially today in our media centered culture, we need the sacred to overpower our senses and drive us towards Heaven. Therefore, we need to cultivate sacred music as well as sacred art. Even atheist Bernard Holland of the NY Times understands this basic concept:

Beauty of musical color, elegance of harmony, soundness of construction and exquisiteness of originality once worked as the lure that would draw the faltering worshiper nearer. Music, as well as architecture and visual art, represented heaven to the earthbound, something dazzling and unapproachable, an advertisement for a paradise still held at arm's length." (NY Times, 23 September 2007) (NLM)

True beauty has such a power over the soul and as Catholics we must support the sacred in our liturgical life. The musical style of Gregorian chant has that power and is a most valuable resource as Bishop Edward Slattery of the Diocese of Tulsa explains:

"I ask...to pay special attention to the Council's liturgical norms....and what the Council Fathers actually wrote concerning the requirements of proper liturgical music, and in particular the principle which places the text in importance over the melody, thus acknowledging the primacy of Gregorian chant among the Church's musical traditions, not merely from the position of its great venerability and beauty, but also because chant, having no rhythm, never forces the text to be rewritten to fit a specific meter. Chant allows us a certain sacred space within which that Word which God spoke in ancient times can be heard today with greater clarity and fidelity."
(Eastern Oklahoma Catholic, 6 March 2006) (NLM) [Emphasis added]

To learn more about the beauty that is possible in sacred music, check out this full length documentary on nineteenth annual Sacred Music Colloquium, sponsored by the Church Music Association of America, that was hosted at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. I highly recommend watching this hour long documentary if you have the time. As Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement says, "I really do believe that this is the most important film to hit the Catholic world in a very long time."

(Click here if you cannot see the video)

SACRED, BEAUTIFUL, & UNIVERSAL: Colloquium XIX from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

For those who don't have the time to watch the video above, here is a short proof that sacred music is something for all ages:

(Click here if you cannot see the video)