People of God, Sing Out!

I began my first position as a music director in late summer of 2008. I was not yet Catholic, and could not have dreamed that the community I was serving would take my life and completely redirect it. Truthfully, I really had not sung much up to that point. I was a studio violin teacher for a rigorous college-preparatory program, so I sang and audiated and communicated with my voice as a violinist — but singing as a cantor and music director was completely new. The church was small ­­­— the entire thing could probably fit inside our grand church’s sanctuary, the marble area where the altar and tabernacle sit — and it was in this little church that a group of music ministers taught me everything they had learned about the promulgation of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the liturgy, and why it is that Catholics sing at Mass. As I prepared and proclaimed the Psalms each weekend I was deeply transformed by the Holy Spirit made active in these proclamations. In the writing of the Psalmists, I experienced healing, love, anger, and deep connection as the Word of God became a living thing in the community each weekend.

I remember feeling awestruck when I walked through the Fulton Street doors of St. Ignatius for the first time. The beauty of the space and the scale of the structure itself really does leave one agog. Five years and a global pandemic later I find myself serving as your director of liturgy and music, and still wanting to share the transformative power that singing at liturgy can have.

In the liturgy the church experiences and shows forth its true identity. How does our collective voice at liturgy reflect our parish’s particular identity? In the next few weeks the people who serve as your music ministers are going to share some of their stories and invite you to consider whether God is asking you to give to our community as a minister of music — to be a part of the creative force that reflects our identity as the People of God. We are a mix of volunteers with a broad spectrum of skills. Some read music, some do not. Some have lots of experience singing in choirs and some have none. Volunteers, supported by professional section leaders, love the rush of energy and synchronicity that comes from group-singing, and being swept up in the sound of our large communal voice filling this enormous church at weekend Masses together. The Eucharistic Liturgy is one of the first places we as Catholics find our voices and cultivate a language of prayer — and it is certainly a place where God invites us into God’s creative and salvific love, and in a world where polarization plagues almost every aspect of our lives, our work together at liturgy is more important than ever. 

So I want to make an invitation to you: do you have a musical gift that you want to bring to Mass to share and fan into a beautiful flame? A voice that is especially lovely at blending bass harmonies? A passion for rhythm guitar that lends texture and energy to piano accompaniment? A longing to pray with and sing the Psalms? I sometimes joke that at St. Ignatius the best approach to all things liturgical is “go-big-or-go-home,” and this is certainly true of the gusto and energy needed in music ministry: we need your gifts to help create a sound diverse, unique and big enough that every voice in our assembly wants to join in and sing at full volume. Now is the time! Stay tuned in the bulletin and newsletter for information about how to participate.