A priority of our Parish Priority Plan is “Enhancing Our Sunday Mass Experience”. 

 

The goal of this priority is to create the conditions for the faithful to more powerfully encounter the Lord at our parish Masses. One area of focus for this priority is the music at Mass. 

 

When we added the 5:15 PM Sunday night Mass in the spring, we introduced an approach to music that is aimed at guiding the congregation toward the interior silence that is essential to encountering the Lord. Then this summer we began incorporating some elements of this approach into our Sunday morning Masses twice a month. 

 

One part of this approach is to use more music at Mass that is only sung by the choir, while the congregation listens prayerfully. Pope Benedict XVI, writing before he was Pope, wrote positively of this “filled silence” -- a silence “in which the choir calms us interiorly, leading each one of us into silent prayer and thus into a union [with God] that can occur only on the inside”.1 

 

As we continue to refine and discuss this approach to the music at Mass, it will be helpful to learn a few musical terms. Our music director, Rachel Dugan, has provided us with the following: 

 

Say What? Music terms you may not know:

Schola: a group of musicians who specialize in liturgical music Choir: an organized group of singers, particularly one that takes part in church services 

Motet: a short piece of sacred choral music, typically polyphonic and unaccompanied Unaccompanied: singing without instruments 

Polyphony (polyphonic): the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other. 

 

Let us continue to pray for The Sunday Mass Experience Team as they lead us to create the conditions for the faithful to more powerfully encounter the Lord at our parish Mass. 

 

Yours in Christ, C.Y. Suellentrop and the Sunday Mass Experience Team 

 

1 “‘In the Presence of the Angels I Will Sing Your Praise’: The Regensburg Tradition and the Reform of the Liturgy” from J. Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today.