Note: There is no bulletin article for Sept. 25th, 2006. I was contending with a very nasty flu. If you got here from my home page link, looking for "This Week's Article," here you find only the previous week's again, apologies. Thanks for visiting my humble web site!

Home                All bulletin articles

The Pope Visits his Bavarian Homeland: Reflections on Love of Neighbor... and Love of Liturgical Music
Associate Pastor's Column
Sunday, September 10, 2006

            Pope Benedict XVI, our beloved German Pope, will just have concluded a brief visit to his homeland, Bavaria (the southernmost province of Germany), by the time you, Gentle Reader, are reading these words. His visit was planned from Sept. 9 – 15, just six days.

            Last Sunday, his Mass pulled in 250,000… that’s only one quarter of those who came to attend his Mass at World Youth Day 2005 last August in Cologne, Germany, a mass at which I had the privilege of attending with 200 teen and young adult pilgrims from around the Detroit area (the Trailblazers). A quarter million is still a mind boggling number, and serves as a real testimony to the love Catholics everywhere have for our Pope.

            Indeed, even in the Pope’s pastoral visit to Poland, the Polish gave the Pope an incredibly warm welcome. This welcome gave joy to the whole world, especially given the troubled history between Germany and Poland in the last century. Such affection just proves that Catholicism is capable of uniting fervent souls from every nation. Even when we might think we have good reasons to divide ourselves against our neighbor, the Eucharist lifts us out of our smallheartedness to union with God, and, through God, with all Catholics everywhere.

            I wish to one detail of the Pope’s words on this trip. This point, in fact, may be of special interest to one of the parishes in our cluster, namely, St. Joseph… not only because the Pope’s first name is Josef and he’s German, but also because he spoke about the Organ. St. Joseph parish has a very fine organ, rebuilt in the seventies by  Mr. William Worden, and it is an integral part of the music program so important to the legacy and heritage of St. Joseph’s.

            The Pope mentioned that the organ is “the king of musical instruments,” since it creates such a variety of beautiful sounds, giving “resonance to the fullness of human sentiments”

            He went on, “In the organ, the many pipes and voices must form a unity,” the Pontiff said. If some pipes are blocked or damaged, the sound becomes distorted; the same is true if weather conditions affect the instrument.

            “Now this is an image of our community,” the Pope said. “Just as in an organ an expert hand must constantly bring disharmony back to consonance, so we in the Church, in the variety of our gifts and charisms, always need to find anew, through our communion in faith, harmony in the praise of God and in fraternal love.” (Thanks: cwnews.com)

            It is so refreshing to hear the Pope speak about liturgical music. Earlier in the year, in a discourse, he also mentioned the need to develop new liturgical music, but always in the tradition of Gregorian chant and Latin polyphony.

            We are proud to have good organs always playing in the Masses, without resorting to electric guitars and drums and pianos and whatnot. And we’re proud to adhere to Chant, choirs, polyphony and classical Catholic hymnody for the same reasons the Pope stresses in his public discourses. This gives us the joy of being right where the Church wants us to be, musically speaking, for the glory of God in our liturgical rites.

            To all in the music programs of the entire cluster: Thank you for your work! May God bless you for your labor of love, a fine service you offer to the holy liturgy of the Catholic Church.

Picture: Pope Benedict XVI sits at the Mariensaeule (“Maria’s Statue”) in Munich, Germany, Saturday, 9 September 2006. (EPA/Matthias Schrader).