Music Ministry

It is good to give thanks to the LORD, To sing praise to your name, Most High, To proclaim your love in the morning, Your faithfulness in the night, . . . How great are your works, LORD! (from Psalms 92)

The music ministry uses music as a tool to spread the word of God both at Mass and at special functions throughout the diocese. The choir and the musicians support and encourage the prayer, song and response of the congregation through uplifting and inspiring music. There is another important component of the ministry, that of hospitality. The musical experience unites, welcomes and uplifts those who are visiting or returning to our church.

Sing a new song to the LORD, Who has done marvelous deeds, . . . Shout with joy to the LORD, all the earth; (from Psalms 98)

At Our Lady of Good Help, our music supports the liturgy.

Our goal is to choose music that supports the theme of the week's readings. Each of our music leaders carefully prays about the music selection. We offer a variety of music styles to our parishioners.

At our 8:00 am Mass on Sunday mornings, we offer many of the traditional styles of music played on the organ by Fran Garrepy.

	At our 5:00 pm Mass on Saturday evening, we offer traditional music, as well as a blend of contemporary selections played on the guitar.

	For those who prefer a more contemporary style of music at Mass, we have a full music ministry consisting of voices, piano, strings, sax or clarinet, guitars and drums at our 10:30 am Mass on Sunday. This Mass is scheduled at 10:00 am during summer months.

Let everything that has breath give praise to the LORD! Hallelujah! (from Psalms 150)

Our ministry meets one hour before Mass to bring their voices in tune with God. It is a chance to warm up the vocal chords as well as a time to enter into the presence of God. They begin by singing a cappella (voices without instruments). This helps to fully focus on the presence of God. We read that in singing, we are praying twice. This prayerful time before Mass is for us a springboard, energizing our music at the liturgy.

In preparation for special concerts and holydays, the ministry meets after Mass for 1 to-2 hours to rehearse. This schedule works well for a group that includes members from all over, because it eliminates the need to meet again during the week.

Music is also an important part of our worship at funerals, weddings, baptisms and other special occasions.

The LORD is my strength and my shield, In whom my heart trusted and found help. So my heart rejoices; With my song I praise my God. (from Psalms 28)

For additional information about joining this ministry, please call Ken Jolicoeur at 765-8017 or call the rectory at 568-5272.

Click to see photos of our music ministry.

With gratitude for the perseverance and talents of each of our music ministers, the following article is offered for reflection. It is reprinted with permission from the GIA Quarterly, Summer, 2001.

Another Kind of Eucharist

Paul J. Philibert, OP

In this season of the Holy Spirit, when we have some quieter days of resting and waiting to harvest of the fruit of what we have planted, my thoughts turn to a special kind of thanksgiving. This may surprise you. But as the prior of a religious community that daily sings the Divine Office, I am especially aware of how much we owe to our liturgical musicians and cantors. So I am inspired to write a letter to all pastoral musicians. It goes like this:

Ministers of Beauty

Dear brothers and sisters,

Speaking for the people of God, we are so grateful for you! It is true, we take you for granted most of the time. But because of you, there is so much beauty in our lives. When I come to church and am greeted by a prelude on the organ or by other instrumental music, I realize that others have already labored to create the environment in which I will have the privilege to pray with grace and beauty. No one asks generally (do they?) how long it took you to find just this appropriate music or how long it took to rehearse it. Why do you go out of your way to learn something new, to find just the right piece that expresses your faith and your response to it? What moves you to make such effort for the good of our common prayer? We do notice, though, believe me.

When we are at our best as Church, there is no beauty like the solidarity-the mutual giving of ourselves to one another in faith and love-that comes about through effective congregational singing. All our environmental preparations, even all our ritual elegance, would be empty without the ratification of faith that a singing assembly enacts. Of course, we can't go through the assembly and ask each person, "Do you believe?" But we can do something better. We can get them all to say, "I do believe," by giving themselves to the song of the Church. Thank you for choosing those songs, for teaching them, for building a repertory of faithful assent. For this life-giving discernment of pastoral beauty, we give thanks-for you!

Catechists for a Singing Church

We have a great a problem in the American church because we really have no context except the Sunday liturgy itself for adult faith formation. In this unsatisfactory situation, you pastoral musicians are the ones who have the greatest influence (except for the preacher, perhaps) in calling us to deeper faith. Thank you for thinking about the texts that you choose in order to provide a catechesis that brings the people into an understanding of the word of God for this Sunday, an awareness of this time in the liturgical year, and a sense of the living presence of the Holy Spirit in the sacred actions of our liturgy. Thank you for your faith. Thank you for believing that hymnody is able to teach and to celebrate. You are as much catechists as you are artists. Without you, the meaning of our rites could become terribly opaque.

It is not just the texts of our hymns, however, that teach. Your sensitivity to the prayerful power of silence and to the alternating dynamics between high and low in celebration, your taking advantage of marker events in the life of the parish-all these things teach as well. Those of you skilled at musical improvisation are also teaching reverence, sensitivity, and hopefulness when you make it apparent that your instrument is really the lived time of the celebration, the acoustic in this unique place, and your empathy with the faith and feeling of the Christian assembly to whom you minister. You play our faith and emotions as well as strings or keyboards.

Builders of Community

So we thank you as well for being builders of community. I've already explained how I think you do that in the exercise of your ministry as parish music leaders. But we don't often reflect on the community building that you do with your choirs. Beginning with my own mother (who was an avid church soprano), I have watched family and friends through the years find in church choirs not only the delight of music, but also the joy and the challenge of community. When you are good at this, you are doing one of the most important jobs in a parish or congregation. After all, your choir members are, from one point of view, the elite Christians in your community -people seeking a richer experience of faith and an opportunity for service through music making.

This must be a special joy for you as well as a taxing responsibility. Over time, I have noticed that organists, choir directors, and heads of liturgy programs in parishes are everything from father and mother to friend and companion, from counselor to crony for their musical groups. And most of the time, you do your most effective work in building the faith of your companions by doing well exactly what you are supposed to do. Faith, competence, enthusiasm, and generosity: you make these contagious. Thank you for this blessed ministry of community building.

Gratitude for Perseverance

Finally, I wonder if we shouldn't thank you as well for perseverance and surrender to the limits you have to work with. Artists are their own worst critics, I sometimes think. You see, artists are the ones who have inside their heads and their hearts the ideas and feelings of what an absolutely ideal music program and liturgical performance could be; therefore, it is easy for you to pay more attention to the gap between your dream and your actual resources and feel thereby something of a failure. But, alas, we never have more than "available reality" to work with-none of us do. So how do you manage to make do?

It is because you really do accept your role as a pastoral leader and take responsibility for those in your charge. Many times I have seen an organist or choir director hang onto a faltering member, knowing how much being in the choir means to her or to him. You really have a two-fold role to play: minister to the gathered assembly and leader and mentor of the liturgical choir. I know this translates out into very different realities in different parish situation, depending upon rich and poor, urban and rural, Anglo and ethnic, etc. But you do it, whatever the circumstances. Thank you for this faith and this generosity!

For you I make this prayer:

Loving God, whose beauty is beyond our imagining, thank you for touching the hearts of artists-especially pastoral musicians. You were the One who called them in the first place to this marvelous work of musical ministry to the people of God. Keep calling them: keep speaking to what is deepest in them of your desire to use their gifts to nourish the body of Christ and to glorify your name. I ask your special blessing on them: may they know how precious is their ministry, may they have great success in their service, and may they meet you in the very depths of what they do to obey your call. May they find you in their practicing, their choir sessions, their planning, and their liturgical leadership. May they have great joy, and may their joy be praise in your sight. Amen.

So, friends, in these quieter days, it is important for you to realize that your labors through the long liturgical and academic year were vitally important to your communities and to the Church. We want you to know our thanks-how grateful we are. In the quiet times (I hope you have some!), I pray that you will receive the grace to revive your vocation to this vital ministry in and to the Church. Be proud of your calling. Dare to give yourself generously despite fatigue and despite the scarcity of recognition you receive. You are a blessing to our parishes. We give thanks and praise to God for you.

Fr. Paul J. Philibert, OP, is prior of the Dominican House of Studies in St. Louis and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Church and Society at Aquinas Institute of Theology.