I am a composer, performer, poet, educator, spiritual director, and permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. I just recently retired after 42 years of full-time ministry in the Catholic Church. I continue to serve in the Church part-time. I have been blessed to be united in marriage to my bride, Ruth, since 1974. I am father to four wonderful adult children, and grandfather to five equally wonderful grandchildren. In my lifetime, I have received a B.A. in Music (UST), M.A. in Pastoral Studies (St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, UST), Certified Spiritual Director. Ordained to the Permanent Diaconate for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, in 1991. Composer, musician, author, poet, educator. The Gospels drive my political choices, hence, leading me toward a more liberal, other-centered politics rather than conservative politics. The great commandment of Jesus to love one another as he has loved us, as well as the criteria he gives in Matthew 25 by which we are to be judged at the end of time directs my actions and thoughts.
This was originally a song I wrote for our wedding. A good friend of mine from the College of St. Catherine, Diane Strafelda, a voice major, sang it at our wedding. The text was taken from the Song of Songs, a book in the Hebrew scriptures, used quite often at weddings (” Set me as a seal upon your heart,as a seal upon your arm”).
The music has long been lost, but over the years I have remembered the primary melody of the song. This past April, I took that melody I had composed for our wedding and composed an entire new setting of it piano. In short, this is not what was sung at our wedding, but something much more expansive, much more beautiful.
Ruthie has long been the inspiration for much in my life. The love, the joy, the care, the compassion, the intelligence, the beauty of life I have experienced with Ruth is present in every pitch. She is my life’s breath and without her I would wither and die.
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The piano score for the new setting of our wedding song.Ruth and I on our 40th wedding anniversary.
“The Nativity”, a painting by John Singleton Copley
Psalm Offering 2, Opus 3
This Psalm Offering is a musical rendering of the Lucan phrase, “and Mary pondered all these things in her heart.” The recurring figure in the left hand is reminiscent of Chopin’s “Berceuse”, literally a lullaby. Within this gentle music I see Mary cradling her new born child to her breast, affecting that rocking back and forth movement that is inherent, it seems, to all mothers. The musical form of this Psalm Offering is 3 part, ABA form.
I wrote this Psalm Offering for Elaine Roesser. Elaine, and her sister, Helen, began playing music in church as children at St. Victoria Church in Victoria, Minnesota, a few miles west of Chanhassen. They continued to play Masses throughout their entire life. Elaine married Ron Roesser, from Chanhassen, and has lived and raised her family there. She is a lovely woman, with a very sharp mind (she worked at the Chanhassen Bank for a very long time), and a good friend. Ron and Elaine have pretty much adopted Kenny Smith as a member of their family.
Scripture passage: Luke 2:19
And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.
This, the longest of the Opus 3 Psalm Offerings, is a musical retelling of four Christmas stories. The opening melody, A, is the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that if she wills it, she will be the mother of the Messiah. The second melody, B, is when the now pregnant Mary visits her elderly and very pregnant cousin, Elizabeth. It is in this meeting that Mary proclaims her great Canticle, the Magnificat. The slower third melody represents the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem for the census, attempting to find a place to stay. The music ends with a juxtaposition of melody B in the right hand over melody A, representing the birth of Jesus in the stable.
I wrote this Psalm Offering for Ken Smith. I got to know Kenny when he was the faith formation director at St. Hubert. Much earlier in his life, Kenny was an educator at St. Hubert School, later becoming principal of the school. He left education for a while, but returned in that capacity as faith formation director. He later went on to be the faith formation director at the Church of St. Stephen, when I had the honor of working with him again, but this time, as parish life administrator, I was his boss. He is a gentle, kind man. I often thought of Kenny as more Catholic than the Pope. He has very strong political convictions, largely progressive (like me), and will share those with any who oppose those convictions.
Scripture: Luke 1: 26-38
In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. (NAB)
Here I am at the old St. Hubert, directing music from the piano.
In the Catholic Tradition, Christmas Day is more than just the 25th of December. Time is suspended, and 8 days become 1 day. In other words, the Solemnity of Christmas begins on the 25th of December and ends on January 1st. We call this the “octave of Christmas.” In music, an octave is an interval of 8 pitches, and, when one thinks of the overtones contained within one pitch, the idea of 8 days equaling 1 day is not so farfetched. The following music over these 8 days are my musical celebration of the Octave of Christmas, composed by me in 1991 as Christmas gifts for the significant people in my life at that time.
Dr. Maurice A. Jones, seating atop of his wooden stool in the Chorale’s rehearsal hall at the College of St. Catherine.
I have related this story a number of times. I have always felt I have never quite capture the essence of what I experienced, and, probably will not at this, my current attempt.
At the end of the Fall semester, the last rehearsal of the Chorale of the College of St. Catherine, was always magical, at least for me. The Christmas concert having been performed, we came into the rehearsal hall relaxed and in good spirits. The rehearsal hall was set up very simply. Along one of the walls was a large coffee urn filled with hot chocolate. Alongside the urn was a basket filled with small candy canes. And, next to the basket were napkins and Styrofoam cups. In the middle of the hall was the wooden stool utilized so often by our director, Dr. Maurice Jones.
We would get our cup full of hot chocolate, a couple of napkins, insert the candy cane into the hot chocolate and sit on the floor around the wooden stool. Maurie sat down, and opened his copy of Dicken’s Christmas Carol. As we sipped our hot chocolate and ate whatever food we may have brought with us for lunch (many of us were “brown baggers”), he would launch into a dramatic reading of the Christmas Carol.
Dr. Jones in one of his dramatic roles in a stage production in the Twin Cities.
It should be noted that Maurie Jones was not only an excellent choir director and professor of music, he was an outstanding actor, well known in the Twin City for his acting skills. His face and his voice were animated as he began the story, “MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”* Because our rehearsal time was only an hour long, Maurie would read up to the part in which the Ghost of Christmas Past visited Scrooge, and then, segue to Scrooge awakening Christmas morning, following his grim visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future, and read to the conclusion of the story.
Many of us would have been happy to sit all afternoon to hear the entirety of the story, but since this occurred at the end of the semester and we all had finals in the rest of our classes, we reluctantly left the rehearsal hall, albeit, far better than we had entered, and filled with anticipation for Christmas.
In that short hour, sitting on the floor sipping hot chocolate and eating cookies, transfixed and enthralled by the storytelling skills of Dr. Jones, all of us “adults” were transported back to the time of our childhood when our parents would similarly read to us from the story books we had in our little libraries. I remembered well my dad reading to me while we sat on the couch in our living room. That short hour with Maurie Jones and Charles Dickens was, for lack of better words, a “magical Christmas moment.” One could say that if the Ghost of Christmas Past came visiting me, this moment in time would be one to which I would be whisked back.
What does this Christmas memory have to do with the Incarnation of Jesus?
Advent is a time, in the parlance of Charles Dickens and his story about Scrooge, in which we get a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Future.
In Advent, we look to the future coming of Jesus, the time when Jesus will come again and all hunger, all poverty, and all the insufferable things that human beings do to one another will cease. This moment we envision will be truly “magical”, when God’s love will be made manifest and true peace, contentment, and love will be experienced by all. As we anticipate the second coming of Jesus, we remember the time in history when God was made manifest in human history, the time in which God put on, crawled into, so to speak, human flesh and bone in the person of Jesus, God incarnate.
What of the Ghost of Christmas Present? In whom or in what do we experience the Incarnation of Jesus? This is where the onus of making Jesus Incarnate falls not upon some past event or future event of Jesus, but upon us. The only one who can make Jesus Incarnate in the present is our own selves.
As an expectant mother, the presence of Jesus has been gestating within us for the past 4 weeks. On Christmas we must give birth, must make Incarnate, the presence of Jesus. As Jesus “put on the skin of humanity” at his Incarnation, we, at Christmas (and, for that matter all other days) must “put on the skin of Jesus” and within ourselves make his presence known to all people. In the imagery of the Gospel, we must enflesh ourselves with Jesus Christ.
After all these many years, 44 years to be exact, following my initial experience of Dr. Jones retelling of Dicken’s Christmas Carol in the rehearsal room of the Chorale at the College of St. Catherine, I finally begin to appreciate the significance of the event. In Maurie’s own person, he embodied Jesus the master storyteller enthralling people with his words, his stories and parables leading people closer to the God who created them. Maurie in the Present of that time, made Christ manifest, not in some elaborate way with all sorts of storytelling pyrotechnics and CGI, but in the simplicity of a bare rehearsal hall, a coffee urn full of hot chocolate, a basket of candy canes, a wooden stool, and, a well worn copy of Dicken’s Christmas Carol.
If the Ghost of Christmas Past would visit all the people who have known us, would they find within their relationship with us at that time, the presence of Jesus Christ? If not, now is the time in which we must, like Scrooge in the story, begin to Incarnate the presence of Jesus Christ to those we know, so that Christ’s presence made be manifest also when the Ghost of Christmas Future comes a-knocking.
* Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol (p. 1). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.
When my son, Andy, was a baby, one of his Christmas presents was a blue head walrus hand puppet. Not quite 2 months old, his primary interests were those of most infants, nursing, sleeping, and filling his drawers. As a brand new music educator, I taught general/vocal music Kindergarten through 12th grade in a rural school, I was looking for something by which I could entertain the students in the younger grades, at the same time teaching them some music skills. I had always been a great fan of puppets. The puppeteer, Jim Henson, was a god to me. I was a huge fan of Henson and his Muppets, and watched the Muppet Show religiously. I thought I might be able to use Andy’s blue walrus hand puppet in my younger grade music classes to fulfill my purposes.
Buying a second hand infant’s sweatshirt, used Oshkoshbygosh infant bib overalls, and used red mittens, I sewed the head of the blue walrus hand puppet to the neck of the sweatshirt, the bib overalls to the sweat shirt and sewed the mittens onto the sweatshirt and Goofus McNut was born. Though I have not taught grade school music since 1988, many of my former students, many of whom are now in their 40’s and 50’s, still remember and inquire about Goofus McNut.
Goofus lived in the piano bench in my music classroom most of the year. He truly excelled at two key times during the school year, namely, Christmas and Valentine’s Day. On Valentine’s Day, he would write the name of the student mirror backward on the valentine, and then read the name of the student from right to left. Using my name for example, mirror backward my name would appear on the valentine as rengaW boB (being written mirror backwards they would appear correct if held up to a mirror). Then Goofus would read the name out loud as Rengaw Bob. The kids loved it, their teachers hated it. The minute the kids would get back to their classroom, they would request/pester their teacher to go to the restroom so they could hold up their valentine in the mirror and read it. Their teachers had a strong dislike for me at this time of the year.
At Christmas, Goofus would sing his favorite Christmas Carols and the kids would have to correct him when he sang the wrong words. Some of his favorites were “O Come All You Fishes,” “Away in the Freezer,” “Good King Applesauce,” and, “Hark I Hear Old Harold Singing”.
Hear are some of his favorite fractured Christmas Carol lyrics.
“O come all you fishes, joyful and delicious, O come ye O come ye to my tummy. All that I wishes is to eat a lot of fishes, O come to my table, O come to my table, O come to my table, so I can eat you.”
“Hark I hear old Harold singing, heartburn to me he is bringing. Gas and also indigestion, I am in need of medical attention. Here I lie beneath the tree, pain and discomfort, woe is me. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz do I hear, relief from pain will soon be here. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz do I hear, relief from pain will soon be here!” (Thank you Alka Seltzer for the conclusion of the lyric)
Away in the freezer the poor ice cream lay, without any cover all through the day. I love you dear ice cream in spring and in fall, and summer and winter you’re the best of them all.”
“Good King Applesauce looked out on his feets uneven (never quite got beyond this point in the carol).
I only got one complaint about Goofus, but it was more on the amusing side rather than severe. One parent noted that at an early Christmas Eve Mass, their child sang with quite amount of enthusiasm “O come all you fishes,” instead of “O come all ye faithful.” When they asked their child where he learned that carol, he told his parents that Goofus taught it to him.
Is Goofus still alive? Of course, he is. he is 41 years old, the same age as Andy. He’s been living in retirement for the last 20 years. He comes out now and again. He doesn’t come out much in the early spring because he still is paranoid as ever about “killer worms.” He believes that the worms that come up on the sidewalk following spring rain storms are “killer worms.” When you step on them they burrow through your shoes and attack your vital organs. He still is not very fond of “icks” (ticks) and “masqueezos” (mosquitos) because when you squish them they spurt blood all over you. He had a little reconstructive oral surgery to take care of a hole that developed in his mouth over the years. Maybe this year he will once more regale some people with his Christmas Carols.
For all of us in the “church business”, it is important that we keep our sense of humor intact as the Solemnity of Christmas nears. The Christmas expectations that people bring with them to church on that Solemn Feast are as great as those portrayed in the comedy film, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” Those expectations are generally dashed as badly as that of the Griswald’s in the same film. So it is vitally important for us in the business of the Spirit to keep our own spirits high as we prepare to serve those whose spirits are easily hurt or disappointed. These are some of the memes that have shown up on Facebook this year and the past. Enjoy!
This is an expanded version of the post I placed on Facebook, reminiscing about a choir concert in which my sister sang back in the early 1970’s.
My sister, Mary Ruth, during high school. She is holding her pet “Pekipoo”, Nicodemus.
Every time I listen to Benjamin Britten’s, “A Ceremony of Carols, “ I think of my sister, Mary Ruth. She sang alto in her choir at Our Lady of Peace High School. Our Lady of Peace High School was one of three high schools in St. Paul dedicated to the education of young women. The school was located on prestigious Summit Ave in St. Paul. Unlike the other two all female high schools which later merged with two all male high schools to survive, Our Lady of Peace remained an all female high school until it closed in the early 1970’s.
As is with all Christmas concerts in Minnesota, it was a cold, dark December night. And, as was with most high school concert halls of that era, the concert hall was a high school gymnasium with a stage situated on one end of the gymnasium. We, the audience, were seated on grey, metal, folding chairs. The choir processed on stage in their choir robes. Their accompanist, another high school student, extraordinarily gifted at performing on the piano, sat at the piano, and the Religious Sister who directed the choir came on stage and began this incredible choral music for treble choir (Soprano 1, Soprano 2, and Alto). This was my introduction to the music of the British composer, Benjamin Britten.
In 1942, while traveling by passenger ship from the United States to England, Britten set 11 Medieval English poems from a collection entitled, The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, to music. He scored it for an S.S.A. boys choir and harp. It was written for Christmas and is composed of 11 movements.
The majority of the text being in the English of the Middle Ages, made it difficult to understand what words the choir was singing. Having the text in the program was not particularly helpful, since the spelling and pronunciation of English from the Middle Ages is not close to our own (as you can see below). It didn’t help that the area in which my mom, dad, and I sat was darkened during the concert. Nevertheless, the performance of the choir was captivating and compelling.
The music began with the processional, “Hodie Christus natus est”, the Gregorian antiphon to the Canticle of Mary at Second Evening Prayer of Christmas in the Liturgy of the Hours. The Latin text is: Hodie Christus natus est,Hodie Salvator apparuit,Hodie intera canunt angeli,Laetantur archangeli, Hodie exsultant justi dicentes, Gloria in excelsis deo. Alleluia!
This is followed by “Wolcum Yole!” The Middle English text is: Wolcum be thou hevenè king, Wolcum Yole! Wolcum born in one morning, Wolcum for whom we shall sing! Wolcum be ye, Stevene and Jon, Wolcum, Innocentes every one, Wolcum, Thomas marter one, Wolcum be ye good newe yere, o good newe yere, Wolcum, twelfthe day both in fere, Wolcum, seintes lefe and dere, Wolcum yole, wolcum! Candelmesse, Quene of Bliss, Wolcum bothe to more and lesse. Wolcum be ye that are here, Wolcum alle and make good cheer! Wolcum alle another yere, Wolcum yole, Wolcum!
“There is no rose” is sung next. The text for the song is, There is no rose of such vertu, As is the rose that bare Jesu. (Alleluia) For in this rose conteinèd was Heaven and earth in litel space, (Res miranda) By that rose we may well see, There be one God in persons three, (Pares forma) The aungels sungen the shepherds to: Gloria in excelsis Deo! (Gaudeamus) Leave we all this werldly mirth, and follow we this joyful birth.Transeamus! Alleluia, Res miranda, Pares forma, Gaudeamus, Transeamus.
The fourth movement consists of two parts. “That yonge child”, That yongë child when it began weep With song she lulled him asleep: That was so sweet a melody It passèd alle minstrelsy. The nightingalë sang also: Her song is hoarse and nought thereto: Whoso attendeth to her song And leaveth the first then doth he wrong.; and, “Balulalow“, O my deare hert, young Jesu sweit, Prepare thy creddil in my spreit, And I sall rock thee to my hert, And never mair from thee depart. But I sall praise thee evermoir With sanges sweit unto thy gloir; The knees of my hert sall I bow, And sing that richt Balulalow!
The choir then launched into “As Dew in Aprille“, I sing of a maiden That is makèles: King of all kings To her son she ches. He came also stille There his moder was, As dew in Aprille That falleth on the grass. He came also stille To his moder’s bour, As dew in Aprille, That falleth on the flour. He came also stille There his moder lay, As dew in Aprille That falleth on the spray. Moder and mayden was never none but she: Well may such a lady Goddes moder be.
“This Little Babe” follows. This little Babe so few days old, Is come to rifle Satan’s fold; All hell doth at his presence quake, Though he himself for cold do shake; For in his weak unarmèd wise The gates of hell he will surprise. With tears he fights and wins the field, His naked breast stands for a shield; His battering shot are babish cries, His arrows looks of weeping eyes, His martial ensigns Cold and Need, and feeble Flesh his warrior’s steed. His camp is pitchèd in a stall, His bulwark but a broken wall;The crib his trench, haystalks his stakes; Of shepherds he his muster makes; And thus, as sure his foe to wound, The angels’ trumps alarum sound. My soul, with Christ join thou in fight; Sticks to the tents that he hath pight. Within his crib is surest ward; This little Babe will be thy guard. If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, then flit not from this heavenly Boy!
The seventh movement is a harp interlude. At the performance I attended, this was played on the piano.
The choir then sang “In Freezing Winter Night”. Behold, a silly tender babe, in freezing winter night, In homely manger trembling lies Alas, a piteous sight! The inns are full; no man will yield This little pilgrim bed. But forced he is with silly beasts In crib to shroud his head. This stable is a Prince’s court, This crib his chair of Stat e; The beasts are parcel of his pomp, The wooden dish his plate. The persons in that poor attire His royal liveries wear; The Prince himself is come from heav’n; This pomp is prizèd there. With joy approach, O Christian wight, Do homage to thy King, And highly praise his humble pomp,Wich he from Heav’n doth bring.
This was followed by the “Spring Carol”. Pleasure it is to hear iwis, The Birdès sing, The deer in the dale, The sheep in the vale, The corn springing God’s purvayance For sustenance. It is for man. Then we always to him give praise, And thank him than.
The tenth movement, the choir sang a rousing “Deo Gratias”. Deo Gracias! Adam lay ibounden, bounden in a bond; Four thousand winter thought he not to long. Deo Gracias!And all was for an appil, an appil that he took, As clerkès finden written in their book. Deo Gracias! Ne had the appil takè ben, Ne haddè never our lady A ben hevenè quene. Blessèd be the time That appil takè was. Therefore we moun singen. Deo Gracias!
The eleventh movement, the “Recession”, ends the music as it had began with the Latin chant, Hodie Christus natus est, Hodie Salvator apparuit, Hodie intera canunt angeli, Laetantur archangeli, Hodie exsultant justi dicentes, Gloria in excelsis deo. Alleluia!
As a young music major in college, I was like a sponge soaking up all musical influences I could. When the concert concluded, I was drilling my sister for all the information she had on this music of Benjamin Britten. It has to be understood that this was long before the personal computer and the internet. Heck, we were lucky to have a Royal manual typewriter at home. Owning an electric typewriter was a bit of a dream for many of us.
A very old picture of the students at Our Lady of Peace High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though by the time my sister attended Our Lady of Peace High School, the habits of the nuns had been greatly modified from what is pictured here, my sister’s uniform did not change. She wore the identical uniform worn by the young women in this photograph.
This beautiful set of Middle English poems set to music for SSA choir and harp by Benjamin Britten is a very special treat for me each and every Christmas. Many years have passed since that cold, December night in St. Paul. The doors of Our Lady of Peace High School have been closed for many years (the William Mitchell School of Law now occupies the buildings of the high school) . My sister has been dead now for close to 19 1/2 years. Yet, with every listening I am whisked back to the concert hall/gymnasium of Our Lady of Peace High School and watching my beloved sister dressed in choir robes singing this beautiful music with her choir.
Dr. Maurice A Jones, in his classic stance, directing a rehearsal of the Chorale of the College of St. Catherine, circa 1973.
Well I remember my first Christmas Concert singing with the Chorale of the College of St. Catherine.
Having abandoned all pretense of being a band director by the end of the first semester of my sophomore year in the music department at the College of St. Thomas, I began to intensely focus my musical studies on piano (my major instrument) and voice (my minor instrument). At the beginning of my second semester of my sophomore year, I auditioned and made it into the Chorale of the College of St. Catherine, a mixed SATB choir comprised of women from the College of St. Catherine and men from the College of St. Thomas. I also fell under the influence of Dr. Maurice A Jones, the director of the Chorale. He was the finest professor I have ever had and greatly influenced me as a musician. After I graduated he, became my mentor and friend.
Maurie introduced to me the choral music of some of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber, Gabriel Faure, and Francis Poulenc. He demanded much from his choir and we, in turn, were willing to do anything for him.
Our Lady of Victory Chapel on the campus of the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota
My first Christmas Concert singing with the Chorale was held in Our Lady of Victory Chapel on the campus of the College of St. Catherine. Women in black concert dress, men dressed in black tuxedos, we processed from the entrance of the chapel to the sanctuary, women processing on one side of the chapel, men processing on the opposite side. As we processed, we sang an Medieval Latin Trope “Alle Psallite Cum Luya” in a 3 part round. The sound danced about the chapel, the music reverberating off the smooth stone surfaces of the chapel.
All the music of the concert that evening was a cappella, which means unaccompanied by instruments. Within each section of the choir was a person with a pitch pipe from which we would receive our opening pitch. The concert was no more than 45 minutes. Maurie Jones, knowing the limits of an audience, would rather have an audience complain about a concert being too short in duration rather than a concert being too long in duration. “We want to keep them wanting more,” was a favorite saying that Maurie preached to us in choral conducting class.
Among the carols we sang that night, were some common carols, for instance, “Angels We Have Heard On High”. Our breath control was tested to the limit, for Maurie demanded that we sing the “Gloria in excelsis Deo” of the refrain in one breath (try it and see if you can make it to the end without gasping for air). From the Oxford Book of Carols, we sang “Pat-a-Pan”, and “Bring A Torch Jeanette Isabella”. We sang an arrangement of “Masters In This Hall”, with its resounding refrain “Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel sing we clear! Holpen are all folk on earth, Born is God’s own Son so dear! Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel sing we loud! God today hath poor folk raise and cast a-down the proud!”
The centerpiece of the concert was Francois Poulenc’s “4 Motets pour le temps de Noel” (Four Christmas Motets). We sang three of the four motets: “O magnum mysterium,” “Videntes stellam,” and “Hodie Christus natus est.”
Of those three motets, it was in the first motet, “O magnum mysterium,” that the mystery of the Incarnation of Jesus first impacted my life most profoundly. “O magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum ut animalia viderent Dominum natum jacentem in praesepio. Beata Virgo cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum. O great mystery and wonderful sacrament that even the animals saw the new-born Lord lying in a manger. Blessed Virgin, whose womb
was worthy to bear our Lord Christ.”
The harmonies evoke within the singer and the listener the mystery of the Incarnation. How Poulenc was able to capture that mystery in music and human voice is wondrous. I feel a chill pass within me upon every hearing of this motet.
We ended the concert as we began. We processed out from the sanctuary to the entry of the chapel singing the Latin chant for Christmas, “Divinum Mysterium”.
Of all my Christmas memories, this perhaps is my favorite music memory. That cold December night in the beautiful chapel of Our Lady of Victory, I encountered the mystery of Jesus in song. My dad recorded that concert on what was a state of the art 3M cassette recorder. Through the hiss on the tape, I can still make out the “Alle Psallite Cum Luya” reverberating through the chapel, and the oh, so mysterious pianissimo opening of “O magnum mysterium” evokes the mystery of which it sings.
Once more, Christmas rolls around. A new liturgical year begins and another calendar year concludes. As with all of life, changes continue. I seem to mark the passage of time by the surgical scars I accumulate. This year, there is a nice long scar over the right knee indicating where a new knee has been implanted. As old body joints depart and new ones arrive, so it is true with the newness that comes with the passage of another year. Andy, a skilled artisan much in demand, has started up his own wood floor installation business. Judging by the lack of time his work truck is at home, his clients are keeping him very busy. Olivia, his beautiful bride, remains much in demand for her skills as a professional photographer. For my birthday this year, she gifted me with 4 beautiful portraits of Ruthie. Their boys are busy growing in age and in wisdom. Owen began high school this year. I am presently having the pleasure of teaching both Owen and Aidan piano. Ollie, just beginning 1st grade is far too busy to think about piano lessons presently. Our youngest daughter, Beth, graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in Psychology this past October. She is busy doing her internship and working at Hennepin County Medical Center. Luke remains busy at Coborns, and when he is not working out at SNAP Fitness, he is busy being a dad to his 4 year old Boxerdore, Belle E Button. Meg, recently moved to Anoka which means we don’t see her, Alyssa and Sydney as often as when she lived at home. Meg continues to work at the Minnesota State Veterans Home as she pursues her degree to become a Registered Nurse. Meg has her sight set on eventually becoming a nurse practioner. Alyssa, a freshman in high school, too, and Sydney are both busy in school. Ruthie, agelessly beautiful, continues to work full time nights as a Registered Nurse at the Minnesota State Veterans Home. While she would love to be able to retire this coming year, with the political situation for the next 4 years, and the political party in power determined to cut or eliminate Social Security and Medicare, it seems unlikely that Ruth, or I for that matter, will know what it means to retire. I remain in church ministry in the New Prague Area Catholic Community. With an anticipated drastic shortage of priests and deacons, I think I will probably continue ministry for quite a while yet. As we look to the next 4 years, it is hard for us to utter, “Merry!” or “Joy,” this Christmas. However, we place our hope that as in all things, God will see us through these dark times as God has done for us in the past. In spite of our flawed humanity, Jesus remains Lord of Heaven and of Earth and humanity’s only hope for peace. So this Christmas, we bid you, “Peace!”
