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This month marks one year since our last real choir rehearsal at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Those are words I never thought I would say when taking on the mantle of parish music director over two decades ago. Even more unthinkable is what I’ve had to say several times to our assemblies gathered for Mass: “Please do not sing.” What?! Those of us who work in liturgical music dedicate our life’s work to leading God’s people in song together, raising to God the voices that He gave us, powered by the very breath through which God gives us life. Yet for this past year, that same breath has become a potential means of spreading COVID. The deep, profound breaths that are the stock and trade of quality singing have seemingly become slings and arrows of peril.
But I’m not the only one who’s had to mourn this loss! We have over 170 singers in our parish choirs – adults, youth, and children – all of whom long for the day we can make the sublime sound that only happens when a group of singers learns to breathe together, phrase together, and blend together. Each singer dies a little bit to self for the sake of the glorious sound we can only make when we care more about the sound of the ensemble than our own ego. And so many in our congregation long to sing again, too. They take to heart the responsibility and privilege of singing with all their hearts from the pews, offering their voices to God in song.
And this is as it should be; this is a holy and just desire. We need to offer all we have and all we are, even our very breath, in service to and praise of the Almighty God. If there’s a musical gift that this time of pandemic has given all of us, it is a reminder that our silence at Mass is unnatural. We need to sing at Mass, not for God’s benefit, but for our own. God doesn’t need our gifts; but we need to offer them to him – our time, our talent, our treasure, and the breath that gives us life. May that day return soon!
-Rex Rund, Director of Music & Liturgy