Nine ladies dancing: The nine choirs of angels
My mother raised her three children on an eclectic musical amalgamation of Sister Act, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration and Annie Lennox. I was rapping Sr. Mary Clarence’s (played by Whoopi Goldberg) Salve Regina before I knew how to translate those words.
My family, hardly a choir of angels, became one eager cadre of Church Singers. Unlike the Church Yeller, the lady who seems to think that shouting the Our Father and Creed louder than any other church goer will get her prayers heard more effectively, Church Singers aim not to be particularly noisy. Rather, we strive for melodic consistency, quickly thumbing the thin pages of our Gather hymnal each time the cantor announces the song. As we sing, we fill ourselves with the lyrics and send them outward. We create something beautiful that was not present before, and will soon pass.
Many of the songs we sing at mass are the creation of a group known as the “St. Louis Jesuits,” who wrote the familiar tunes “City of God,” “Be Not Afraid,” “This Alone,” “Lift Up Your Hearts” and “Here I Am, Lord.” For thirty years, the music of these five men has filled Catholic Churches across the country and become part of American Catholic identity. Non-Catholics might recognize their work too:
Music of the St. Louis Jesuits was sung at President Ronald Reagan’s funeral and at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. A song of theirs has been heard on “The West Wing”; Susan Sarandon sang another to death row inmate Sean Penn in “Dead Man Walking.” The British Catholic journal The Tablet recently surveyed its readers as to the most popular hymn of all time. The winner was “Here I Am, Lord,” a song composed by one of the St. Louis Jesuits.
As I have written here before, too much guitar and too little passion can render liturgical music into whiny Christian lullabies. But when it’s good, it can be transformative, especially when, in song, you participate in that conversion.
St. Augustine is credited with saying "He who sings prays twice." Which I hope also means “She who sings and writes about it, prays thrice.”
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