Liturgical Contemplations - The Spirit Produces the Singing

The singing of the Church comes ultimately out of love. It is the utter depth of love that produces the singing. “Cantare amantis est”, says St Augustine, singing is a lover’s thing. In so saying, we come again to the trinitarian interpretation of Church music. The Holy Spirit is love, and it is he who produces the singing. He is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit who draws us into love for Christ and so leads to the Father.

[The Spirit of the Liturgy (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), p. 142]

Commentary: Most people, fans of modern music and proponents of modern music in liturgical use included, would not have issues with the statement that "the singing of the Church comes ultimately out of love." It is indeed this love that often propels them to sing with great expression and sensation.

But this short paragraph seems to have brought an unexpected twist into our often humanised interpretation of "love" in the worship of God's people. It is often construed that because we love, we therefore sing with great sensation, even to the extent of engineering the entire worship of God's people into a sensational orgy of pop-rock indulgence. To justify this, we say that God enjoys all sorts of music and that all sorts of music can be used to worship God - so long as the words of the music are infused with lots of religious language and mentions of "Jesus".

The Pope is not vague about this - our contemplations on the love of God must lead to a trinitarian interpretation of Church music, not to a humanisation of the Church's liturgical actions. Since the Holy Spirit, in the economy of the Trinity, is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, it is He who will show the Church how to sing and what music most pleases the Godhead of which He Himself is a part.

In the liturgy, there is no place for individualistic interpretations of Church music, especially when such interpretations tend to take place apart from the mind of the Church. Church music is not a matter of one's whims and fancies; it is a matter of divine grandeur and majesty.