Striving to Sing

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, C                                                    August 25, 2019
Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

“I’m a good person. I never killed anyone.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that. People often say this to me whenever the subject of hell comes up, or confession, or the need for repentance. Just last week, Jesus warned us that really following him will cause division because repentance means being divided from sin. We saw how the Mass itself expects us to take repentance seriously, asking us to repent at least twice every time we come to celebrate the Eucharist.

Not killing anyone is definitely a good start to repentance, but it’s not enough. That kind of claim shows a rather terrible misunderstanding of heaven: the assumption that most people are going to heaven, that only the really terrible people like Hitler and child murderers don’t get to go. So, when people say, “I didn’t kill anyone,” they are really trying to tell me “I think I’ll go to heaven the way I am now, so I don’t need to change.” What does Jesus think?

Fortunately, someone asked him. “Will only a few people be saved?” And he doesn’t say “don’t worry, you’ll be fine as long as you don’t kill anybody.” No, he says, “strive to enter the narrow gate, for many… will not be strong enough” and “some are first who will be last.” In other words, getting to heaven is not easy, it’s not automatic, and you’ll be surprised at who makes it and who doesn’t.

Absolutely no one deserves heaven. After Original Sin, heaven is not the default. It is an immense gift from Jesus Christ. But the gift is not a one and done sort of thing. Being in heaven has more to do with the kind of person we become than it does with our location. Being in heaven means being holy and being holy takes work. You can’t be holy without Jesus Christ, but you also can’t be holy if you don’t even try. So, Jesus is not impressed by claims like, “you taught in our streets.” “We sat in Mass, we wore crosses around our necks, we posted about you on Facebook and Twitter.” “We never killed anybody…” “Jesus says, “I do not know you, depart from me.” If we take heaven for granted, it will be taken away from us.

Strive. That’s the word he uses. Strive. Effort, work, diligence. People talk as if murder is the most likely reason to go to hell, but this seems to say that laziness is much more dangerous. Now, this applies to every aspect of the Christian life, but in keeping with the series on the Mass started last week, let’s look at what it means for the liturgy.

Remember that the reason we go to Mass is to worship God. If you want to understand why this or that thing is done at Mass, the answer is “it’s to help us worship God.” What does that word even mean? What is worship, exactly? First of all, it means to acknowledge that God is God and nothing else is God. Okay, but what do we do with that information? We praise God. We humble ourselves before him. We express our love and devotion to God. And as Jesus says, we must strive.

Being in a Mosque doesn’t automatically mean you are worshiping Allah and simply being in a Hindu temple doesn’t mean you are worshiping the goddess Shiva. You have to express that worship through thoughts, words, and actions. The same is true of the Catholic Mass. Simply being in the building when a priest consecrates the Eucharist does not qualify as worship. “We ate and drink in your company.”

Worship is not an absent-minded presence. It is a decision, an act of the will, a conscious choice to humbly express our love and praise for God. How? Repent, follow the commandments, and “do this in memory of me.” The Church teaches us how to speak God’s “love language” in the liturgy. This is why the Second Vatican Council says that everyone should have “fully conscious and active participation” in the liturgy.

It starts with being “conscious.” Worship begins with a deliberate choice to pay attention to God. The liturgy is chock full of signs and symbols and words that reveal God to us. Interiorly focusing on these inevitably makes a person active. Not active in the sense that we’re running and jumping around like an active 4-year-old, but active in the sense of active watching and active listening. Every relationship requires active listening skills and our relationship with God is no different.

This spills over into external activity. Sit, stand, kneel, say this, sing that – all these are external expressions of an interior worship. Half-heartedly mumbling “holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts” doesn’t exactly express the heavenly joy of the angels who gave us those words. This is one reason I’m starting to stress singing at Mass. To say something expresses an idea. To sing it expresses the value of that idea. Singing takes more effort, it is one way to “strive” in our worship of God. This is why certain parts of the Mass are supposed to be sung. Every human being is capable of singing. To prove it, all you have to do is sing “happy birthday,” and just about everyone joins in.

Could you imagine just saying that song? “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…” It might be ironic and funny, but it’s not the same. Those words are meant to be sung. The same is true for some words at Mass. And if we’re not willing to make a little extra effort to sing the praises the eternal all-powerful God of the universe, what does that say about how well we “strive” to follow him?

There are practical concerns like having musicians and knowing the tune and the right words – something we don’t all have right now – but this is something worth working on, something worth improving. Special occasions have more music and regular ones have less, but the goal is for every Catholic to know how to sing a few basic things so that they’re ready to use them in the worship of God at any Mass. As a parish, we will take small steps in that direction over time, learning more about what to sing, when, why, and how to do it. The Church provides us with all sorts of reasons to sing and methods to do it, but the one thing She can never provide is your effort. No one can make you strive.

Is singing at Mass the most important thing in the universe? No. But love is. And real love means real effort. Effort in repenting of sins. Effort in loving your neighbor. Effort in worshipping God. I never want to hear Jesus say, “I do not know where you are from.” I want to worship and speak and sing to Jesus so often that he recognizes my voice, so that when I confess my sins – even if it were murder – he knows me and forgives me. Strive to make your voice known to God in word and in song, so that when we stand outside that final door of life, he knows us and lets us in.