Today the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced the imminent promulgation of an Apostolic Constitution which will create a ordinariate within the Catholic Church for Anglicans/Anglo-Catholics/Episcopalians who wish to convert to Catholicism but maintain certain elements of the Anglican worship tradition: read it here.

This probably means very little to most of the world, but to Anglicans around the world, it is the opened arms of the father of the prodigal son of Our Lord's parable. Much prayer and discernment and decision-making remain, but a choice has been offered in great love.

Thank you, our gracious and beloved Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI. Ut unim sint!

Thanks be to Thee, O Lord our God.

From the Holy Father's comments following a piano recital of great works played on seven historical instruments:

Music, great music, gives the spirit repose, awakens profound sentiments and almost naturally invites us to lift up our mind and heart to God in every situation, whether joyous or sad, of human existence. Music can become prayer. Thanks again to those who organized this beautiful evening. Dear friends, I bless you all from the heart.

Last night the priest celebrating Mass preached on, among other things, Beauty and Truth, and the power of Beauty to lead us to Truth if we search diligently. This is an idea that resonates with me in every aspect of my life, particularly musicianship, stitching, and gardening.

Gardening and stitching each produce a finished product which is the visible, tangible result of the effort put into them. The beauty of a stitched work is set and can be enjoyed at all times, while the beauty of the garden changes from day to day. Music, on the other hand, can only be experienced in the Now while it is taking place.

In gardening, the spirit of hope informs our work--we weed and plant and prune today so that tomorrow and tomorrow there will be fruit and beauty.

In stitching, we encourage each other to bring pieces to completion, and rejoice in each other's finishes. The spirit of hope is present as we stitch as well. I used to sign my stitching-groups e-mail with "Every stitch a prayer", as my late mum would say over the quilts she and other ladies of our church would stitch for charity. May all our stitching be a repose and a prayer, and the finished pieces likewise.

In music, I often think how, for us liturgical musicians, we often have difficulty praying while making the music for which we are responsible, and the 'end product' is fleeting. May the music we make invite prayer and become prayer, even as we must pay attention to doing the work of creating it. May it lift our hearts and minds to God and focus our attention on Him and not us.

My husband and I are admirers of St. Thomas More (which is, from the Heavenly Point of View, very funny on my part, since I was raised Anglican but detested Henry VIII), and I recently found this prayer of St. Thomas' on a Catholic homeschooling blog:

O Lord, give us a mind that is humble, quiet, peaceable, patient and charitable, and a taste of your Holy Spirit in all our thoughts, words, and deeds.

O Lord, give us a lively faith, a firm hope, a fervent charity, a love of you. Take from us all lukewarmness in meditation and all dullness in prayer.

Give us fervor and delight in thinking of you, your grace, and your tender compassion toward us.

Give us, good Lord, the grace to work for the things we pray for.

— St. Thomas More, 1478-1535

How often do we fall into the mode of "God give me patience and I need it RIGHT NOW!"? :-)

Certainly there are things for which we pray that only Our Lord can work on, but for my part I see places where I need to be doing my share of the work, by His grace.

Small act by small act...stitch by stitch...brick by brick...note by note...

Gratias ago tibi, Liz, at http://hfclassicalacademy.blogspot.com/
for St. Thomas More's prayer.

Actually, the title is a bit of a misnomer..."Songs my mother taught me" is a very sweet song by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, about learning songs (and about life) from one's mother. My mum couldn't sing. When singing while playing as a four-year-old, she had been told, "You sound like a frog--stop that!" and she was never able to get over that. (I was told that story when I was a teenager looking at becoming a musician and teacher, and it went into what I call my "mental little black book of things I will never do as a teacher/conductor/parent"--never tell anyone they CAN'T do something if they are trying, because it is humiliating and definitely unChristlike, and you will probably create the inability. Much later I read ed psych research that confirmed creating difficulties for kids.) So mum never taught me to sing, and never sang at anything louder than a whisper, even though she had a great ear and loved music. But my mum taught me how to stitch, and to crochet, and knit, and quilt (only the applique part took), and to do liturgical embroidery in real gold and silver and silks and pearls...

As many of you know, I have been very slowly clearing out my late mum's stuff. With a hundred quick stops at the storage unit, I had finally gotten down to just furniture the last week in June, so I hired some nice local movers to bring that back to my garage. (If you're in the Triangle, I'd be happy to make a recommendation.) I'd managed to take bags and bags of stuff to Goodwill and partially empty the garage, but now it's back to full.

But I keep coming across the neatest finds. I've found birth certificates and baptismal records for Mum's aunt--the one she was named for--and her paternal grandparents, plus my dad's parents and grandparents (these last ones from Germany and falling apart). Holy cards in Latin and English and German, some just 'everyday' cards, many of them ordination commemorations or anniversaries, some memorial cards of people I vaguely remember and people I never knew except in stories.

But best of all, I keep finding mum's stitching projects. I'll post the interesting ones as I get time. Here is the first one. It's a Dimensions crewel kit (not cross stitch) from 1987 done with floss of puppies, with the picture preprinted so that the stitcher can see how the stitches are supposed to create fur.



Mum only finished two of the puppies.



We're not dog people (my son and I are allergic to furry creatures), so I want to give away this project to someone who will finish it and love it. I have the cover picture from the kit, the chart which shows which color goes where, and the pre-painted linen, but no floss. (It may turn up later...)

If you would like to enter the giveaway, leave a comment by 12:01 a.m. Monday morning, and I'll have DS pick a number at random to choose.

Whatever your tradition, I hope that your Holy Week and Easter have been as meaningful and joyful as ours. As I am a pastoral musician, it's been a busy two weeks, but such blessings!

Two weeks ago, on Passion Sunday, the St. Timothy's choir sang Charles Wood's beautiful St. Mark Passion. The area was under a high-wind advisory, and when we came to the part where the choir sings the tumultuous, "And they laid their hands on Him, and took him; and the disciples all forsook Him, and fled," the high winds caused a blink in power followed by a minute or so of no power at all. The organ, the wind chest of which is filled using an electric motor, sort of wound down into groans, and the choir kept going, God bless them! It reminded me of the organ 'symphony' in Dubois' Seven Last Words of Christ during the rending of the veil of the Temple and the graves opening...Did I say that I am extraordinarily blessed by the singers whom I direct, everywhere I direct? My St. T choir regulars are a group of most willing and good-humored singers--not a big ego among them, just joyful music-making--and we had the "three young guys" (classically-trained singers, the brother and two friends of our [also classically-trained and fabulous] soprano soloist) with us, which is always a treat.

On Palm Sunday, Schola Vox Clara sang for the Extraordinary Form Mass at the cathedral, which included the palm procession and all the hymns (Latin and English) sung a cappella (in the Extraordinary Form the organ is silent from Ash Wednesday to the Easter Vigil). This is 'my' other group of wonderful singers, who come together from several area parishes to support the EF and to help renew traditional music within the Catholic Church.

Back to St. T's on Maundy Thursday, with John Stainer's God so loved the world and the Procession to the Altar of Repose through the sweetly-scented garden full of blooming azaleas, singing Pange lingua. I think it must have been such a setting when Our Lord prayed in the garden for His Father's will to be done--such a contrast between the spring blooming and the stark reality of what the Father asked. "Jesus, with the Law complying, keeps the feast its rites demand; then, more precious food supplying, gives Himself with His own hand."

Good Friday the schola sang Palestrina's Improperia (Popule meus) at Sacred Heart, Dunn (our home parish), during the Good Friday Liturgy, which also included the chanting of the Passion according to St. John in Latin, the Adoration of the Cross, and a Cristo Muerte procession through the streets of town. Then we dashed up I-40 to St. Timothy's, where the St. Timothy's choir sang the St. John Passion of William Byrd (in English) and Goss' haunting O Saviour of the World. (My brain kept superimposing the Latin on the English and I think I'm going to have to write it up that way for next year.)

The most meaningful part of the liturgies of the Triduum, for my husband and me, is the Exsultet, sung in the candle-lit darkness of the Vigil on Easter Eve. Father Z has the most beautiful translation and a podcast of it here. I've been the cantor who sang this many times, so it was a great joy to be able to listen to Fr. Parkerson chant it and simply enjoy that great hymn of praise, and enjoy our first Easter as a united Catholic family.

This morning, it was back to St. Timothy's for the Easter Celebration. We had strings and brass in addition to our organ, and the music was, as usual, grand and glorious. We sang the Oldroyd "Mass of the Quiet Hour" (the one labeled "Third Communion Service" in The Hymnal 1940) with the orchestration I did several years ago, and the wonderful Macfarlane Christ our Passover. (Yes, I know it's a barnburner, but if we can't proclaim the Resurrection and our redemption with trumpets and strings on Easter, when can we? And only one 19th/20th c. American/Victorian piece at a time is not an embarasse de richesses, IMNSHO.) The main anthem of the morning was Jane Marshall's My Eternal King, which I think is a new all-time favorite and must-do for the choir (it was new to them this year). There is a lovely free mp3 of it here, and a simple commmentary on how Ms. Marshall came to compose it here. Ms. Marshall has a splendid compositional gift which she places at Our Lord's service with great humility.

(And I managed to stitch for a good hour or more on Angel of the Morning en route to Sacred Heart on Friday--somehow very appropriate!)

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Take the Quiz here!

2 March AD 2009
As of 17 February, I had finished all the stitching and was awaiting my son's decision about what charms to use: