Upon our return from the wonderful day of reparative prayer held at Our Lady of the Cape Basilica last August 22, I received so many beautiful appreciations of these “days of heaven”.
In spite of the long hours of prayer, often standing because of a lack of room, those who were present keenly experienced the spiritual value of this Eucharistic and Marian day. The devotion, recollection and participation were really remarkable.
The BEAUTY of the liturgical hymns and more particularly of those in GREGORIAN CHANT uplifted this human mass and offered the soul a foretaste of the beauties of heaven.
May the Gregorian chant, so pure and so deeply touching, be taken up again in our liturgical celebrations. Gregorian chant disappeared as did the statues in our churches. I understand that it is not necessary to have a whole lot of them, but to go so far as to get rid of them all, there is a difference. The saints in heaven whom the statues recall prompted us to admire the work of the Creator. An artist’s work will never eclipse the Artist Himself because of the admiration it arouses.
Now, may you be highly congratulated for the very wonderful presentation of the paper Marie. It arouses so much interest! I have read and reread those pages so rich in doctrine, teachings and appreciations. Those pages deeply touched me and stimulated my hope and faith in better days to come for the Church.
To be able to express the bare TRUTH... without passion or bitterness... but with a “gentle firmness” is tremendous! Please carry on with this, for we have such need of light in these times of confusion. I am convinced that the paper Marie fills a real need among the Christian people and will help it journey along in the light.
Mrs. Émélina Aubé, Montreal
Our days of prayer uplift souls and render them sensitive to the very pure evocations of the Gregorian modes. Over and above the situations and the different duties of state, we are advancing, all of us, towards the same LOVE, and that LOVE awakens in our souls the same hymn, relies on the same basic spiritual realities to give us the impression that we are experiencing heaven on earth. Thank you for your kind words.
You raise two serious points which deserve to be given much consideration even if the reply to your letter which dates back to September is being sent to you somewhat tardily. You will be able to draw elements from the article on “Saint Pius X”, in order to complete all its aspects.
SACRED MUSIC
“The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of immeasurable value.... Holy Scripture, indeed, has bestowed praise upon sacred song, and the same may be said of the Fathers of the Church and of the Roman pontiffs who in recent times, led by St. Pius X, have explained more precisely the ministerial function rendered by sacred music in the service of the Lord” (The Documents of the Second Vatican Council, “The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”, chap. VI, no. 112).
With regard to “Gregorian chant”, here is the Church’s thinking:
“The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as proper to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services” (id., chap. VI, no. 116).
“Roman liturgy” means the liturgy of the Catholic Church. His Holiness Pope Paul VI, on several occasions and again very recently, encouraged the people to sing the “KYRIE, GLORIA, CREDO, SANCTUS, AGNUS DEI.” Furthermore, he had a collection of these hymns published in which was also included the solemn “TE DEUM”.
Gregorian chant leaves behind it salutary echoes in the soul, echos of a calming certainty that divine grace, working in each one of us, is preparing us to always better grasp the grandeur and beauty of the DIVINE MYSTERY illuminating our life.
How explain then that Gregorian chant disappeared from our religious ceremonies when the Fathers of the Council so highly recommended it to the point of still giving it “pride of place”?
Gregorian chant is the external expression of the state of prayer marking our soul. And, the Catholic Church, which according to Christ’s thinking, must be “ONE” by bringing together all the peoples in a same profession of faith, can, through Gregorian chant joined with Latin, unite them with one single language in the solemn expression of the CREDO which resounds, more particularly in Saint Peter’s in Rome, and everywhere else, because in our era it is so easy to visit our brethren on other continents.
Oh, how sad it is to see disappear in ten years’ time the true values of the Church and to have even reached the point of siding with the thinking of the demolishers! A frightful sight that should awaken us and make us jump in indignation. Will we have enough courage, faith and love to give back to the liturgical life the solemnity, the simple and moving beauty that really unites us with the prayer of the Church and renders more perceptible the extensive brotherhood of humanity? If, in a decade from now, we still want to sing with the same heart in a same chorus at the center of Christianity, it is really urgent that we shake our almost culpable lethargy.
THE STATUES
Under the impulse of Satan’s modernism, the magnificent statues in our churches were thrown out, in order to offer to the faithful, always fewer and fewer in number, the bareness of cold walls, the combination of colors of which distracts the superficial eye to the detriment of the wholesome thoughts that penetrate the soul at the sight of the divine Conquests which the Church has canonized and which are models to be imitated.
In certain places, the statues and paintings have been replaced by drawings made by young people as they fancied. The efforts of our youth can be praiseworthy provided, of course, that they are oriented towards perfection. Unfortunately, the majority of subjects chosen have become more of a distraction than an inspiration. Is it not better, by means of a statue or painting, to remind the intelligent child, thirsting for beauty, of the example that may be appropriate for his ideal of perfection? For example, a little ThérPse with her arms full of roses, a Francis playing with a dove, etc. And these are works of God! which we find in the Temple of God.
Once again, the scale of values has all too often been reversed. Would the father of a family accept that some fanatic come along and take away from him his children’s pictures? It matters not whether there are 3, 5 or 7 children, they all hold a special place.
By chance, a photographer recently stopped in at a parish where statues and liturgical vestments were being sold by auction.
There, a young boy bought the statue of the little ThérPse of the Child Jesus for $5.00. A family, interested in the statue but having arrived too late, offered $50.00 to the boy for the statue. “No,” the twelve-year-old boy replied, “no money can take away my little Thérèse from me.” How eloquent are those very few words! And the parishioners hastened to quickly buy all that would no longer be used for the divine cult for the sole purpose of respectfully preserving it.
Of course, the multiplicity of statues not always attractive or arranged in bad taste in churches had to be corrected. But it is not always easy to maintain an appropriate balance.
If we get rid of an artist’s works, we reach the point of forgetting the artist himself. It is not easy to go directly to God; the reminder of this or that saint whose means of ascending to God seems accessible to us can become an effective aid, a valuable support, a source of security even as we mount to Him. There is no naivety or sentimentality in this, but rather the natural reflex of a DEEP LOVE that tends towards progression.
Marie-Paule
(Paper Marie, vol. I, no. 4)
