Music = unity?

Coming from a family of musicians, I have been around music all of my life.  Music has touched my soul, made me laugh, made me cry, annoyed the heck out of me.  And it's brought me closer to God.

Now, being a musician and a music minister for the Catholic Church, it is quite interesting to see how those emotions that I and countless others have experienced are present in the celebration of our Eucharistic liturgy.

It's interesting.  And it's sad.

Sad to see how brothers and sisters - bishops, priests, lay people alike - in our Church are so divided because of the on-going argument of what constitutes "liturgically appropriate" music.

Sad to see how brothers and sisters rest their experience of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass based on how good the music sounds or if a genre of music fits their musical preferences.

Now, these discussions about the liturgical appropriateness of certain musical forms are good and necessary.  And those of us involved in music ministry need to be well versed and well practiced in our talent as we share it with Christ and His Church.  God doesn't deserve mediocre.

But we need to see that God's true and real presence comes before us at every Mass, and we can miss Him because we're distracted because of our mis-understanding of the real purpose of music.

Check out this article from the National Catholic Reporter.  It focuses on the use of contemporary forms of music in liturgy, but it really is about getting our Church back to real, authentic worship of our Father.