I will never forget Mary. I will never forget the beautiful understanding she shared with us in class one day near the end of the semester. I remember that, unlike the vast majority of students who have studied sacred music with me over the years, Mary was actively involved in music ministry and was, as a matter of fact, majoring in theology. Most of my students at St. John’s University are majoring in areas like business administration, marketing, finance, and (doesn’t this sound intriguing?) quantitative analysis. Music courses are, for these students, a welcoming and balancing touch of the humanities. To Mary, this particular music course meant even more.
Mary had been actively involved in a folk group in her home parish for about five years. She had known the triumphs and the tortures that all of us involved in music ministry on the parish level have known. Mary quit for a while. She needed space to contemplate the interactions of her prayer life and her music ministry.
Then she joined the music ministry group at St. John’s and started all over again to share her gifts to help people pray. She thought it was a good move, but she wasn’t sure. She prayed about it, trying to resolve her problem. And it was while she was praying one time that she had her vision about Jesus – a powerful, prayerful dream that she shared with all of us in Sacred Music class.
In her dream-like vision, Mary was struggling to move a great rock which was blocking the entrance to a cave. She just had to get into that cave. But the rock was too much for her. She pushed and pulled every possible way with all her strength, but the rock would not budge. She needed help. Wouldn’t someone help her?
Then, suddenly, but gently and comfortably, Jesus was standing there, right next to her. Jesus smiled at her and helped her push the rock.
Together they moved the rock easily and, Mary told us, as soon as the entrance to the cave was uncovered, she heard beautiful music – waves of lovely music – coming from the cave. She couldn’t get over it. She turned to Jesus and said, “The music… It’s the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.”
“But Mary,” Jesus said to her, smiling, “it’s your music. The song you’re hearing now is yours. It’s always been yours.”
The song is yours too.
And mine.
Meanwhile, back at the cave… We who would remove rocks from caves and make a joyful noise unto the Lord today can learn something from each of the six periods of music in Western civilization.
Medieval music existed only to bring out the meaning of the Latin prayer-texts, and it did so faithfully and exquisitely. How can we use our music today to bring out the words of our prayers?
Renaissance music emphasized phrases of prayer-texts by overlapping melodies in different voices. “Alleluia,” for example, might begin in the basses and be repeated by the tenors, the altos, the sopranos: echoing, repeating in beautiful polyphony. Can some melodic repetition and echoing help us express our musical prayers today?
Baroque music added instruments to the vocal music tradition of the past. Would that be a help for us? Is there an instrument or two or three that we could add to some of our musical prayers? And, another question: Can purely instrumental music in itself be prayerful? We know that it can. Do we ever experience this kind of prayer in our churches today?
Classical music continued what had begun in the Baroque and used the new musical forms of opera to sing God’s praises with a great sense of order and beauty: arias, duets, trios, quartets, choruses, instrumental music. How many of the forms of today’s music do we use in our musical prayers?
Romantic music let loose a floodgate of personal expression with soaring melodies and orchestrations. What evidence of that personal freedom do we hear in our church music today? Does a fear of seeming sentimental prevent us from expressing emotion? Are our prayer-texts more didactic than poetic? Can we express ourselves personally and freely in musical prayer?
Modern music frequently baffles us, sometimes annoys us, or even delights us. But has any of the freedom of atonality been used to help us pray? Has any of the vast mysterious world of electronic music helped us explore the vast mysterious world of our relationship with God and with one another which we celebrate in Eucharist?
There is wonderful music, old and new, resounding within the cave. And the wonderful music is ours. Beautiful musical prayer is ours. But there is a rock to be removed. Who will help us move the rock from the entrance of the cave?
Outside the entrance to the cave, with us always, God is in the gentle, whispering wind. As God was there for us that day in Mary’s story and in Mary’s music.
And so God was with us another day, in another class, in Diana’s story and Diana’s sculpture.
The final project for students enrolled in a theology course called, “Religion and the Fine Arts” was to create a personal, artistic, religious expression and bring their work of sacred art into class on the day assigned. These products of their own hearts and heads and hands were created only after we had studied and prayed, all semester, over great works of art all the way from prehistoric cave paintings to modern abstracts
In any given semester, only about ten out of fifty students in “Religion and the Fine Arts” are ever art majors. Everyone else is usually majoring, as I have indicated, in areas like business administration, marketing, accounting, finance, and quantitative analysis. It is delightful to experience the unique creations these students create out of wood, nails, stone, clay, rope, wire, metal, glass, cardboard, rope, string, paper, and paint.
These students, who almost always feel uncomfortable and apprehensive about the assignment at first, always come through in the end. They are a tribute to the Spirit of God who breathes where she will, creating and recreating us as unique works of art who are, in turn, capable of creating our own unique works of art. Time after time, I have been touched by wonderful spiritual expressions that I have not only never seen anything like before, but never even imagined anything like in my wildest dreams or my deepest prayers.
Diana Archila created one such work. Diana was one of eight art majors in “Religion and the Fine Arts” one semester. All eight were assigned to bring in their original works of religious art on the last day of class. We did not want to intimidate the non-art majors. So we saved the “pros” for last. And so it was that, on the last day, at nine o’clock in the morning, Diana wheeled in a cart with a brand-new, still fragile clay sculpture on top. The terra cotta was not yet baked. It was still wet to the touch.
The sculpture was of two figures. One man was crawling up out of a deep pool of mud, trying desperately to reach the other man. A hand coming up out of the mud seemed to be holding his right leg and pulling him back down. A snake was wrapped around his left leg. The crawling man looked pitiful as he reached up toward the other man for help.
But the other man was with him in the same world. The other man was kneeling down, deep into the mud, stretching, reaching, bent into the mud himself. The orangey-brown mud was the whole world of the sculpture. It was not only the stuff of which the two men were made, but it was also their entire world. It was earthy. It was real.
The two figures were exquisitely shaped and cleverly positioned. The soft clay arms of the crawling figure literally needed the stronger clay arms of the kneeling figure for their support. Diana saw to it that the crawling figure had that support. It was not only what the work needed, but it was also what the work was about. The two figures were holding each other. Each man was looking deeply into the other man’s face, the other man’s eyes.
I mentioned to Diana that the kneeling figure looked like Jesus. His robes looked like robes Jesus would wear. His hair was long. He had a beard and mustache. His face was beautiful and his expression was sensitive and compassionate and loving. Diana said that, yes, the kneeling figure was meant to be Jesus
I asked her if the other figure was someone from the Gospels, some suffering person coming to Jesus for help? I thought that perhaps the crawling man could be a blind man, a cripple or even a leper, someone crying out to Jesus, “Lord, if you will, you can make me well.” And Jesus, bending down, reaching out, kneeling next to, so obviously compassionate and loving, was saying, “Yes, I do will. Be well. Your faith has made you whole again.”
Diana apologized, “I’m sorry, Father. I should have put the title on it. I meant it to be Judas begging Jesus for forgiveness.”
I was stunned. I must have said something clever like “Wow!” a dozen times. I was all lost in wonder. was strangely uplifted and renewed. When I could speak again, I said something like, “Diana, I have never seen any depiction of anything like this. I have never even heard any suggestion that this could have taken place. I have never read anything like it. I have never imagined anything like it. Has anybody?” Nobody had.
I thought some more; Diana was smiling. We all were smiling. “Diana,” I said, “I don’t know how we could work this scene into the two different gospel scenes about what happened to Judas after he betrayed Jesus. One has him hanging himself. Another has his body exploding in the field. But, Diana, this is right. You have captured something true and beautiful here. This is what Jesus is like. We know that. Jesus forgave everybody even when he was hanging on the cross. This is what Jesus is like. If it could possibly have happened that Judas did come to Jesus wanting to be forgiven, Jesus would certainly have forgiven him. Jesus would certainly have knelt down into the mud to hug his dirty friend. Jesus would certainly have said, “Oh, yes. Yes, Judas. Of course, I forgive you. Of course, my friend. Go on your way now, and sin no more.”
What a beautiful communication!
Diana Archila, like Elijah or Michelangelo or Mozart, stands by the entrance of a cave and waits and listens and discovers God in the gentle wind. And through her beautiful sculpture, “Judas Begging Jesus for Forgiveness.” So do I. So do we.