Why we sing

In a world gone so far afield from God’s purpose for His creation, why should we expend our efforts and resources on music? Why not evangelize, help the poor, heal the sick, comfort the suffering, teach the faithful? Why spend countless hours honing a frivolous, non-essential skill? Some people seem to naturally be better singers than others with little apparent effort. Why not just let them do the music? It is their gift. The rest of us can use other gifts. The Church has from its inception, emphasized and even expected singing from all worshippers.Yet today we rarely find even a hearty fifty per cent of a congregation singing the liturgy or even the processional and recessional hymns. Singing is the primary act of musical worship. It uses the human language, an intensely personal and unique form of human expression, in combination with music, a living, breathing, form of human expression which uses our very own bodies. There is no more personal expression of human worship. Music is a form of human language which exists in every culture ever known. It lives and breathes, unlike many other art forms, as it takes place over time, recreated anew and uniquely with each performance. We sing because God gave us a song, His song, and we need to sing it back to Him. He doesn’t need us to sing for Him for His sake. He gave us His song as a gift to us for our need, because we need to sing to Him. In the earlier societies of ancient Greece and Rome, from which the early church grew out of, speaking and singing were not so sharply delineated as today. The early church sang often and always as a form of worship. Through our baptism and salvation we have heard God’s great song of love to us. Through our consequet commitment to Him, we are called to sing His song to a dark world in need of hearing His song of salvation. We must sing His song of love and light to keep it present in a slowly darkening world of despair. We must sing His song to keep the presence and power of His special love for each soul alive in the world. God’s song of love brought us into existence and saved us from ourselves. God’s song forms the mystical body of Christ. If you are privileged to be in that body of believers, how can you not sing “unto the Lord with a loud voice,” “to make a joyful noise unto the Lord?” God’s song was with Christ on the cross in the form of Psalm 22 and was there at his resurrection. We are united in Christ through God’s song. If you do not sing, you are removing a great weapon from your Christian warrior’s arsenal. Music of the liturgy does not exist to make people feel good nor to ornament the Mass, nor to make the Mass more palatable. It is not an optional element. We sing the liturgy together as members of Christ’s church because we are collected together, sanctified and redeemed by the song of God’s love. If you do not sing, you miss out on a very important part of your membership in Christ’s church and being a child of God. Singing the liturgy is your chance to fulfill Pentecost, to evangelize the world. When, or if, a visitor to the Mass hears the entire congregation of faithful lift their voices in a joyful noise of praise in the Gloria, they cannot fail to recognize the authenticity of true worship and the real power of God’s love. Sing unto the Lord His song. Your soul depends upon it!