THE MUSICIAN’S SPIRIT
BECOMING AN INTENTIONAL CATHOLIC
By: Kathleen M. Basi I
t’s a truism of pastoral music that two things make a lasting impression on churchgoers: the homily and the music—and nobody
walks out the church doors whistling the homily. Sometimes that impression—the musical imprint--is only fully felt, understood or realized much later.
Te arrival of my second child, who has Down syndrome, taught me it’s not enough to be a “practicing” Catholic; we need to be intentional about living our faith in the real world. (It’s a story I’ll share at NPM’s convention in July.) Tis insight began with a deepening of my understanding of what it means to be pro-life. In the end, though, the ripples cascaded outward, touching nearly every place where faith intersects real life.
And none of this could have happened if other influences hadn’t been working beneath the surface for years before my daughter’s arrival. Tere were many factors, but pastoral music was one of the most important.
Te texts I sang as a child, adolescent, and young adult helped lay the groundwork for the coming challenge to my world view. For example:
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Wealth can be an idol, built of gleaming gold Bringing dreams of paradise, futures bought and sold. Some will choose to gather it, all that they can hold, But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.1
I learned Rory Cooney’s “We Will Serve the Lord” in college, and to this day it encapsulates for me the power of pastoral music to illuminate real life. It names universal temptations: the desire for affluence; the lure of pleasure (food, alcohol, shopping, binge watching, social media—we’re susceptible to many kinds of empty pleasure) and power. More importantly, it connects these temptations with our actions.
Our souls are made in God’s image, but it’s through our bodies that we make that image visible on earth. Our words and our actions are, in a very real way, our faith. To be intentional about living the Catholic faith means discerning what form our temptations take and being deliberate about addressing them. It means discerning God’s will in messy realities, where there is no quick and simple answer, no matter how much we’d like there to be one. It means discerning where our attitudes and actions have to change in order to be better reflections of God.
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