Sing It

I belong to the choir at The Catholic Community of St. Charles Borromeo here, and this is Holy Week: final rehearsal was Wednesday, Maundy Thursday Mass yesterday evening, Good Friday service this afternoon and then Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday evening. Singing in the group, especially this time of year, is the most “religious” thing I’ve ever done, and the most intensely spiritual.

It’s not that I’m a good singer. I can’t read music. I have to hear it. I can sing with some energy when I get the tune and it’s helpful if the other basses lead me. I just love the experience. The combination of our voices and the orchestra, the harmony, the verses, the feeling, the energy of devotion, makes it a whole-body prayer.

Tim Keyes, our excellent choir master, put some excerpts from Ezekiel to music. The refrain is, “I will give you a new heart/Put a new spirit within you…” When we sing these words my eyes close and my gut tenses with an urgent sense of universal Love. Every time we sing this I am transported to a place where God is, a place I always am, just in that moment, really There!

It is praying for real, from my heart.