Sacred quiet, sacred sound.

Carrie Tomko who blogs at Still Running Off at the Keyboard wrote this a few weeks ago:

I tried to attend Mass at 5 p.m. today at Holy Family in Stow. I thought it would be a less troubling experience than last Sunday’s Mass was because the big performances are usually saved for Sunday. I got to church 20 minutes before Mass was scheduled to start and thought I could say a rosary while I waited.

But there was a low buzz of conversation that was distracting. Lots of people were talking. I prayed to You that You would just get me through it and resisted the desire to leave, trying to concentrate on my rosary. But the soloist needed to practice her songs and she couldn’t get it right, so she had to keep repeating it.

I took out the earplugs that are always in my purse and put them in my ears, hoping they would muffle the sounds enough so I could pray. But it didn’t work, Lord. I couldn’t do it, and I couldn’t overcome my growing anger. It became overwhelming and I had to get out of there.

They have forgotten You, Lord. They are there just for themselves and their performance. They don’t remember that You are there in the tabernacle and would like to talk with them. They are too busy talking with each other just like they do when they are outside of church. Church is no longer a holy place. It has become a gathering space, a place where people meet other people. A place where You are an accessory that can almost be dispensed with.

If they needed You there in that church, they would talk with You. But they must not need to talk with You because they don’t talk with You. They just talk with each other and make elaborate preparations to perform. All they want is their performance. They have substituted activity for You.

I won’t get to Mass again this weekend. I can’t go through that again, and I have nowhere to go that I can be sure to avoid another disaster. I need a place to worship Lord. There is no place to worship here.

At first I was a little put off by it, but after thinking about it for a few weeks I have a couple of more thoughts.

First of all, I am a church musician. I play the flute with our parish’s music ministry. I have also played for weddings, programs and even with the main choir as a featured instrumentalist. I think what Carrie says is true in some respects. Sometimes the musicians do get so wrapped up in the technical parts of their musical contribution to the liturgy that the sacred and religious aspects take a second seat.

I remember last Easter Vigil, the church was dark and people were meeting and greeting each other in the darkness. The feeling was festive even without light because our new candidates and catacumens were entering the church that night. But the darkness also presented special challenges to me in that I was afraid to navigate through it to go down into the basement to warm up on my instrument. It was about 30 minutes before the start of mass. So I started playing soft low tones. Immediately the choir director came over and told me to stop because the church was supposed to be dark and quiet before the liturgy on Easter Vigil. (I did look that up in the GIRM later. Although it mentions darkness several times I could not find anything about quiet!)

So I got up, carefully avoided all of the wires on the floor connecting microphones and amplifiers, and made my way to the first exit, being careful to open and close the stairway door before I flipped on the light. I warmed up for ten minutes and then came back up stairs to find the atmosphere to be very similar to the block club party my neighborhood had during the big power outage a few years ago! Boy was I ticked.

But I think even I missed the point last spring. The tomb was quiet and dark before Jesus rose from the dead, and that was the feeling my church was trying to recreate on the night of the great vigil. How awesome would it be if everyone had a chance for really quiet prayer (with the quiet enforced for the churchgoers too, not just the musicians!) Since reading Carrie’s comment I am more mindful of the people who are really trying to put their mind into their thoughtful prayer and not inflict unnecessary sounds of distraction.

On the other hand, I object to “All they want is their performance. They have substituted activity for You. “ I won’t deny that it seems that way sometimes, but there are times, especially when we are going to play a particularly beautiful piece of music that I say an inner prayer before we start, that I may give a performance that honors God, and that touches hearts to the message behind the music.

In a decade or so, I will no longer be the lady with all of the rambunctious kids at mass who make all of the noise. I will be hopefully be the church lady with lots of prayers for lots of people and lots of intentions. Those seem to pile up as we get older, or maybe we just become more aware of the need for prayer and those who need them. I hope that while I try to be sensitive to the need for quiet in others now, that I become equally tolerant for the noises and disturbances that come whenever there is a crowd of people in church then, realizing that laughter and conversation although sometimes inappropriate, is still a sign of God’s gift of life, and I can be grateful for that.