March 6, 2005

Many Catholics are deprived of their own glorious musical heritage when bad music drives out the good. One hears horror stories of what is sung in some places. But truth and beauty perdure in the long run, even if they are menaced in the short run. It is a privilege to complement the liturgical antiphons on any day with sturdy hymns. On "Laetare" Sunday (the word, like "Gaudete" in Advent, means to be glad) we get to sing beautiful words, including "Jerusalem the Golden" whose source is Bernard of Cluny.

Laetare Sunday measures the middle point in progress through the penitential season. If we need no relief, it is not too late to become penitential enough to need it; and if we welcome the relief, we thank the saints who have already "finished the race."

The "Jerusalem" which the Laetare liturgy hymns celebrate is the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly City itself. Its radiance spills out to us in church. So the Second Vatican Council spoke of the song of the heavenly Jerusalem coming to us in the Holy Eucharist. This is nothing less than Heaven and Christ is nothing less than its king. We are not meant to live meager lives in the suburbs of God's glory. St. Peter was tempted to a bourgeois attitude to God's grace when he asked how many times we should forgive one another. Christ responded with a confounding brilliance: "Seventy times seven." There are no limits to God's mercy, but there are limits to his toleration of evil. That is why at Easter we renew our baptismal promises: Reject Satan and all his evil works and all his empty promises. Banal worship, with cloying self-congratulation and music that represents the mediocrity of an unchallenged culture, massages the ego but does not awaken the soul to the tremendous mystery of God.

Divine forgiveness, given in royal measure, requires that man confess his failings with a humble dignity. "Let the wicked forget his way, and the unrighteous man his thought, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Have I made a good confession recently as the heir of a kingdom, or have I whimpered like a pedant that I just want to feel good about myself? Have I given God sacrificially of my money in tribute to his glory, or have I tipped him with a few dollars as though he were a waiter and I a clerk on a cheap holiday? We are not to live as petit bourgeois in an adequate but dull acre outside the Heavenly City.

From the Cross, our Saviour promised one man a share in his Kingdom. He did not offer that to the other man whose cynicism prevented him from begging for glory.

Fr. George W. Rutler