I don’t know about you, but one of my least favorite human reactions is the “eye roll.” I just SCREAMS, “I really hate you right now.” Unfortunately the “eye roll” is one of the most common reactions of many a congregation member when somebody tells them to sing. Well, I’m all about the singing. Not just because I’m a musician, but because Mass is a sensory-based experience, and we use ALL of our senses, including the sense of sound. Now, some of you may be reading this and wishing I wouldn’t be encouraging EVERYONE to sing, because there are probably a handful of people (if not more) in every parish that should never sing outside the shower…and maybe even a couple that make you feel sorry for the shower head. But still, everyone should sing…and I’m not talking about the singing by mouthing the words silently, where you might as well just be saying “watermelon” the whole time (sorry if you don’t get that joke); I’m talking about moving your lips to the ACTUAL words and having actual sound come out. It’s possible you don’t know the words to some of the hymns sung, but usually in each pew there are these little stacks of paper bound together with a cover, and the sheets of paper in the stack all have markings and words on them to clearly tell you what words to sing for different hymns…try cracking one of them open and see if that doesn’t just help you out a little bit.
If you’re going to be absolutely immovably stubborn on the singing thing, maybe we could compromise and get you to start out slowly by at least singing the parts of the Mass, like the Sanctus. If you’ve been going to Mass as long as most Catholics have, chances are you know the words to the parts of the Mass, because they’re generally the same every time you go, everywhere you go. I say “generally” because there are some parts that have a few options on how the wording can go, although the main idea is always the same. One of these Mass parts, the Sanctus, Latin for “holy,” is the last part of the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer and (coincidentally enough) the topic of the rest of this post.
The Sanctus is one of those things that we (partially) get straight from Scripture. Isaiah 6:3 says, Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts!" they cried one to the other. "All the earth is filled with his glory!" Then Matthew 21 tells the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem just before his final days (which we now celebrate as Palm Sunday) and verse 9b says: “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest.”
In case you’ve never been to Mass, or have been to Mass, but have been mentally absent all this time, the Sanctus goes like this:
Current text:
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
Beginning in Advent 2011:
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
What’s really cool about this prayer/song is that if we actually READ Chapter 6 of Isaiah, we see that the “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts” part is sung by angels to God. So when the priest invites us (at the end of his solo role of the Preface) to sing the Sanctus, he mentions that we join the choirs of angels in their unending hymn of praise (or some similar wording). So that’s why we sing what we sing. We’re at that moment joined with the choirs of angels in heaven, praising God in the same way (according to the prophet Isaiah—not according to some “made up” theory of the Catholic Church) that the angels do.
At the conclusion of the Sanctus, the congregation all kneels to start off the actual “meat” of the Eucharistic Prayer…where we’ll pick up next time.
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