While broadcasting from the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, Father Dave welcomes Catholic composers and musicians Sarah Hart and Steve Angrisano. Steve, Sarah, and fellow Catholic composer Curtis Stephan recently set 220 antiphons to contemporary music in a new project called, “Let Us All Rejoice.”
Sarah and Steve discuss the workshop they’re leading about antiphons. “First of all, I want to say pronunciation is very important, because people hear it and they think you’re saying ‘anti-fun,’” Sarah quips. “The antiphons are just scriptural references that we say [or sing] at Mass during the entrance and communion time that refer to the Scripture readings of that day.” They are also part of the daily prayers in the Liturgy of the Hours.
Steve discusses his goals for sacred music. “Doctors have a creed, and the physicians’ creed says, first off, do no harm. I’ve always thought that should also be the liturgical musicians’ creed, because we enter into something beautiful and holy. If we’re not adding to this, we should stop singing,” he says. “The Antiphons are a great way to [illustrate that] what we do makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. We sing, ‘Rejoice, yours is the kingdom of God,’ and then when that shows up in the Gospel, you’re like, ‘Ah, there’s a message to this.’”
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“One of the beautiful things about singing the parts of the Mass — such as the ‘Holy Holy,’ which we have all done many times — or the antiphons, is that you’re not singing at Mass, you’re singing the Mass,” Steve continues. “These words are part of the liturgy, and it’s rich to sing them.”
In addition to their joint workshop, Sarah discusses her own workshop at LA Congress called “A People Meant for Healing.” She says, “I don’t know if anybody has noticed this, but the world is kind of hard right now; there is just so much division, anger, and hate. It’s something I never thought I would see in my life, how much division is actually trickled down to the Church. People in the pews who are literally shaking hands saying, ‘peace, be with you’ then leave and say, ‘I hate that guy.’”
“I just felt like it was imperative to have a workshop where we discuss healing and what it means to not just be healed ourselves, but to be a people who are healing each other,” Sarah continues. “People who think about going out into the world on a daily basis and trying to help people see each other as the beloved…That’s the only real way that we can heal the world. I can’t go to Congress and sign a bill into law, but I can love somebody that day. I can choose to be kind to somebody next to me. I can make choices that heal the world.”
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Steve discusses his workshop called “The Story of Faith: Grandparenting as a Witness of Faith.” He says, “Grandparents are really living legacies of faith in our family…I think we underestimate what it means to be what Saint Bernard of Clairvaux calls ‘a reservoir of grace.’ I think sometimes we try so hard, as faithful parents and grandparents, to make faith happen, like to be a channel of grace.”
“Saint Bernard said, ‘Don’t be a channel; be a reservoir. Be so filled that it overflows into people around you.’ I think all of us know holy people in our lives where it isn’t a doing, it’s a being; like they hug you and you feel like there’s a lot of Jesus hugging you too. I think we have a sacred trust as grandparents to live that.”
