Doxology: All Hail, Adored Trinity

There are a lot of paradoxes involved with the “Doxology” track on my recent album of the same name. The word itself derives from the Greek “doxa” (glory) and “logos” (word) and has come to mean a “short hymn of praise.” In Christian worship, doxology can refer to at least three things:

• Gloria Patri: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit . . .”
  In addition to being one of the three most common Catholic prayers (along with the Our Father and the Hail Mary), the Gloria Patri is prayed as the conclusion of each psalm and canticle during the Liturgy of the Hours.



• Eucharistic Doxology: “Through him, with him, and in him . . .”
  This is the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer at Mass, right before the Lord’s Prayer.



• “Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow”
  This short hymn of praise is sung as the concluding prayer in many Protestant services and may very well be the most popular English Christian hymn of all time:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
Praise him, all creatures here below.
Praise him above, ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

When I was gathering ideas for my latest album I was inspired to focus on the Most Holy Trinity. Strangely, even though the Trinity is the central tenet of Christian belief, we just aren’t singing in praise of Father, Son and Holy Spirit at Mass as often as we should. The Trinity is invoked in spoken prayer at least nine times during the liturgy. So why aren’t we reinforcing that in our sung prayer?

Part of the problem is the current trend in liturgy planning for theme compartmentalization: We sing Trinity hymns only on Trinity Sunday, Marian hymns only on feast days of Mary, etc. On the Doxology collection, I wanted to offer more Trinity hymns that could be sung throughout the year.

As the years have gone by, I have grown to realize how important it is to balance contemporary songs with traditional hymnody at liturgy. Doxology offers both, sometimes with a creative breaking down of the barriers. In this spirit, I needed to offer a new arrangement for the traditional “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” from which I derived my album’s title. While doing research on this grand traditional hymn, I uncovered some interesting facts.

The hymn now known as “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” was composed in 1674 by Thomas Ken, an Anglican priest. His words were eventually joined to the hymn tune known as “Old Hundredth,” which was originally a song of praise based on Psalm 100. This powerful and irresistible combination of words and melody quickly became the cornerstone of Protestant worship.

But there is a Catholic hymn known as “All Hail, Adored Trinity” that was first sung in the 11th century in Latin under the title “Ave! Colenda Trinitas.” It had an entirely different melody than “Old Hundredth,” and yet the English translation by John Chandler fits perfectly with the Protestant melody. It is unclear whether Chandler intended this in his 1857 translation. In the 1960s, Catholic hymn publishers, buoyed by the ecumenical spirit of the Second Vatican Council, started publishing “All Hail, Adored Trinity” with the Protestant melody and even included “Praise God” as the final verse.

I love the inspired paradox in this song. Protestants call the hymn “Doxology,” a word that has different meanings for different Christian denominations. Catholics now sing their own version of the song with the Protestant melody. And on my album I arranged the song in a way that merges contemporary with traditional: It starts out in a light gospel feel with piano, guitar, bass and drums, and climaxes with brass, full SATB choir, and cathedral pipe organ!

In a way, this hymn is an embodiment of what the Catholic Church teaches about the sacrament of Baptism:

The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of St. Peter. Those who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church #838

In other words, the Catholic Church recognizes as valid the baptism of those baptized in non-Catholic Christian communities who use the Trinitarian formula: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This becomes powerfully evident at the Easter Vigil, when many RCIA candidates profess their faith and are not “re-baptized” since their baptism in a Protestant community is indeed a valid sacrament. Such is the unifying power of the Most Holy Trinity!

May the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit inspire us to reflect their divine love in our families, our relationships, and in our continuing efforts for Christian unity.

O Trinity! O Unity!
Be present as we worship thee;
And with the songs that angels sing,
Unite the hymns of praise we sing.
Amen.

Listen to Doxology on spiritandsong.com.

Downloadable Octavo

O Spirit of the Living Lord

As a composer, I love to create lyrics that will hopefully lead the listener or singer to a deeper connection with God. I prefer to work with the inspired word of scripture, the official text of the liturgy or, sometimes, from the experience of my own spiritual journey. Occasionally, I will look to other poets or lyricists for inspiration.

Benedictine Sister Genevieve Glen is a fine example of inspiration, a liturgical poet of the highest quality. Her dedication to God, to her community and to the liturgy is exemplary, and this love shines through in her graceful and grace-filled hymn texts that are published in several award-winning books.

As I was preparing for my Doxology album, I was trying to come up with song texts that would honor the Most Holy Trinity, as a whole and as the individual Persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It was a somewhat daunting task. What could I contribute that hasn’t already been said before? There are already several hymns about the gifts of the Spirit, or about the power of the Spirit, or about the Pentecost event. What I was looking for was a way to sing about the Spirit’s gift of peace.

My piano has a long angled “desk” that allows me to write on manuscript paper as I compose or arrange. In the pre-Doxology days, this desk was piled on high with scribbled and crumpled notepaper, old hymnals, and several different translations of the Bible. One book caught my attention: Sister Genevieve’s hymn-text book, Take With You Words. I flipped through it and was immediately taken by one of Sister’s sacred poems.

O Spirit of the living Lord,
You blow across the waiting world;
You cleanse and heal earth’s wounded face
with balm poured from the cross of grace. . .

Such simple yet powerful imagery! I took that text and tried several different approaches, realizing that I needed to compose a melody that would convey the gentle spirit of both the text and the lyricist. I opted to forego a contemporary style and composed something more traditional and choral. Above all, the melody had to be as simple and as moving as the text.

My reputation as a contemporary composer sometimes masks my love for the traditional sacred music of the Church. After all, I grew up with Gregorian chant and sang choral hymnody in the choirs of my youth. This hymn has a traditional feel, but the piano chording lends a contemporary air. On the recording you will hear the flute playing a bit of “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” during the instrumental break, another nod to my love for ancient chant.

In the studio we were blessed to have as our lead singer Jenny Pixler, who is herself a gentle soul gifted with the voice of an angel. Everything just came together beautifully for this hymn. We sang “O Spirit of the Living Lord” at my parish for Ascension Sunday and for Pentecost and the biggest thrill of all, for me, was to hear my parish friends sing these inspired words at liturgy. Thank you, Sister Genevieve. And thank you, Holy Spirit.

Listen to O Spirit of the Living Lord on spiritandsong.com.

Of Jazz and the Sacred, Part 2

Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond

As mentioned in my previous blog, the performance of jazz requires much discipline and perseverance from the aspiring jazz musician. Although it sounds like they’re making it up as they go along, improvisation is built on exhaustive confidence in the ability to play jazz scales, patterns and chords in all twelve keys.

This is the reason I love jazz and admire jazz musicians. Their mastery of jazz theory is such a joy to experience, both in live performance and on a recording. I think this also helps to explain why jazz didn’t catch on as a musical style in mainstream Catholic liturgy.

Folk music was assimilated into sacred music because it is so accessible. True to its name, folk music is the music of the people, played on a popular and ubiquitous instrument (guitar) whose music theory is basic and easily learned.

Jazz is similar to classical music in the way its effective performance requires the musician to have advanced knowledge of the respective discipline’s theory. This limits the pool of musicians who are skilled enough to perform jazz at liturgy. (Sidebar: Sadly enough, this also means that there are fewer qualified organists today.)

Another consideration is that the structure of jazz doesn’t fit tidily into the structure of Roman Catholic liturgy, where the primary musical instrument is the voice of the gathered assembly, praising God in song. For example, the music for the liturgical processions has a specific ministerial function to fulfill at the Entrance, the Gospel, the Preparation of the Gifts, and Communion. At a typical parish liturgy, priest, ministers and assembly cannot stand around idly at these processions, waiting for musicians to finish a variation on a hymn tune. Having said that, the Prelude before liturgy and the post-Communion Song of Praise certainly lend themselves well to prayerful improvisation.

But jazz is not limited to improv. Jazz theory can be expressed beautifully in chords and harmonization, in the bending blues notes of a hymn melody, in the rhythm and dynamics. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council’s reformed liturgy, there are a handful of songs that have effectively utilized elements of jazz theory:

• The music of the late Father Clarence Rivers and the late Leon C. Roberts, inspired by the motifs of the African-American spiritual and gospel music;
  
  
• Ernest Sands’ “Sing of the Lord’s Goodness,” with its 5/4 rhythm that invokes Dave Brubeck;
  
  
• James E. Moore, Jr.'s “Taste and See”;
  
  
• Mass of Glory, with its blues-influenced melodies;
  
  
• and several other compositions.

There have been examples of jazz liturgies that hearken more to the “high art” approach of the Mass settings composed by Bach, Mozart and Palestrina. These fall under the umbrella of performance art rather than liturgy, but they certainly lift the listeners’ minds and hearts to God:

• Vince Guaraldi at Grace Cathedral
  
  
• Dave Brubeck’s Mass to Hope
  
  
• Mary Lou Williams: Mary Lou's Mass

As a working Catholic composer and musician, I welcome and incorporate elements of jazz theory at liturgy whenever appropriate. For example, in the aforementioned “Taste and See,” composer James Moore left a lot of space between the lines in the verses and the refrain for tasteful improvisation on the piano. Whenever we sing this contemporary classic at my parish I enter into it in a prayerful manner that allows me to improvise without being distracting. That is the key element to successfully utilizing jazz in mainstream liturgy. The music must serve the Eucharist and not the other way around. Let jazz be a humble servant at worship and it will shine all the more brightly.

There is a “mystery” to jazz that can help us to enter into the mystery of the divine. To the non-musician, jazz is an adventurous music that leads the listener to anticipate where it is going. Jazz can lead us to God. That makes jazz both cool and holy.

(With thanks to Peter Ostlund for his thoughts and insights.)

“O Triune God” - Of Jazz and the Sacred

I love jazz because it is so cool, in the purest sense of that word. Uniquely American, jazz is our indigenous music, the progeny of an African-American musical experience that eschewed traditional, classical and popular forms. With jazz, notes are syncopated and bent in a bluesy way, harmonization is freed from the confines of Top 40 pop, the rhythm swings, and melodies take off via creative improvisation that renders the original idea almost unrecognizable. What emerges is an art form that literally liberates the musician and the listener to embrace a much larger musical universe.

To the untrained ear, jazz might seem like a cacophony. What have they done to that melody? This surely can’t be the song they started playing. I think about what Miles Davis did with “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” that innocuous and iconic song from Snow White, the Walt Disney cartoon. The original melody is there in the beginning, played in the oh-so-mellow way that only Miles can do. But then he and his band launch into variations that seem to take the fairy tale song into directions that neither Disney nor the Brothers Grimm ever dreamed possible.

Jazz. You either love it or you don’t get it. That has always been the appeal of jazz for me. I grew up a rock musician with some classical training, which is not as contradictory as it sounds. As a child of the 1960s, I was formed by the music of the Beatles, the Doors, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and other rock groups that seemed to revel in the rebellious abandon of the Boomer generation. This in-your-face brashness was tempered for me by my involvement in sacred music, particularly the traditional music of the Catholic Church: Gregorian chant, polyphony and hymnody.

As a teenager I was especially taken with the groundbreaking 1968 album Switched-On Bach, in which Wendy Carlos performed the great classics of Johann Sebastian Bach on the then-new Moog Synthesizer, giving “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and the Brandenburg Concertos a radical realization that seemed so right for the late 20th century. Because of this album I started listening to traditional performances of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and so many other classical masters, learning something from each composer along the way.

Rock, classical and folk music fed me in my teen years, but another style of music definitely caught my ear because of the Charlie Brown television specials. There was something so mesmerizing about watching Snoopy dance with abandon to the jazz riffs of Vince Guaraldi. I bought the Charlie Brown Christmas album and listened to it repeatedly, even in July. Jazz was definitely in a world unto itself, so different and so cool. I was just starting to get good on the piano, playing in the styles of Paul McCartney and Elton John. But I wanted to also play like Vince Guaraldi and couldn’t figure out how.

Classical musicians have difficulty understanding how a jazz musician can improvise so freely and easily. The performance of a jazz song is different every time. Although jazz musicians do read music — “lead sheets” that feature only melody and chords — this is a far cry from the precisely notated octavos and scores used by classical musicians. Jazz musicians don’t read classical scores but they do know music theory, in their head and in their heart. A jazz musician-in-training has to spend endless hours playing scales and chords IN ALL TWELVE KEYS, memorizing patterns and harmonic approaches that will eventually equip them to improvise and comp (play the basic support for improvisers) with other jazz musicians. It’s a code, a secret code that most people have no patience to learn. Did I mention that all this theory has to be memorized?

I have been trying to crack the jazz code for most of my adult life, with little success until quite recently. It has taken years of listening to records and CDs, attending jazz concerts, studying jazz theory, and even taking a jazz piano course at a community college, and I still don’t have it all down. I admit, I don’t have the time or patience to memorize scales, patterns and chords IN ALL TWLEVE KEYS, but I know enough now to incorporate jazz theory in my sacred music. And that has been my goal all along.

In the 1970s I discovered a marvelous album called Vince Guaraldi: The Grace Cathedral Concert. In 1965, as part of the experimentation in liturgy that was sweeping the country, Bishop James A. Pike and the Rev. C. Julian Bartlett, rector of the cathedral of the Episcopal Church in San Francisco, invited the Vince Guaraldi Trio to perform a jazz Mass at the landmark church. I couldn’t believe my ears. Here was the sacred text of the Anglican liturgy, almost a word-for-word match of the Roman Catholic liturgy, sung by a cathedral choir that was accompanied by the hottest jazz pianist of the decade. This jazzy merging of traditional and contemporary assaulted my soul like nothing before or since. I must have played Guaraldi’s rendition of “Adoro Te Devote” (“Humbly We Adore Thee”) over and over until the record grooves wore down. I was smitten and promised myself that someday, I would make sacred music like this.

Alas, I never became the accomplished jazz musician of my dreams (I’m still working on it) but I did become a liturgical composer. And although I have had success over the years with both liturgical and youth ministry music, I still had a yearning to bring jazz to the liturgy. That opportunity came in 2008 as I was planning tracks for my upcoming Doxology CD.

Doxology was something of a risk for me. People generally know me from the gospel-inspired Mass of Glory and from such upbeat youth ministry songs like “Bless the Lord” and “Holy Spirit.” Doxology would be a way to showcase my love for both contemporary and traditional sacred music, with modern renditions of “O Sanctissima” and “All Hail Adored Trinity.” It was now or never. I realized here was my opportunity to do something with jazz.

For many years, I had been playing a jazz arrangement for the Easter hymn, “Ye Sons and Daughters,” which is based on a haunting medieval chant melody. Notated in modern hymnals in 3/4 time, the tune can be expressed as a jazz waltz and, with the right jazz chords, can really soar. I just needed new words to reflect the Trinity theme of Doxology. Like manna from heaven, I received in the mail new Trinity lyrics by the dear Sister Genevieve Glen, OSB, a noted hymn writer. She used “Ye Sons and Daughters” as a template for her new hymn, “O Triune God.” I thanked Father, Son and Holy Spirit for this gift and submitted my jazz arrangement to the OCP editors, who gave me an enthusiastic green light.

What a jazz combo we assembled at Dead Aunt Thelma’s Studio! I was blessed to work with stellar Portland session musicians: Tim Ellis on guitar, Phil Baker on bass, Mike Snyder on drums, Clark Bondy on saxophone, and the incomparable jazz pianist, Rick Modlin. That summer afternoon session is forever burned in my memory. I gave them the charts and told the guys I wanted something that was both cool and sacred. They delivered in just a couple of takes, staying true to the original hymn tune while improvising creatively. All that was left was the vocals.

I almost fell on the floor when our producer Kevin Walsh informed me that he had successfully recruited Rebecca Kilgore to sing the lead. Are you kidding me? Rebecca Kilgore, the famed jazz singer? I had not realized that she lived in Portland and was rubbing my eyes as she walked into the studio. She nailed it in just a few takes, of course. “Ye Sons and Daughters” is basically a repetitive chant, and Rebecca respected its simplicity while infusing it with her own jazz sensibility.

Does jazz have a place in the sacred liturgy? Do we dare blend the sacred with the secular? I wrote a whole book on this topic: Keep the Fire Burning. Although the book is about the revolution of folk music in liturgy, I believe the same principles apply to jazz. In my next blog I will write more about that. In the meantime, please click here and give “O Triune God” a listen. I hope it helps people expand their horizons on sacred music. Yes, God is very cool indeed.



Rebecca Kilgore and me

Teachers

The death of Mr. Jaime Escalante, teacher extraordinaire, got me thinking about the teachers in my life, and the way they inspired me to come out of my shell and explore new worlds and and experiences.

Teachers are the real heroes of our culture. They are grossly underpaid and seem to derive their fulfillment from their dedication to their students. How many of us owe our lives and our livelihoods to their selflessness?

In the immaturity of my youth, I probably didn’t say "thank you" to my teachers as I should have. There are a handful of educators who really inspired me and shaped me, and this is probably just as good a time as any to express my gratitude. I have no idea where most of these fine women and men are, or even of they are alive. But somehow, through our cosmic interconnectedness, I hope they can know of my gratitude and appreciation.

Miss Anderson was my second grade teacher at Stoner Avenue School in Los Angeles. She was young, pretty and so affirming. She encouraged me to be my best in everything.

Mrs. Holzer was my fourth grade teacher, also at Stoner Avenue. I had her for two semesters at a time when I was bullied by mean classmates, and she encouraged me to always strive for excellence, no matter what anybody else thought.

Sister Maria Goretti, SNJM: I was a latecomer to catechism classes and I made my First Communion in third grade CCD at St. Gerard Majella Parish in Los Angeles. As a public school boy, the Church was a whole new world that intimidated me. Sister Maria Goretti regaled us “unchurched” kids with marvelous stories about Jesus and Mary and the saints and helped me look forward to my First Communion with a fervor that totally transformed my childhood.

Mrs. Pat Presti was my fourth grade catechism teacher at St. Gerard’s. Her faith, her devotion, and her personal interest in me moved me closer to God.

Mr. Thomason was my music teacher at Marina del Rey Junior High School in Los Angeles. I played flute in his orchestra, back when public schools still had the funds for such programs. His dedication to music and to young people, and his good humor, inspired me to pursue music as a career.

Father Peter Diliberto, CM: I felt called to enter Queen of Angels High School Seminary in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, a whole new world from my public school experience. Father Diliberto was an excellent teacher of math, a subject I hated in junior high. Somehow, Fr. Diliberto pulled me through the haze of algebra and had me mastering the quadratic equation through two fun semesters. I can still do fractions and proportions to this day.

Monsignor Carl Gerken was music director at Queen of Angels when I was just learning how to play the organ and piano. His enthusiasm for life inspired me to take up liturgical music as my vocation.

Father Peter Nugent also taught music at Queen of Angels and at St. John’s College where I attended after high school graduation. Fr. Nugent was dedicated and no-nonsense, but also friendly. I learned to love Bach and Beethoven and Mozart from his music history classes.

Father Ron Wilkinson, CM: Going off to college in the 1970s was like setting foot on another planet. Fr. Wilkinson taught Freshman writing at St. John’s and he helped me to find my voice as a writer. I never would have even thought of myself as a writer if not for Father’s constant encouragement for all the little short stories and humorous essays I was submitting every week. He also helped me discover the wonderful works of John Steinbeck. My life was never the same after a whole year of Father Wilkinson.

Father George Niederauer (now the archbishop of San Francisco): Before he cultivated his reputation as a statesman for the Catholic Church, Father Niederaurer was a professor of English literature at St. John’s who taught his classes with dry humor and disarming wit. From him I learned of Tolstoy and Faulkner and Hemingway. We read Waiting for Godot and The Great Gatsby and saw the movie The Pumpkin Eater, and my life was all the richer. Later, in post-graduate school, he taught Pastoral Theology and I learned to love the Church even more.

There were several more teachers who inspired me, and the years have played havoc on my memory. I was diagnosed with hearing impairment in first grade and Stoner Avenue School had a special program for “special needs” kids. I honestly cannot remember her name, but I had a once a week hearing-specialist teacher through my six years of grade school who taught me lip reading and conversational skills in such a fun way that I never thought of myself as “handicapped.” I am deeply indebted to this wonderful woman who prepared me to cope with a world that wasn’t always receptive to a near-deaf person.

To all these teachers and to all who guided me though my childhood, my teen years, and my college years: Thank you! I wish I could tell each of you how grateful I am for putting up with me and inspiring me. I owe my success to my dedicated teachers! God bless you all!

Palm Sunday: So Too Must I Die With Him

How quickly the crowd turned against him! On Sunday they were shouting at the top of their lungs, "Blessed are you! Hosanna in the highest!" Now, just five days later, there were cries of "Crucify him!" Yet, this man had done nothing wrong.

The first day of Holy Week perfectly captures this dichotomy. Originally called "Palm Sunday," various liturgical publications now refer to it as "Palm-Passion Sunday," "Passion Sunday (Palm Sunday)," or "Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion." So, what exactly do we celebrate on this day?

By whatever designation, Palm Sunday is the final Sunday of Lent and the beginning of Holy Week. Although not a part of the Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday's Easter Vigil, Palm Sunday certainly points to those three days of commemoration of the Lord's passion, death and resurrection. Indeed, for the many people who will not participate in the Triduum, Palm Sunday is their only liturgical celebration of Christ's suffering and death. It affords them an opportunity to complete their Lenten preparation by placing the following Sunday's Easter event within the proper context of Jesus' ultimate sacrifice.

I strongly encourage you to participate in one or all of the Triduum liturgies. These are the most important liturgical celebrations of the year, and I will write more about them in a few days. But if you do attend the Good Friday liturgy, please do not think of it as a rehash of Palm Sunday. The suffering and death of Jesus is too rich and too profound to limit to one day of remembrance. Each has its own emphasis, its own spiritual message for our prayerful consideration. . .

Click here to continue reading on spiritandsong.com.

For the Sake of Christ

“For the Sake of Christ” has become my most requested song this year. Many people have asked me how I composed it. Here is the story that first appeared on spiritandsong.com.

===

Arleen Dunne was an energetic person, full of life and ideas and enthusiasm. She was the Director of Religious Education at St. Monica Church in Moraga, California when I became middle school minister there in 1995, and I had the pleasure of working with her on the parish staff. Her daughter Shannon was one of our cantors, and I always looked forward to doing music ministry with her at our Sunday liturgies.

The mid-1990s was something of a golden age at this parish. Our youth ministry was beginning to take off, reflecting the changing demographics of this region in the Diocese of Oakland. Once thought of as a quiet "retirement" community, Moraga was suddenly bursting at the seams with children, necessitating a building boom in local schools. In the midst of this growth, Arleen coordinated a thriving religious ed program for the elementary children, recruiting and training teachers, scheduling overlapping class sessions in our small parish plant, and supporting the parents in their role as the primary religious educators of their children. All this was done cheerfully, and Arleen's smile and laughter were contagious.

Arleen also made time to be a good wife and mother, and the parish watched Shannon blossom as an outstanding singer, growing up from high school musicals and liturgy to a burgeoning career in show business. Arleen and her husband Frank were proud of Shannon and all their children.

One day, the unthinkable happened. Arleen was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. Also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The affects in Arleen were gradual but noticeable. As her body moved toward muscular paralysis, Arleen lost her ability to speak. But she did not let this disease prevent her from carrying out her responsibilities as our DRE. Arleen communicated through a wonderful portable voice synthesizer that "spoke" the words as she typed into it. Her teachers continued to be supported, First Communion was celebrated with great joy, and the children grew in their faith. Over the next year and a half, Arleen charged into her ministry with a zest and cheerfulness that struck many of her friends as saintly. ALS was not going to stop her from bringing children to Christ.

I was personally inspired by Arleen's spirit, and moved by how her loving family dealt with these new challenges. I wanted to give Arleen something to show her my appreciation and love. While praying the Liturgy of the Hours, I came across this reading for Friday Morning Prayer, Week III:

I willingly boast of my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I am content with weakness, with mistreatment, with distress, with persecutions and difficulties for the sake of Christ; for when I am powerless, it is then that I am strong.

— 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I looked up the passage in the Bible to see it in context. Preceding this passage, St. Paul gives this memorable piece of wisdom:

He [the Lord] said to me, "My grace is enough for you, for in weakness power reaches perfection."

Tears streamed down my face as I realized that this passage was personified in dear Arleen. I went straight to my piano and this song came out almost immediately. I started with a chant mode on the words "For the sake of Christ," and the song basically wrote itself after that.

By the time I finished the song, Arleen was in the final stages of ALS. She had to step down from her daily DRE duties, and the parish staff covered for her. I went over to her house and played my new song for her. Afterward, we embraced through our tears. God's word spoke powerfully to us at that moment. It would be the last time I would ever see Arleen in this life.

"For the Sake of Christ" became a Lenten favorite at St. Monica, and a fitting remembrance to a dedicated parishioner and dear friend. I am now long gone from that marvelous parish, but whenever I play or hear this song I think of Arleen and how God worked so powerfully through her to bring children to Christ.

For when I am powerless, then I am strong.

===

Here is a link to the song on spiritandsong.com. That's Bob Halligan, Jr., of Ceili Rain, singing lead vocal. This version appeared on the Spirit & Song, 2nd Edition CD-library. I later recorded the song myself for my 2009 Doxology album.

The video above features a guitar/vocal interpretation. I have no idea who created this beautiful video but I am grateful.