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| Above: David Haas |
On October 10th, David Haas breezed into Dunedin. After presenting a total of nine workshops in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland, he flew out of Auckland on October 16th leaving behind a trail of warm hearts, large smiles, pondering minds and enthused liturgists and pastoral musicians.
Prior to his week in New
Zealand, David had been keynote speaker at the Australian Pastoral Musicians
Conference, a biennial Conference, held this year in Perth and attended by 350
delegates from all over Australia with a light sprinkling from New Zealand. Watch
out for the 2019 Conference in Melbourne.
David used threads of many
textures to weave his rich tapestry of talks. As one, nearly eighty year old
friend remarked after his visit to Auckland, – “what a talented man. I knew he
could write music, but he can play and sing and tell stories and make us laugh
– I don’t think I have ever laughed so much in my life. And he taught us so
much.”Five minutes after beginning his presentation in Auckland, David had 150 people singing in three parts about “the blessed gospel which shall be mine.” And then led us beautifully into prayer.
In the first of his three
presentations in Auckland, David identified six principles of liturgy. Those
six principles, mingled with a little of my own reflection, follow below.
…. ‘how do we keep the experience of
Jesus strong in our communities and in our lives?’
The first principle:
Liturgy is a
celebration of faith and stands on middle ground between experience and
catechesis. As David rightly pointed out, we don’t know much about Jesus; the
Gospels don’t provide a full biography. But the people who walked with him, the
people in the first Christian communities had an experience of him. Years
stretched out from the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection and people
pondered his promise to return. As the wait continued, the problem they faced
was, ‘how do we keep the experience of Jesus strong in our communities and in
our lives?’
The answer of course, was
to celebrate a ritual, as we do for birthdays or anniversaries – to keep the experience strong in our lives.
The ritual they celebrated was the ritual Jesus gave them on the night of the
Passover; “take and eat, this is my body broken for you.” Liturgy was a
response to experience. It “was never seen as how you got to know what Christ
was– it was how you celebrated the Christ you already knew.” Necessarily,
catechesis followed. While the liturgy remembered the experience, catechesis
was the lifelong learning that sought to understand what the experience meant.
With this understanding in
mind, it is easier for us to see that it is not possible to talk about the theme
of any given Mass. That every Mass we ever celebrate always has the same theme.
The ‘theme’ of every Mass is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – the
Paschal mystery.
Today, the experience
people bring with them to Sunday Mass varies greatly. People attend for a great
many reasons and not all will have had a conversion experience in their lives, not
all will have encountered Jesus. Parish musicians, as leaders of sung prayer,
are naturally challenged by this dilemma. How do we achieve the goal of full
participation when people are present for a vast variety of reasons?
The second principle:
Liturgy is an action
of the church. “It is about we, not me.” While personal prayer and private
devotion are both important they are not what the liturgy requires of us. At Mass
“we surrender our private devotion to the community, to the Body of Christ.”
The primary minister of the liturgy is the baptized, gathered assembly. This is
at the centre of God’s covenant with us. God says, I will be your God and you
will be my people and not, as Haas points out “your series of individual
personal relationships.” It is a cause for concern, perhaps even lamentation,
that understanding on this point is still so limited. Haas reflected on times
he had been asked on street corners if he had a personal relationship with
Jesus. His thinking response is “we have a personal relationship with Jesus
when we see Christ in one another.”
… it is essential that people are then well formed and well
prepared to take up their role in liturgy.
The third principle:
Liturgy requires a
community of ministers. Liturgy does not take place in a void. Rather, liturgy
arises from the midst of a community. Indeed, “liturgy springs forth from the
gifts of the community.” Those gifts need to be encouraged and drawn out but it
is essential that people are then well formed and well prepared to take up
their role in liturgy. The various ministers need ongoing formation to
understand the function and importance of their role as a part of the whole.
Once well trained, the
ministers will recognize that good liturgy takes work, and that good liturgy is
always beautiful liturgy. Liturgy must always be as beautiful as we can make
it, for when it is beautiful, when we have laid the groundwork carefully, the
Holy Spirit finds the entrance. God is found in beauty.
The fourth principle:
Liturgy is ritual prayer. We have street language. We have
office language. We may even have home or beach or school language. But we also
have ritual language and it is different. In the liturgy, we don’t say “‘sup’
bro?’’ we do say “the Lord be with you.”
We don’t say “is everything ok?” we say “peace be with you.”
We use symbols. Symbols
have layers of meaning. They are purposefully ambiguous. It is this layering of
meaning, this ambiguity which leads us to wonder and to prayer. Short, confident
explanations come as abrupt interruptions on the pathway to wonder. Perhaps in
this regard we could be like Jesus and follow a question with a question - keep
the wonder alive!
To be truly potent, symbols
need to be lavish. It is challenging to believe that one is plunged into the life,
death and resurrection of Jesus when a teaspoon of water is poured over the
head of the one being baptized. Lavish symbols lead to a more potent
experience, a more prayerful encounter, a more clarion response to the call to
turn once again and live in the light. Our conversion is never finished.
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| Above: David Haas workshop 2017. |
The fifth principle:
Music in the liturgy is ritual language. Words have more
power when they are sung. Music is not an optional extra – music is an integral
part of the liturgy, and every musician is aware of the power of music to move
the heart.
“We don’t sing at the
liturgy. We sing the liturgy.” Each piece of music used in the liturgy has a
place and a function. The entrance hymn fosters the unity of the community
gathered. The Gospel Acclamation announces the Gospel. The Holy, Holy allows us
to join our voices with the saints and angels. Understanding the purpose of
each piece of music makes us conscious of the effectiveness and appropriateness
of our decisions.
The purpose of liturgy … is not
liturgy.
The sixth principle:
The purpose of liturgy is not liturgy. To understand this, take a glimpse at that song we sing at the end of Mass, sometimes called the ‘closing’ song. Mass does not have a closing song, it is not mentioned in the missal. The liturgy is not supposed to feel finished. We are supposed to feel, if we are supposed to feel anything, – sent. David mentioned one parish he knew of which did not talk about Mass. They talked instead about the “sending ritual.” The purpose of the liturgy is eta missae est – being sent!
David chided us mildly when
he said “it seems really prevalent here, that you have three or four Masses a
weekend and they’re led by different groups, who play different Mass settings,
have different music and use different repertoires.” He added that sometimes,
in his experience within a parish, people from one music group or choir don’t
even want to talk to people from a different music group or choir. People can
too easily develop the idea that this is “their” Mass. This is a challenge for
us. We are on the road to unity and anything that appears divisive, separatist
or private is an obstacle. Does this sound like your parish? Maybe a combined
Christmas BBQ for all involved in music might be a first step toward building that
earnestly desired unity.
Finally, he suggests, we
should not dwell too long on our success in preparing and carrying out good,
successful or beautiful liturgies. The question that should remain with us is,
“are we better Christians? Are we helping to show people who Jesus is?”
There is much that can be
said about his brief visit here. He will be remembered for his warmth and his
wit, his ability to mix the serious with the hilarious, his ability to pepper
his talk with relevant personal stories and experiences, but perhaps most
especially for his ability to speak with deep passion, conviction, knowledge
and love about the liturgy and leave us with a desire to know more, do more and
be more.
Thank you David Haas for
your visit. Thank you for dropping by on your return to Minnesota. Thank you
for the wave of inspiration, enthusiasm and desire your visit has generated.
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