I hope that everyone is having a great Easter! I wanted to share some thoughts about Easter with you and try to relate these thoughts to our community and our communal musical vision.
I play piano for the 9:30 Sunday choir at St. Marks Church in Kitchener, Ontario up in Canada. This year it was our “turn” to play the Easter Vigil. I consider playing this a great honour and I was looking forward to it ever since the Holy Week schedule was made up by our priest in conjunction with the choir leaders last January. As most of us know…the Easter vigil has 7 different readings followed by 7 psalms that occur in the first part of the service. Last year, I didn’t play music, but was part of the congregation and I did some homework afterwards trying to figure out in my mind why the readings were chosen. I’ve read several different blogs by different priests and other lay people on the subject, but me being me (LOL) I had to figure something out for myself. Last year, I settled on the fact that most of these readings deal with new beginnings (e.g. the story of Creation, God testing Abraham, the Jews escaping from the Egyptians with Moses parting the Red Sea – just to name 3 of the readings). I settled on the fact that Easter is a new beginning and most of the content of the 7 readings seem to reflect this.
After some careful thought – after playing the Easter Vigil this year – I have renewed my thought process about these readings. These readings do or can be seen as indications of new beginnings – but I would like to extend the meaning of the words “new beginnings” – these “beginnings” were actually amazing transformations. According to the Cambridge dictionary, a “transformation” refers to “a complete change in the appearance or character of something or someone, especially so that they are improved.”
This whole concept of transformation can be applied to each of the seven readings in really profound ways. The seven readings would take a lengthy blog to analyze, but I’d like to use the seven readings that I mentioned above. The story of Creation (Genesis 1:1 – 2:2) detail how God created all things. This transformation from darkness to the establishment of light and dark continuing all the way to the creation of man is an amazing description of how God truly shaped everything out of nothingness – a very obvious transformation done only through the power of God. The second reading (Genesis 22:1-18) refers to how God tested Abraham’s obedience. The story of how Abraham was going to follow God’s will and sacrifice his only son reveals a transformation that could be considered more subtle compared to the Creation story. In verses 17 and 18 it is written,
“I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies,and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”
Abraham’s obedience to God transforms not only Abraham but all the Jewish people – this is the beginning of the Jewish nation. This transformation is of a great nature…great in numbers of “descendants” but also over time. God’s promise and blessing has a permanence to it that will fortify Abraham during the remainder of his life as a great leader.
The third reading (Exodus 14: 15-31) details the events surrounding Moses parting the waters and getting the Jewish slaves to finally leave the confines of the Egyptians. The transformation in this reading is rather obvious (e.g. from slaves to a free nation) but the last line reveals what really happened,
“And Israel saw the great work which the LORD did against the Egyptians, and the people feared the LORD; and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.”
One of the translations of the word “fear” is the word “respect.” For the slaves to be truly free, freedom had to start with this “respect” for God and to believe that Moses was God’s servant and should be followed and listened to as a leader.
Soooooooooooo….what does this have to do with us?? I hope my blog hasn’t seemed too stuffy – if it has – I apologize…..but after some prayer, I realized that this Easter can be an important time for us in terms of transfomation as well. These three readings deal with creation, obedience and respect….and I believe that if we can consider what these words mean, this Easter season can give rise to an amazing transformation in our community. We all create music, we do this in line with our shared beliefs in Christ’s one True and Holy Catholic Church which we are totally obedient to, and we need to consider the role that respect has – not only in terms of respecting our God, but each other and our collective musical missions. Many of us have been doing these three things for a while, and some members of our community are new to writing or playing music of the Catholicmetal genre….whether new to this concept or if you feel like a veteran – we can all witness a form of transformation.
I originally had a business plan for Catholicmetal.com that laid out a fairly detailed course. I thought by 2015 we might be able to release a compilation CD and that it would hopefully be met with some success. Well, at this time – we have release 2 music collections (“Praising Him Loudly: Volume1″ and “Via Crucis”). So much for my business plan (LOL!)….. I am both amazed and humbled by what we have been able to do as a community over the past 18 months or so….it shows what our potential can be and how our collected musical vision is working.
I firmly believe that an important transformation for the Catholicmetal community has got to start with prayer. I’m asking the community during this Easter season and beyond to pray for itself. Please try to make a habit to pray for our community every day. Our combined prayers can only lead us to greater spiritual works through our music. If you look at the forums, we also have requests for prayer in our community as well. Please, if you are comfortable doing so, let the community know if you need prayer for specific needs…..we should feel compelled to pray for each other – prayer makes us stronger!
Let’s see where this can take us!! Please feel free to comment on this blog and add your own thoughts. I hope that everyone has had a beautiful Easter and that we all keep Christ’s resurrection in mind with all that we do. I’d like to close with the Fatima prayer,
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires o
f hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.
Domine Iesu, dimitte nobis debita nostra, salva nos ab igne inferiori, perduc in caelum omnes animas, praesertim eas, quae misericordiae tuae maxime indigent.
Yours In Christ!
dave@catholicmetal.com
