The past two nights we’ve closed our day in St. Anthony’s Chapel with the charisms of sacred space, light, silence, and music. We go in around 9:30, light four candles, read an opening prayer, listen to 20 minutes of music, close with a single prayer, blow out the candles and walk back to Thomas Merton under the stars.
Wednesday night we heard the first five pieces of Rachmaninov’s Vespers; last night we heard the first 5 songs from the album Music for Compline—a collection of Byrd and Tallis chanted by the group Stile Antico.
Gawd, what glory. Both these works share the virtue of being relatively simple, gorgeous, and conceived and performed by singularly talented people. Beauty is surely a means of grace. And bringing to the hearing a contemplative mind and heart amplifies the experience as much as a sound system.
Worship surely doesn’t need always to be so charged with felt grace, but it sure is energizing when it is.
God of realms, thank you, thank you, thank you for all ways we encounter you. Amen.
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