Sr. Jacinta: Speaking for myself, it was the Traditional Latin Mass that deeply aided me in desiring to really live my faith as it showed me how to give everything to God. In the modern world everything is always changing and shifting in attempt to keep peoples’ attention and interest, but it has to always be different because what it offers doesn’t offer satiety. Talking to other friends who have found tradition, and some who because of it have since become religious, I can confidently say that it is a HUGE pull for the younger generations who want to give their all to God. When Holy Mother Church offers a way to give your best to God using the beautiful, reverent, God oriented traditional liturgy, with it pregnant silence and amazing music, people cannot but be draw by the Holy Ghost to worship their Creator. It’s authentic and real, something hard to find in the modern world.
REGINA: Your community became famous for your widely successful chant albums. What is your observation about chanting the Office?
Mother Abbess Cecilia: The Divine Office truly forms the life-blood of our devotion. St. Benedict calls it 'the Work of God' and says that nothing is to take precedence over it, no matter how important it may seem.
The loveliness of the chants are set off by the silence that we keep during the day, but the Office also feeds that silence of prayer. It is a joyful burden the Church asks of us, and we take it up with tremendous love, knowing we are the beneficiaries, along with the entire Church.
REGINA: And about music and the spiritual life?
Mother Abbess Cecilia: Music actually reflects God in an amazing way. If it is beautiful, it reflects Him Who is Beauty Itself, ordered and harmonious; it propels the soul upwards almost in spite of itself. Beauty is the most incontestable aspect of God, the gentlest and kindest of reformers. Gregorian chant is a prime example. Here you have the inspired Word of God inspiring in turn the old melodies based on the chants of the ancient Temple: music that is written for scripture to produce contemplative prayer. It is completely ordered, yet with a free rhythm. It is disciplined, yet freeing and almost passionate at times, but always subject to certain rules and the primacy of reason. The philosopher Simone Weil said that she knew classical music aficionados who could be morally depraved, but she never knew this to be the case for Gregorian chant. It is designed to make you a better person.
Singing the Word of God introduces formality, less personality involvement and imposition of one’s own will on a form of prayer. There is an elevation of the voice, and this is proper in addressing the Most High God. In community, there is a concerted effort to blend and produce a united sound. A spiritual reality is paralleled: restraint is needed, attention to self is dropped. It is truly the “sacrifice of praise”!
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