Saturday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 11, 2024

John 16, 23-28

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.  I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father. On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

Lord ends his discourse to the Apostles during the Last Supper with these words on prayer (although the Apostles will make a comment to which he will give a short).

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”  Jesus is speaking of the time after he has ascended into heaven and after the Holy Spirit has come upon them at Pentecost.  He says, “whatever you ask the Father in my name”, in order to do the Father’s will.  This is to be done particularly in the work of spreading the Gospel.  We are to ask for this in the name of Jesus, as though saying to the Father, This is what your Son wishes me to ask you for.  To give to me is to give to your Son, for it is his will that I receive it.  I ask this too inasmuch as I am a member of your Son’s Body.  “Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”  Our joy is complete or perfected in the doing of the Father’s will.  In aligning our wills with his we make ourselves capable of sharing in his joy.

“I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father.”  The figures of speech the Lord refers to are his various parables which show the happiness of those who love him and the wretchedness of those who refuse to love him, for example, the Parable of the Ten Talents (Luke 19, 11-17).  Jesus says that he will speak to them clearly about the Father, which he would do after his Resurrection.

“On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world.”  Jesus tells his Apostles and us that the Father so loves us that even without the intercession of his Son he will grant us what we need, for we are children very dear to him for whom he gave up his Son.  The Lord Jesus indicates the the Father loves us “because” we believe in his Son, meaning that our belief in his Son enables us to experience the Father’s love and to grow in it.  “Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”  He reminds them again that he is departing from this world: he has already made sure that they knew he would be betrayed by one of them, that he would be beaten, mocked, scourged, and crucified, though they struggled to accept this.  He seemed to them to be on the verge of complete victory, why would he leave?

The Lord has left the world and no longer walks about on it as he once did, but with his name on our lips and in our hearts in our prayers, he is with us always.

The thirty-first article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass: Music at Mass

The Church has used sacred music in her worship of Almighty God from the beginning.  We learn from Mark 14, 26 that after the very first Mass, the Last Supper, Jesus led the Apostles in a hymn.  St. Paul seems to quote Mass hymns in his Letters.  St. Justin, who gives us a very early description of the Mass, tells us that hymns were sung at it.  Some of the first Church books were collections of psalms with indications for when they were to be sung.  Pope St. Damasus (d. 384) wrote hymns, especially in commemoration of the martyrs, which were presumably sung at Masses offered on their feast days. Other writers such as Prudentius (413) enriched the Church’s library of hymns.  St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), encouraged the use of plainchant in the Mass and was thought in the Middle Ages to have created it.  The chant was used for such parts of the Mass as the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Creed, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei.  Hymns would have been sung during processions.

Over time, the use of plainchant declined and was replaced with hymns, often in the vernacular.  This was especially true in the 18th through the first half of the 20th centuries, though attempts were made at restoring it.  The Second Vatican Council decreed in the document Sacrosanctum Concilium, that Gregorian chant was to have pride of place in the Church’s music, but the document also allowed for the singing of hymns in the vernacular.  Following the Council, the document Musicam Sacram instructed that hymns be chosen in such a way that they assisted the sacred actions taking place, listing these as the Entrance, the Offertory, and Holy Communion.  Thus, a hymn sung at Holy Communion should be about Holy Communion.  The hymns could also be chosen with respect to the feast day or season.  They could not be chosen in such a way as to appear random.

Next: Liturgical Colors