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Beauty & Liturgy – Part 2 — 2 Comments

  1. Greetings & Blessings Father,

    Thank you so much for this post, I am greatly honored that you spent some time to address my response. I understand that my website is something “unique” in the Church in that we are trying to walk the Catholic “both-and” when it comes to music ministry. In doing so we are always growing and deepening our understanding of worship in the Church and I greatly appreciate your help in this regard.

    I wanted to point out a few things to your readers about the points you brought up regarding the term “worship leader” and the nature of worship itself.

    I’m not sure when you last saw the post about “How to become a worship-music leader” but I do first want to say that this post is an organic post. As you will see when you visit the site, there is an order form for the eBook version which I am currently working on and refining that will be available in the near future. The two main points you bring are precise examples of how that post has changed and continues to be refined.

    Within the past week, I have added the introduction section to give a clearer understanding of the term “Worship Leader” as it applies to Catholic music ministry – that is, for the purposes of my blog, a worship leader is someone who leads the people in music during prayer. Although, interestingly, I have recently begun to re-think the use of this term. The original goal was to differentiate between a “music minister” as one who seemingly just shows up on Sunday, sings a few songs and leaves, and one who engages in music as an act of prayer and was so called a “Worship Leader”. As you mentioned, this is a borrowed term from our non Catholic brethren, but it is from that context which I first experienced true prayer in the form of music. As a result of your article and some continued prayer and reflection I do believe I will be changing the title of the post and refrain from using the term “Worship Leader” because of the confusion it tends to cause.

    Secondly, I also agree that worship is something that is done in union with Jesus Christ. I especially love the beautiful definition of Liturgy by Fr. William Heidt OSB. Indeed the liturgy IS the source and summit of our faith and therefore our Worship.

    I look forward to you next post regarding sacred music as I’m sure I’ll be replying! Perhaps we can talk in person some time about this. God bless!

  2. Fr. Jay, My impression when I was reading this was: “Oh my, every young Catholic man reading this will want to become a priest!”

    Have you considered writing blog pieces specifically to encourage young men who are discerning a vocation? Or meeting with them in order to share your love of the church and the priesthood?

    God bless!

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