Memorial of Saint Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr
I've learned from my daughter Gabriella that two-year olds love to sing, constantly. They just make up songs as they go - they sing about baths and supper and the games they want to play with their toys. They sing their days. I don't know why she does this - but it's made me realize again how important music is to us as humans. Playing a peaceful song has an almost instantaneous effect of bringing peace to those who are listening.
Music is integral to being disciples of Jesus too. I was struck in my research about today's saint, Saint Cecelia, that she's not only a martyr but the patron saint of music! Sometimes I think we take music for granted and don't stop to think about how important it is, but today's memorial and scriptures invite us to do just that.
Today's Old Testament (1 Maccabees 4:36-37, 52-59) shows that the Maccabees have defeated the Macedonian Empire (which you may know better as the empire of Alexander the Great) and they are now celebrating their ability to worship God freely and rightly, by rededicating the temple to God and observing eight days of celebration.The focus of the Old Testament reading is on making the temple once again a good place to worship God, and the people succeed. They work hard to prepare it to be a holy space, and part of the celebration is to play music joyfully! As often is the case in Old Testament stories, it looks like God's people have won, and they're celebrating! Music here is a crucial and important way of praising God; in their music, the people are telling the story of who God is and celebrating that God.
Telling God's story through song is important because (as scientists will tell us too) we learn so much more easily by singing than we do by speaking. After all these years, I still remember the names of all the Old and New Testament books in order because I learned to sing them. And each week in our celebration of the mass, our song-singing tells the Gospel stories again and again, helping to make them ingrained in our hearts. One of the songs we sing regularly at mass tells: "We come to tell our story, we come to break the bread, we come to know our rising from the dead." We know this truth better when we sing it, just as the Maccabees' singing named something true and hopeful about God.
The gospel reading (Luke 19:45-48) is jarring, by contrast. This passage is set roughly 170 years after 1 Maccabees, but Jesus finds that the temple is once again profaned. Notice where Jesus puts the blame though: it is not on the Gentiles, as it was in the Maccabees' day, but it is on the Jewish people themselves. By selling things, the people have made the temple a marketplace rather than a place of prayer. The gospel reminds us that though it may look like God's people are "winning" we may well be our own worst enemy. The Jews won the war against the Macedonian Empire, but they didn't see the encroachment of a marketplace mentality into a place meant for prayer and worship as a problem - until it was a problem.
The singing is no longer present in the gospel story. Its absence highlights how much business and everyday life can take over and make me forget to sing. And yet, we never truly forget songs. I remember working with an Alzheimer's patient a while ago, who couldn't carry on a conversation but knew Salve Regina and the chant versions of the Our Father by heart. In singing, she became more herself than her disease usually made her. In my darkest moments, too, it is the songs I learned and sang over and over that comfort me, too. "The King of Love my shepherd is" is a song I sang every single Sunday for four years at a small Catholic community and that's the one that comes to my lips in moments when I need a prayer but don't know what to pray.
Today, let us give thanks for the life and witness of Saint Cecilia and remember to praise and remember God always through our music.
- Jana M. Bennett