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PS: A word of thanks to those who lent a special touch to some of our 9:30 and 11am Masses this summer: Angelo Besana, Kyle Koslowski, Andrew Naret, and the Newman Family Singers (my Kathleen, along with our Brian, Kelly, Tim, and Bridget, plus Bridget’s beau, Mel McGuiggan). All these fine folks made time in their busy schedules for the rehearsals needed to prepare for Sunday morning liturgy. Thanks to you all, for sharing your many gifts!

Singing a New Church into Being...

It started when I was just a little child. Out of the mouth of my Irish-American Mother would suddenly come this strange phrase:  “Il est n’y a pas de quoi!”  “What’s that mean, Mom?”  I’d ask.  “You’re welcome!” she’d say.  “It’s French.”

My Irish-Scottish Dad would take his turn.  As a young lieutenant in World War II, before being transferred overseas to Burma, he’d been sent to San Francisco, there to spend six months learning Cantonese.  I can hear him now, teaching us kids how to say, “Nee-HOWma” (my phonetics):  “How are you?”  (It wasn’t til years later, when I first saw “Crouching Tiger,” that I first heard the phrase on the lips of an actual Chinese speaker--and smiled as I recalled my Dad’s voice.) 

When I got to high school, I had my first introduction to what would become many years of Latin. I enjoyed it--but not nearly as much as the German we took beginning in our junior year.  It was with German that I first grasped, from the inside, what it was like to actually  speak  another language, as night after night, we students would get together to practice our first rudimentary phrases--and found we were actually beginning to understand one another. It was like a neat, new secret code:  and it worked!  Wunderbar!

Seven years later, I found myself sitting in a Gasthaus high in the Swiss alps, actually able to have a conversation with the lovely older couple who owned this comfortable little hotel. Thanks to my teachers--and those night-after-night practice-sessions with my schoolmates--I was able to enter into the marvelous new world of a culture that was not my own.

And so I guess I can say, I’ve always loved languages. And thanks to Mom & Dad, I’ve always taken a delight in sounds I’d never heard before: sounds that, with a little effort, I began to understand.

Here at St. Fabian’s we’ve already been doing just that. Of course, it really started years ago, the first time we came to Mass. For our Latin-rite liturgy has always incorporated other languages into its structure: the Greek of the Penitential Rite (“Kyrie eleison”), the Hebrew of the Gospel Acclamation (“Allelu-ia,”  “Praise-Yah[weh]”), and of course, in those bygone days, much Latin (“Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus...”;  “Agnus Dei”).  All, sounds we at first might not have understood; but with just a brief exposure, soon became part of us:  “Alleluia: Praise God!”

More recently, people in parishes across this great country have become exposed to other sounds, to other languages.  I first taught our parish “Pan de Vida” several years ago. But already it was being sung by American churches in hundreds of cities and towns across the country. At first, if we hadn’t had highschool Spanish, the words would have been unintelligible.  But it wasn’t long before we as a community were singing it like we’d known it all our lives: “Pan de Vida, cuerpo del Señor”: “Bread of Life, Body of the Lord.”  Those syllables, once unintelliglble, were starting to become familiar. And able to express our faith.

But more than that.  By singing in a foreign language, we were expressing something tremendously important, in fact, central to our faith as Catholics. For the very word that denotes our religion, Catholic, means “universal,” “all-inclusive.”  As the marvelous Marty Haugen song says, “All Are Welcome in this place.”  Come to think of it, that’s also our parish motto:  “We welcome all,”  something not just a statement of what is,  but a challenge, and a hope for which we’re called to strive.

The bishops of the U.S. put it this way:
     “For the Church in the United States to walk in solidarity with newcomers to
     our country is to live out our catholicity as a Church. The Church of the twenty-first
     century will be, as it has always been, a Church of many cultures, languages, and
     traditions, yet simultaneously one, as God is one--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--
     unity in diversity.”
          From the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Welcoming the Stranger among Us:
          Unity in Diversity,   Nov. 15, 2000.

I’m proud to be the grandson of Irish and Scots immigrants. But I’m even more proud to be part of a church that opens its doors to the whole world. And here at St. Fabian’s, that’s what we’ve been trying to do: to tell our brothers and sisters who come here from other lands, You are joyfully welcome at the Table of the Lord.    And at the same time, we’ve been trying to enter into a bit of their culture, so that our worship, our faith, our lives   become enriched.

All this, especially at first, is not always easy.  As a young server a hundred years ago, I found  it wasn’t easy to learn, “Introibo ad altare Dei: ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” But, with my Uncle Don’s help, it wasn’t long before the words flowed easily off my tongue. They had become familiar. 

And so here at St. Fabian’s, we’ve begun learning all kinds of phrases that at first were not familiar, but soon we sounded like’d we’d been singing them for years: “Heavenly Father, hear our prayer, Wysłuchaj nas, Panie"  (pronunciation: Vih-SWOO-hy nass PAH-nyeh: “Hear us, Lord.”).  And even a little Tagalog: “Kordero ng Diyos,”  “Lamb of God.” 

Over the years to come, let’s continue the journey. Let’s get to know one another more and more, share our stories, so that we begin to see each other not as “us and them,”  but as all, simply, “us.”  And when we gather as church, let us begin to open our minds and our ears to yet new sounds, to yet new songs. Tho at first unfamiliar, with a willing spirit, they too will become new ways for us to sing our love for God, and God’s unending, catholic, infinite  love for us.

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PS: On the weekend of Sept. 22/23, I introduced a peppy little piece written in Spanish & English (look for a translation in that week’s bulletin).  The melody was so much fun, and the theology so right-on-target, I couldn’t pass it up: “Somos el Cuerpo de Cristo: We Are the Body of Christ.”   And so we are...

St. Fabian's Children's Choir, Christmas 2005:
     Front Row: Nicole, Ashley, Santana, Edna, & Katie;
     Back Row: Jim, Raiza, Jimmy, Kori, Chris, Lauren, with Director Dennis J. Newman.
 

St. Fabian's Children's Choir, on their way to June Field Trip & Recording Session, with choir moms Sue Dlouhy and Teresa Thomas + assistant Jillian.

St. Fabian's Children's Choir, taking a break between laying down tracks on their new CD. Left-to-Right: Santana, Baylee, Raiza, Jimmy, Ashley, Jim, Edna, Kori, Lauren, Nicole.

Kamil Bartoszcze, owner/engineer of KBE Studios, watching as Santana fingers some keyboard riffs.