The patron of this little church on French hill is also, famously, the patron saint of musicians and composers, a reality most dearly celebrated by our wondrous tradition of Sacred Music: from talented composers, instrumentalists, singers and our wondrous Cassavant organ.
Saint Cecilia was declared as patron of the Church’s music because, we are told, she frequently “sang in her heart to the Lord,” so beautifully that a member of the heavenly choir heard her voice, and was so enthralled with the beauty and of her voice, that he became her guardian angel.
She is, of course, our patron because of her martyrdom, her willingness to lay down her life, joined to the sacrifice of perfect love offered on the altar of the Cross. But allow me tonight, with the help of a couple of her literary admirers, to reflect for a moment on how beautifully the idea of music and martyrdom, song and sacrifice go together.
C.S. Lewis, in his reflection on Church Music, asks the question “What is music?” He suggests that it is an opening up of a little window between heaven and earth, and that through that portal we see the beauty of the light which comes from the face of God and pierces all the darknesses of our lives.
How true that is, when we think of music in our own lives. When we think of the teenager coming home from school, the music blaring through his AirPods quelling the savage turmoil of adolescence. He longs for that music. He longs for that music to quell the sin-sick soul.
Or the old lady, sitting at home listening to the music of her youth, freed miraculously from the chains of her age and her lonliness, freed from time and space, and hearing only the most beautiful moments of her life.
Such music is, in the words of a 17th century poet, like unto the voice of God; Music which
…the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's severest rage disarm:
Music which softens pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please:
Our joys below it can improve,
To bright Cecilia greater pow'r is giv'n;
To lift the soul to heav'n.
Saint Cecilia knew that music lifts us up, despite everything which weighs us down.
Which is why CS Lewis suggests that:
When singers succeed…[they are the most enviable of men; privileged…to honor God like angels and, for a few golden moments, to see spirit and flesh, delight and labour, skill and worship, the natural and the supernatural, all fused into that unity they would have had before the Fall.
And which one of us has not known that moment when soothed us brought us into unity.
Even Paul Simon, perhaps the most famous popular composer of our time once wrote a song call Cecilia, from the Bridge over Troubled Waters album. And while at first listening, you might think it was about a girl he loved who walked away, Simon himself admits in a recent interview that he was really writing about his relationship to music, which is why he named the song after the patron saint of music. For the music which the composer seeks to create is often breaking his heart, and shaking his confidence dear, as down on his knees, he’s begging the lyric please to come home.
This music for which Paul Simon searched on bended knee is described by our Bishops as a gift of “God, who dwells within each human person in the place where music takes its source.” It's “a cry from deep within our being, music is a way for God to lead us to the realm of higher things.”
So let us thank our patron, Saint Cecilia, for reminding us of the gift of music. For in the words of the poet John Dryden,
bright Cecilia rais'd the wonder high'r;
and sang the great Creator's praise
To all the bless'd above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And music shall untune the sky.
