From the Archives: "Ritual Music and Formative Spirituality"
Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.
“Ritual Music and Formative Spirituality” by Shawn Madigan asks questions about the music used in worship, pointing to the need both to pass along the tradition of Christian worship through the music our ancestors loved and to embrace new music that speaks to the many cultures, theologies, and needs in every generation and every land. While the psalms remain a powerful source of music for worship (speaking of the psalms as the hymnbook of the Hebrew people), other sources for praise and prayer must be acknowledged as valid. Scriptural songs other than the psalms may become the font of music for worship as well as the songs and rhythms of a people’s culture, using words and instruments, gestures, and dance that give praise to God. Madigan offers worship music planners five considerations about musical choices. –– Melinda Quivik
Selected Quotes from
“Ritual Music and Formative Spirituality”
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How frequently the scriptures cry for new songs to embrace a particularly formative moment in the God experience! When the old songs cannot express the newer depth of conversion, it is time
for a new song to be sung to the Lord. This is not a judgment on old songs but the expression of an awareness that this community requires a new expression of its relationship with the mystery we call God.
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New songs may or may not wear well. They can be so time- and event-specific that only one particular community, at one point in the conversion journey, can sing praise in this manner. On the other hand, all songs were once new.
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How can people sing the Lord’s song when they live in lands foreign to them? They cannot pray with words, sights or sounds that do not express their own spirituality. On the other hand, continuity in the tradition must be preserved as a unifying reality so that the paschal mystery is not reduced to local experience.
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God’s wonderful works do wear cultural clothing. Yet we must also be sensitive to certain realities; e.g., that Europe’s culturally-conditioned religious imagination is not necessarily the best clothing for the body of Christ in North America. The global nature of the body of Christ
should always be part of our consciousness too; authentic celebration of the Lord’s supper is a
constant reminder of that infinity.
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If the ritual theology of those who choose the songs, sights and sounds of praise is to be grounded in the paschal mystery, nothing less than a global horizon will do. That horizon will allow for distinct preferences among liturgists, though one principle should remain intact; namely, that since the coming of god's reign in fullness will include a people of diverse tongues and tribes and nations, we need songs in all tongues and styles to remind the singers of the inclusiveness of the paschal mystery.
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Shawn Madigan, C.S.J., retired from teaching liturgy and spirituality at the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota in 2008. At the time of this essay, she served on the board of directors of The Liturgical Conference. In retirement she works with five groups of CSJ associations, the Norbertine Centyer for Spirituality, and with a ministry team for homeless women and men in the Green Bay, Wisconsin, area.
Madigan, S. “Ritual Music and Formative Spirituality,” Liturgy 9, no. 1 (1990): 76–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/04580639009409171.
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