UNDERSTANDING THE LITURGY by John J. O'Brien, C.P.

SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER?": The Entrance Rite, Part One

I want to comment on the entrance rite, the beginning of Sunday Eucharist. Let me begin personally. My love for singing and music began in my boyhood. I was and am always moved by the sacred song of African-Americans. For example, "Shall We Gather at the River?' Verse three goes like this: "Ere we reach the shining river, Lay we ev'ry burden down; Grace our spirits will deliver, And provide a robe and crown. Yes, we'll gather at the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river; Gather with the saints at the river That flows by the throne of God."

Every Sunday we gather with the saints (= baptized journey-mates and catechumens) at the assembly hall we call St. Malachy Church. Upon entering we are greeted and we greet each other. We ready ourselves to do the arduous work of public prayer. Our bodies ritually move from one posture to another walking, sitting, kneeling, standing. Each outer posture expresses and cultivates an inner attitude, a spiritual feeling, the soul's desire e.g., walking is a bodily movement conveying the soul's movement toward God or another Christian pilgrim, or towards the communion table. Thus we walk away from sin, injustice, or selfishness. We personally and mutually walk with a hunger and thirst for God, don't we?

The assembly lays the burdens of life down, places them in God's hands, and allows "grace our spirits to deliver." We want our personal and mutual hungers and thirsts to mix and to mingle as we become the chorus and congregation of God. We sing out the ways God is present with us, within us, among us, for us - even when our burdens make us feel spiritual darkness, as if God were absent from us.

I say that we sing out the ways God is present because that is what we do at the beginning. We stand to sing. We stand and sing so that we can move out of our own inferiority and self-absorbed concern and can become an assembly, a community, this local church. There is no better way to do this than by singing. Singing delivers and frees us, unites us, engages us together, bonds us, and enables many voices to harmonize and blend into one marvelous sound.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (who died twenty-five years ago on 20 December 1972) wrote of the call to be God's cantor in 1957:

"The heavens declare the glory of God. How do they declare it? How do they reveal it? There is no speech, there are no words, neither is their voice heard. The heavens have no voice, the glory is inaudible. And it is the task of mankind to reveal what is concealed, to be the voice of the glory, to sing its silence, to utter, so to speak, what is in the heart of all things. The glory is there invisible and silent. Man is the voice; his task is to be the song. The cosmos is a congregation in need of a Cantor."