Gather Us In hymn

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Do you know the hymn, “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know”?

Do you also consider this hymn “egocentric?”

The hymn “Gather Us In” is a prayer to God asking Him to “gather us in.” The prayer goes into details about who all of us are–(the young, the old, etc.). It doesn’t seem egocentric to me, unless prayers asking for help for ourselves and talking to God about the specifics of our petition is egocentric.

I think it is helpful to discuss our needs with God, and explain to Him (and to ourselves, since He already knows our needs before we voice them) why we are asking Him for help.

The phrase “Give us the courage to enter the song” could apply to many, many Christians, especially non-Catholic Christians, who have studied the Catholic Church and have come to realize that it is THE Church that Jesus Himself founded so that Mass can be offered at all times all around the world. For non-Catholic Christians, and for new converts to Christianity, contemplating entering the Catholic Church can be terrifying–for years, many of us were under the assumption that the Catholic Church was a cult of some kind, and many converts have been frightened away by the scandals in the Church.

The beautiful phrase, “Give us the courage to enter the song” is a way of asking the Lord to help us be Catholic. I think even Catholics can pray this prayer, as many Catholics are lukewarm, skeptical, or even hostile towards their Church. Again, i don’t consider asking God to change our attitudes and bring them into alignment with His Will is “egocentric.”

I realize that our preferences in music change, but I hope you will re-consider throwing this hymn out of your “like list.” It is possible for us to like a variety of hymns and musical styles. Just because we like one hymn doesn’t mean that other hymns are jettisoned. At the very least, perhaps we can try to appreciate the hymns that are no longer at the top of our “Favorites List,” and recognize that fellow Christians DO like the hymn, and for THEIR sake, we should sing it with all our heart when it comes up in our Masses. Offer the hymns that you don’t love as prayers for your Christian brothers and sisters. 😃
 
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@Peeps, if I could give you all my “likes” for the day I would! 😁👏👏👏
 
Right. Not for for liturgy.

I guess I just find the fun and happy tunes distracting… They are nice for a fellowship around a campfire, but please not in the liturgy.
 
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Everytime this thread bumps up, the song gets stuck in my head again.
 
This is a really nice document. I love this sentence about the music at Mass:
Is it deserving of universal esteem, offending nobody? Personal tastes in music vary greatly in a parish assembly. While not everything chosen will be everyone’s favourite, all the music must be deserving of everyone’s esteem. Music that offends anyone’s prayerful sensibilities should be avoided.
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Does it occur to the music directors here that for some reason, “Gather Us In” offends someone’s (actually many people’s) prayerful sensibilities? Ditto for the other hymns that are routinely joked about?

http://www.liturgydow.org.au/assets/guidelines-music_within_the_mass.pdf
 
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In my experience they still don’t…

What do parishes with Gregorian chant, traditional polyphony, evangelical style praise & worship, 1970s “contemporary” Catholic hymns, etc. etc. all have in common? No one but the choir sings…period…

I exaggerate somewhat, but definitely my experience of Catholic parishes…
 
My experience also – have you ever been to a Mass where it seemed like people really sing?
The two examples I can think of are a fairly small rural parish, where most people are very involved in church life in general. (For instance, their bishop’s appeal participation is something like 70%.)
The second instance is when our parish chants the Our Father, etc. Most people I ever hear singing there! 😃
 
I think churches should teach kids how to play or they should have teachers to teach them to play more traditional music.
 
How many cities/states and how many Catholic parishes have you visited?

I’m not asking this to be sarcastic. It’s a legitimate question. If you are someone who does a great deal of travelling and you have visited hundreds or thousands of parishes, I think your comment definitely has merit.

But if you have visited a few dozen parishes in random areas of the U.S., then…you really don’t have a enough of a data pool to be able to draw general conclusions. All you can conclude is that those parishes that you visited that featured certain kinds of music had non-singing congregations.

It would also be important to learn what kind of music education was present in the schools in those cities (both secular and parochial schools, including the Protestant schools and home schools). If the city, like ours, eliminated music education from the curricula for many years (decades), then it might be possible to conclude that the congregations do not sing because they truly don’t know how. Singing is not instinctive–it is a learned skill set.

There are lots of other factors to take into account. If you attended Masses that didn’t feature the parish music minister in the accompanist/choir director role, then it’s possible that the congregation lacked adequate musical leadership to be able to sing the hymns comfortably.

Finally, what were the demographics of the people in the Masses that you attended. If the congregation was primarily Hispanic (e.g.), it’s possible that they don’t sing comfortably in English.

My biggest point, though, is that it’s difficult to draw valid conclusions from a small data pool.
 
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I agree that parishes and churches (Protestants) should take a leading role in sub-contracting music teachers who can teach young children.

A piano/organ teacher will not teach beginners to play “more traditional music.” They will teach the basics of playing the instruments–reading music (notes, time signatures, key signatures, etc.) and the mechanics of playing the instrument (fingering, attack, etc.) You have to start at the beginning when it comes to playing an instrument.

I know that certain methods (e.g., Suzuki) do utilize a different method that might result in learning to play actual songs earlier in a child’s musical education.

But no matter what method is used, the basics must be mastered before the child can play in church for a congregation.

And there is a difference between playing a solo piece and playing an accompaniment, and that skill takes a long time to master.

I think that a good music teacher will teach a student (advanced beginner, intermediate, and higher level) to play ALL kinds of music, not just traditional. A musician needs to be educated to play in all kinds of venues in order to earn an adequate living, or to make a decent part-time income.

I truly wish I had a better grasp of “jazz” and “improv” (piano), as I am absolutely useless in any venue that requires reading jazz chords and ad-libbing a solo. There are so many venues that are not possible for me because of this gap in my music education.

OTOH, I think that any Christian teacher should push for his/her piano students to learn the basics of playing the organ, and learn about the registration of the organ.

However, I realize that many children and teens are already so busy with a myriad of activities and extra-curriculars that they just don’t have the 2-4 hours a day (and more on the weekends) to practice that I had when I was growing up. All the good student musicians that I know (and I know hundreds because I chair a music competition in my area of the country) are home-schooled. which means that they hire a private music teacher, not a parish school music teacher.
 
This is cultural and has nothing to do with the music styles used in the parish.

Catholics did not/do not grow up singing hymns in four parts. The generation before me–and many are still alive and doing quite well!–grew up with the Latin Mass, and from what I have seen (unless the current Latin Masses are different from those in the past), no congregational hymns were sung.

My generation was the “guinea pig” for the OF Mass and the singing of congregational hymns, and from what I understand, there were all kinds of “experiments” that apparently created “mass confusion” (pun intended!) when it came to music in the Mass! At any rate, my generation definitely did NOT learn how to sing hymns!

And then there were our children–and if they grew up in the Catholic Church, they did NOT learn how to sing hymns in the Mass!

Now we have a fourth generation, and they don’t even come to church, and many of them grew up spending more time with their phones and other electronic media rather than singing in a children’s choir or learning to play an instrument.

Meanwhile, in the Protestant churches, vibrant, lively, participatory 4-part hymn singing has been a vital part of the “liturgy” for centuries, ever since Martin Luther! Our hymnals include four-part music (I have yet to see any Catholic parishes that have 4-parts in the pew hymnals or missallettes)

When I was growing up, I sang with all my heart, as did most of the other people in our Baptist church! The MEN sang–it’s wonderful to hear that low bass part in the hymns! And we had many trios and quartets that formed in the congregation and regularly presented “special music” during the worship service.

And we didn’t have cantors–we had SONG LEADERS who conducted the singing while the accompanist (usually organ and piano together) played lively, well-paced accompaniments. This is where I learned to play, and I still use that style on the appropriate hymns (e.g., Holy God, We Praise Thy Name) when I play at Mass on either organ or piano–and our congregation LOVES IT! When I play, they sing.
 
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Finally–think hard about this. In the Catholic Mass, the hymns are “fillers.” We play/sing the Processional Hymn UNTIL the priest is “in position” on the podium (sanctuary). We play/sing the Offertory (Preparation) Hymn UNTIL the offering has been received and the priest is finished preparing for the Holy Communion. We play/sing the Communion Hymn UNTIL all have received. We play/sing the Closing Hymn UNTIL the priest is out of the nave.

THE INTEGRITY OF THE HYMNS DOESN’T MATTER!!! We have sung hymns about the Trinity where we sing the verse about The Father, and the verse about the Son–but whoops, Father is ready for the Consecration, so we don’t sing the verse about the Holy Spirit! We have sung Marian hymns where the Hail Mary portion was cut in half! 😮

Personally, I think it’s awful! No wonder people don’t sing–the hymns/lyrics are obviously unimportant, and the people get that and don’t bother to waste their time and energy even trying to sing a piece that ends in the middle of a thought.

What would you think if the priest cut off his homily in the middle of a sentence or paragraph? E.g., “Jesus loves us so much, and we ought to…” (done)

I think that the USCCB should put a stop to this and find a way to make the hymns themselves a part of the Mass, not just “filler music”! I think one of the main reasons that Catholics don’t sing is that the hymns are just FILLERS, filling in the time between the “important stuff” in the Mass. And that’s awful. In the Protestant churches where I play, ALL the verses to the hymns are sung because the hymns were written to be a complete “lesson,” not just a filler in-between “important stuff.”

I think that if this is what the USCCB wants–filler music–they ought to trash the hymnals and put “Chorus Booklets” in the pews, and the choruses could be repeated over and over until the “important stuff” is ready to go. I’m not joking about this–at least a short chorus, mainly taken from the Psalms; e.g., “You Are My Hiding Place” can be sung in its entirety, instead of cutting it off before the entire message is sung.

No wonder Catholics don’t know squat about their faith. Their hymns are truncated in every Mass. The message is clear–they’re not worth singing, so why bother?

No wonder so many Catholics are lured into attending Protestant churches where the hymns and choruses are such a vital part of the worship. Yes, Catholics have Eucharist. But worshipping the Eucharist–Jesus Christ—would be so much more edifying for all of us if worshipping Eucharist involved offering magnificent congregation hymns.
 
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Oh well, there’s lots to discuss in here.
I think that the USCCB should put a stop to this and find a way to make the hymns themselves a part of the Mass, not just “filler music”! I think one of the main reasons that Catholics don’t sing is that the hymns are just FILLERS, filling in the time between the “important stuff” in the Mass. And that’s awful. In the Protestant churches where I play, ALL the verses to the hymns are sung because the hymns were written to be a complete “lesson,” not just a filler in-between “important stuff.”
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Traditionally, a lot of the music of the Mass (The Propers) accompanied a liturgical action, so you're right, it wasn't primarily about the texts, and the length could be tailored to fit the action. The Mass is not structured around hymns.
Just curious, when you became a Catholic liturgical musician (rather than Protestant), did anyone educate you about the Propers, Gregorian chant, the importance of the celebrant chanting his parts, etc?
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https://musicasacra.com/about-cmaa/faq/
 
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Peeps said:
Meanwhile, in the Protestant churches, vibrant, lively, participatory 4-part hymn singing has been a vital part of the “liturgy” for centuries, ever since Martin Luther! Our hymnals include four-part music (I have yet to see any Catholic parishes that have 4-parts in the pew hymnals or missallettes)

When I was growing up, I sang with all my heart, as did most of the other people in our Baptist church! The MEN sang–it’s wonderful to hear that low bass part in the hymns! And we had many trios and quartets that formed in the congregation and regularly presented “special music” during the worship service.

And we didn’t have cantors–we had SONG LEADERS who conducted the singing while the accompanist (usually organ and piano together) played lively, well-paced accompaniments. This is where I learned to play, and I still use that style on the appropriate hymns (e.g., Holy God, We Praise Thy Name) when I play at Mass on either organ or piano–and our congregation LOVES IT! When I play, they sing.
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You and I must have grown up in the same church 😃 Stirring four-part hymn-singing is thee #1 thing that I miss about being Catholic. Most of the time I can improvise a bass line to what is being sung, but I still miss hearing the two internal parts being sung by all. In fact, I’m going out this evening to the annual Alabama State Gospel Singing to get me some.

As for your next post (#123) – WOW! Every Catholic who cares about music in the worship process should copy and email it (or print it out and snail-mail it) to their pastors and music directors. Word way, WAY up!

D
 
Hello.

I don’t care for the title, for sure. It sounds like we’re all together wearing silly smiles & garlands of rose petals, while we’re ignoring the truly pressing problems of our neighbors and actually participating in the meeting of heaven, our God, and us in Mass on the earth, that we’re at Mass to praise our omnipotent God, who is actually physically there. To me, it’s like putting out a checkerboard tablecloth for a guest when we ought to be putting out our best linen one.

Just my random thoughts. Please take or leave.
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
As Pope Pius X said: “Music is a humble handmaid of the liturgy”.
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And that (the perceived subordination of the role of music in the liturgy) is a large part of why Catholics don’t sing. “It’s not important, so why should I bother?”
 
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