1/13/20 Jonathan Bading

[Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program every week when I hear the stories and meet the guests I certainly often recognize that we share a lot in common but different you know our walk with Jesus Christ or openness to the work of the Holy Spirit in our life being opened and drawn to the Catholic Church and then other issues and tonight I'm excited our guest is Jonathan baiting and we share music which I'm excited to hear about he's a former Calvinist than that we share - so former musician Calvinists welcome to the program thank you for having me appreciate it yeah I'm anxious to hear your story because we do share walked in similar footprints but let me back up and start for the beginning I was born and raised in Northern Virginia Fairfax County right outside of Washington DC I grew up in the mansion of Calvinism - the Presbyterian Church in America which is a more conservative larger denomination of Presbyterianism and my two parents and I have an older brother as well we my parents kind of entered into Presbyterianism actively as well they made the decision to enter into the Presbyterian Church so my mother kind of grew up while her parents to necessarily attend church her grandmother would take her to Methodist Church every week and that's their old stock Eastern Shore of Maryland fisherman Wharf men and they're all Methodist through and through for the last 400 years so she kind of grew up with that and then in the 70s when kind of did the Jesus people movement and everything she was kind of looking towards you know the more of an evangelical expression of the faith and kind of came into the Presbyterian Church McLean Presbyterian Church which is the church I would have grew up in right inside the Capitol which actually has become sort of a flagship in the mid-atlantic and then my father his his I believe both of his parents were Lutheran practicing and then they and the 50s Mike my grandparents then kind of became through an influence of a friend of theirs became sort of fundamentalist Baptist so my dad hadn't been going too to Bob Jones University and group in that whole whole world as well but then while he was at Bob Jones began reading some Calvinists literature even though it was contraband and they from there he kind of read himself into into Calvinism there's a lot of funny stories with that experience but I we can leave those away anyway so they both kind of came into Presbyterianism actively and then both my parents in educationally they studied music so my father is an organist and my mother's a vocalist and so from the get-go sacred music has been a part of our family's life in all its various expressions but I think some of the earliest virtues or things our family found significant was beauty and and was also that music for us was always connected to the divine it wasn't ever a sort of a self-serving thing it was it was the divine practice even secular music my mom my mother too operated art song things like that leader but that was still there was still in music itself there still a divinity there was a prayerful aspect or a proclamation act Charlie Proclamation and and just the fact that beauty music elevates in its nature its elevates it should elevate at least properly done and so my earliest memories of church were being there forever because my dad would play all the Sunday services and then I would go in the morning sometimes with him and if I got up early to go with him to get me you know McDonald's or something like that on the way into Church which was a nice memory and then my mother was in the choir and then she directed our children's choir which my brother and I sang and so we were always the ones we were always closing turning on the lights you know as our way out we were always closing out the church it seemed but that still has an impact on you as a child is that that the Sunday was that it was a very significant day of our week well in I know that in that world there are things called P K's which are pastors kids yes ray are there okay perhaps organist kids I probably we had we like we were able to enter the sanctuary and I'd go and see my dad at the Oregon or turn pages for them and we're very related we're just we're close cousins to PK's I'm sure so anyway so that was kind of my early memories and what a thing pretty one yeah during that time period I'm guessing your your parents might be my agent I know they didn't I was PC USA yes a little bit larger had more liberal Presbyterians in it than the PCA yeah but there was a movement in that time to become more liturgical yes was it happening in the PCA I can only speak to McLain at the time and I grew up an interesting era because my parents my whole perspective of what the church music was and what the state of church music at our Presbyterian Church was that we were coming out of a good period of it and we were kind of in a transitional period but things were still sort of good so for example we were still religiously using the hymnal and the Pew when I was growing up as a child my I still heard the organ every week my father did preludes he did post loads he like I said played accompanied the hymns on the organ we had the influence of of a praise band at the time but it was it was more conservative piano maybe some strings nothing too edgy yes and then but at the same time especially the big the big Easter and Christmas were actually very I would say solemn I think there are a pastor at the time interestingly enough he was sort of at a secret friendly a mindset but also had these sort of high church leanings too so when it came to Christmas it was we had the advent calendars out we had we put greens in the sanctuary we celebrate we sang add that hymnody and then Christmas was you know candle lit and lovely and there was very warm memories of feeling like you're part of something greater than yourself I had a friend of my Protestant friend of mine who did a PhD study on on Church music in his conclusion was that often the music of the moment mm-hmm that's most popular was the music that was popular in the last renewal interesting yeah because the people whose life's changed back then are now in the position choosing the music power yes you know so we're seeing music now that became really popular back then they'll be coming and that was true in the processor world I think a little bit during the Catholic yeah well it's old I've discovered that the whole different can of worms but if there there are parallels you know but if there's a phrase that you know when Rome sneezes the rest of the world gets sick you know that kind of thing like I think yeah a lot of the stuff that happened I think with liturgical shifting and in Roman Catholicism effect it was all the same spirit all the same movement you know it's but if the same so my early experience is if you were having all that we were having all of it yeah yeah and then I think the early we so you had a you had a camp that's too strong reward but you had people who you know preferred perhaps some of the things happening in contemporary Christian music but at the same time it was still this you know yeah our whitewashed Presbyterian walls and we had the red him and all and at least that's my image of it it could have been wrong but that was my image that was something given to me my earliest memories of the musician to our I'm gonna learn this I really learn the sink parts at a young age because I read the hymnal you know my mother would say this is the alto you sing the alto I'll sing the soprano or whatever these things I learned I was terrible at first I'm sure but I miss him why is a Catholic I that's in my current position I'm seeking one that has for part him today because what's the point of doing him that if you can't sing parts you know that's but that's I digress so so there's a brother and I always talk about that's very formative to us it was the hymnal and was singing this music and and then my earliest memories as a child or also you know being put to bed in the evening and hear my father practice the piano downstairs and then my mother would go in and they would sing show tunes together or shot seeing whatever art song and lovely yeah what a gift yeah did as an okay yeah had you found Jesus I think yes I I always felt I always felt close to the Lord as a child I never felt the dissonance there at least when I was a child when I was entering into the age of reason I I felt like that's when that things began to change I think where things kind of went where I began to find some dissonance in probably no awakening was so the age of reason I was on seven or eight eight or nine and you begin intentionally sinning and all these things and a big negative influence on my life which entered in that time was you know as a millennial we were the first generation it really grew up with the internet and and for me it was really exposure to internet pornography which was a huge aspect of my eye I would say staggering in the faith definitely I mean obviously I understand now of being a mortal sin and staining my depth his mole innocence that I received in baptism I'll be it outside of Rome but that was a at a very young age falling into that and then never having really a solution to the problem and I remember being young adolescent 11 12 13 and you know we would have these candid youth group evenings at our Presbyterian Church where everyone you know came clean about this kind of stuff but it still never offered a solution it was pretty much just like you know stop it you know it's not right which I'm glad they were saying it was not right I mean there's there's more perverse teaching and other areas of the church about and that kind of stuff I'm glad they said it wasn't right but it still wasn't offering a solution to what I recognized that was an actual it was an addiction and so that was sort of an area where I really felt like I might my spiritual life began there really de stray but then at the same time what was healing for me and what's keeping me I think moving towards maybe like work in the church or say what was this notion of sacred music and and some of the big influences on that in my life where I had a choir director at my em I went to a private Christian school in Fairfax and acquired director who I had sung in her since my was very young first grade all the way up through my my senior year and she was very influential my left she was an Anglican and I remember one time I was singing in choir for we had a little honors ensemble that we had in high school and we were singing with her in choir and we were singing what now is is I really considered one of my salvation pieces it was the ave verum corpus by Bert William Byrd who's the great Catholic wreck ascent composer he only he pretty much survived the Reformation by being elizabeth.sarah composer you know so she's like I can't kill him he's he's too good you know his musics too beautiful same with Tallis so we were singing the Burt IVA verum corpus which of course the ave verum is uh it's it's Eucharistic text right hail true body born of the Virgin Mary held true blood you know the blood and water flowing flowing from the side we were seeing in this piece and the beauty alone was stunning I was loving and I lowered his head I always had a an affection for Renaissance polyphony that was growing and then um the one time my teacher stopped and she could see she was getting a little weepy you know and she was getting very emotional and she said do you not realize that when you sing this music you are manifesting the crucifixion and I was like for that was a Eureka moment for me the light bulb went on I said that's why that's why music is that's this is why it's so appealing to me it's not this garnish in in in worship even it's so much more than that we do manifest these realities art does that right and and that these aren't things that we even create you know a proper platonic understanding of art of music theater or anything is that we ourselves are not actually creating these things these things already exists in the cosmos is more merely you know opening opening the curtain to it which is why music you have to be taken so seriously yes because of its power in the end as your teacher said Eurex you were expressing the very incarnation the resurrection yeah do that or that same music can arrow you into something else yes Gustin said yes you know your thing you prayed twice yes so I mean there's a power there that must be you must be a steward of yes yes it end and and that needs to be fleshed out but to be a steward of it means being responsible for what one does with this yeah yeah and your teacher was doing that yes right you know as you said you went to tears because she realized not only what it meant for her but what it meant for you yes and come on to make sure you understand what what you're getting is that you're not being moved just because you're really for aesthetic but the fact that you're entering into these into the mysteries and that was the first time that was ever really articulated for me in such a way and that alone began really and sorts of questions of don't only like what's the role of music and my life what's the music of and what's the role of music in the church and I guess providentially enough at this time entering into high school and on our later years of high school where should I begin there's two trails here one was that on the church front our church began going to through sort of a it was almost a divided I mean it was pretty there was a there was a lot of tension in the room over the fact that we had a new pastor and we were kind of switching what we were doing with our liturgical music the organ was being kind of pushed to the side which obviously there was a personal offense there to you know hit close to home obviously my dad being the organist and organist there for 20-plus years whenever you hand the organ to maracas it makes a huge jonathan beading it's one to make sure to get that effect long a yeah so a new pastor yeah new priorities exactly understanding of how do you express the faith yes and so the whole it kind of felt that the carpet was ripped under from under our feet and we had we had a new worship minister come in and it wasn't just contemporary it was very contemporary very quick and you realized that a lot of people begin to be really affected by this and worship or any notion force but all began very stressful and my mother god bless her she's much more expressive with her emotions and my father my father was quite the opposite in true extrovert introvert named opposites attract so but then when I began to see my father really really take on this burden and really kind of be very upset when we would come home from church on Sundays and eat lunch together and we would just be vitriol American to be vitriolic overall how angry we were over the things that were happening cuz it would really hit close to home and then we had to have so many talks as a church about it and there are all sorts of arguments and camps you know Presbyterian polity you know you have to everyone has to do everything all at once you know you have to agree on it as a congregation and I remember the pastor came out and pretty much said you know all this comes down to his preference and as long as the text we're singing is valid or theologically correct then does it really matter if the music matters and I went going like it doesn't really come down to preference I mean this beauty come down to preference the psalm say that God is the perfection of beauty that how can we is taking music flippantly beauty is just in the eye of the beholder this substance to it it's all of that and that's never even be held by the church and so while this was happening get her at our church at my school interestingly enough it was our school was mainly Protestant there are a handful of Catholics one Orthodox tell me about a new of but I would say generally Baptist Presbyterian Lutheran's and Anglicans and we had this group of Anglican priests that were our theology upper upper level theology teachers you know and so I took this church history class as a junior in high school and this class was one of these that changed my life and we began reading the fathers and we read on the Incarnation by a tenacious which is and I began connecting there was the exact sania that we had this ave verum corpus discussion right so we began to connect in this idea that Christ became flesh and therefore he sanctifies every single aspect of creation and that the flesh isn't something that we just ignore but the physical reality matters and then I'm tying it out to this notion of okay within liturgical music matters and and then my whole and then on the other side you know it quietly secretly I'm festering morally you know within in the sin I've already mentioned and that has just been you know very difficult and gotten me all sorts of trouble and so then the early churches offer offer being made a solution there with the sacraments and this notion that God touches us physically you know that he doesn't just it's not the spiritual action but that there's this that we are physically redeemed and that in this body that God I mean were coming home from one day mother and I used to have wonderful conversations on the way home from school because I just began saying like mom have you heard about this stuff before and we had one conversation particularly where I began talking about how we were talking about the Ascension and we you know he ascended into heaven and for the first time ever I realized that that was a bodily ascension and that Christ reigns on the right hand of the Father in flesh in his flesh and my mother and I just like sat there like thinking about that forever you know we just we both kind of had this realization like that's humongous and that that really felt like that mystery pondering the mystery of the Ascension right really we actually were doing it out at that moment but that this life really matters and in that it's not just you know one stop on the way to heaven you know that but that that's not Christianity at all that church is never really taught that and then as a musician I was sacramentally that kind of beginning the thinking of music and sacramental terms it's still opaquely I was still growing in that and so in the midst of this kind of crisis in our senior mice play my senior year of high school with what was going on in the church I began valuing myself off of the crisis in the Presbyterian Church because I wanted to kind of say maybe I should explore Anglicanism a bit and these priests had really taken a lot of time to speak to me about these things and I would go to them at lunch periods and ask them about everything I mean Andy's a ganglia tweets are hardcore but they were even on areas like contraception we were I would ask some questions about that and they'd be like well I really don't see historic precedent for for it ever you know so once again my Catholic formation was already there or and then that is also healing sinful areas of my life which really afflicted me as an adolescent I began discovering all those things are in the same time so then I began sort of exploring Anglicanism on a cursory level the beginning of said attending services when I could my parents let me and then my parents were generally open to it that's also one of the things I admired about them they were they've always been intellectually liberal in the best sense in the sense that they they didn't fear the pursuit of truth wherever it took you and so they were very okay with me saying okay I could be I could be an Anglican I can begin going to the services here they liked the priest that I have and I haven't brought them in my dad Matt down out of Sunday I would have suspected they would have the liturgy and of course and and I've always said that my I think my feel like my parents have always been that way with they've always been once thought beyond a Calvinistic approach to music because really the way we were doing music at the Presbyterian Church was not even Calvin's approach to music we had an organ so that itself would be there's no organ in Scripture so I mean what are you not just plain sawing the song no no which has its own Beauty but at the same time it we weren't we weren't even doing that we had we were kind of diet angle can't even even then so that all the stuff was rubbing off on me and then I had a friend at the time in high school who she was Orthodox Greek Orthodox family was Greek and she invited me to the Easter Divine Liturgy in the evening one time that year which is also providential move because I'd never and I'd never been to anything like that before right so he went into this it was this warehouse that they'd converted into this church and that itself was an amazing image because there was you know you could see the air-conditioning unit in the back but then you have the iconostasis and you have the smell of incense is just as fixating as you go in and it was just it was an amazing experience and we're sitting there and the thing for me that I noticed immediately was that the liturgy just goes on without you you know and it just it proceeds without you and that there was something there to being there that was totally different than anything I've ever experienced and I got hooked I got absolutely hooked into that notion of the objectivity and the independence of the liturgy and I was still seeking for that you know and I I thought the Incan ISM at the time was it was a satisfactory conclusion to that a satisfactory answer to that kind of longing and so then I'm but not Catholic but not well that's here's the interesting thing so at the same time this is actually amazing when I think back about it because the you know I feels like when God when he's bringing you into the church there are things he plants at you in such a young age that don't even flower until decades away you know I remember being in high school and I was reading this website called the new liturgical movement which is a Catholic website devoted to ameliorating the Roman liturgy and they put a big emphasis on the traditional mass and they put a big emphasis on how do we effectively reform some of the liturgical abuses that have entered into Roman Catholicism on a humongous level and the thing that attracted me are this level about this website was that um they had most beautiful photos on this website of these Catholic masses and the priest had the most beautiful vestments and the churches themselves were being beautiful and the thing that really hit me was these priests would have they'd show these European churches and these priests to be having these masses there and they would be having they'd be celebrating the mass at the high altar of this Church and so you have a church an altarpiece that looks like the altarpiece of Ghent you know one of these glorious pieces of Western art and they'll be sacrificing the host on the you know on on the elevating host on this altar and it was this combination of like that art has this divine purpose that the altarpiece of get was made to be an altar not to be a museum piece and that that like we as Catholics created these beautiful things that then we use there was a both a pragmatic use and the most beautiful thing we could ever have it was worthy of the temple so that really began to influence to me but then the thing I had was once again Catholicism was still kind of stigmatized and I wasn't too comfortable with it yet but I hadn't seen an honest expression of that kind of beauty before the only really exposure I'd had the Catholic Church at the time was going to a couple of funerals with you know I would say your typical suburban liturgy nothing to write home about maybe a guitar that wasn't tuned oh yeah right or you know someone who shouldn't be singing and singing Ave Maria on the piano while playing you know whether or wherever it's gonna be and going like this is kind of odd but then it's so that's what really kind of kept me in an Kinison for a long time so then I go his anglicanism was really your only option unless you want to go hydros Lutheran exactly about it but even still the Anglicans that were influencing me were still making they were still showing at the divide with Luther they were saying like Luther you know really was this reformer and their opinion was that the Anglican Church did retain some sort of apostolic succession some sort of could that was kind of their vein they weren't I would say Engle Catholics but they were old school prayer book Trek tearing and Anglicans through and through and they taught me the scriptures really well and they taught me dearly father's really well so it was a remarkable thing so then I go into college well I've been studying Oregon around the same time my dad had I've been paying piano I was getting really interested in choral music was think about choral conducting I loved singing this choral music I was a good singer and I loved I loved that world but I knew that I needed they still keep in my keyboard skills and my you know my key piano and I was kind of festering and in retrospect when I think back about I think that a lot then let the lack of discipline that I had a lot of areas my life probably resulted from from this addiction that I kept very closeted and that I had so much the danger with the internet was happening for your generation yes because the parents you know we we suspected mmm that this is gonna have a bad side we all did we were saying about it yeah I don't think we truly realized how pervasive how easy would become how easy all pervasive it could become no it was really there was an ignorance there I don't I don't have bad feelings there I just it was just it it was you know and I mean now I see it as the cross that God gave me to bear and that's the profound honor hard honor but a profound cross and one that I know I have a lot of solidarity with peers over that which is also a lovely thing but I look back at my discipline in the lack of discipline I had on it particularly as a keyboardist like I said I was confident as a courser as a singer and succeeded in those areas but as a keyboardist I was kind of festering and I think for me I was very tense and I got very stressed while I was played and terribly nervous while I played and I never really understood the bodily aspect of how to play I never could you know sing through the keyboard I just kind of always thought like I was playing on top of it I was awkward I was clumsy I carried it really hard in the shoulders and the arms and then the thing that I think was really in the back yeah I know that yeah and and and then sweating like a pig while I played and I never had poise like I did when I was sang and I thought I was just I was a goner I was doomed to that fate you know and as a pianist and I really wasn't connecting on it aesthetically I was connecting on I wanted to achieve higher forms of music but I just was with a teacher I had I wasn't getting there but I also didn't have the solution to this stress and this lack of discipline the lack of ability to call him everything and and kind of start the patience to start again and kind of reteach myself technique and everything I thought I was a goner so my dad at the time being an organist said now it's time to you know take the family craft here and come to the good side and he sent me off to a camp a tour when we were in campus the have an introduction for piano students into the orgonite I really began to love it I met a teacher there that can't end up being my teacher for my last two years of school and I really kind of began to fell in love with the organized thing with the organ was it allowed me an opportunity to start again to relearn some aspects of technique and then they also say that this technique is different from piano and maybe I can just kind of re model myself as a as a keyboardist and then also say you know I would express my organ teacher I said I have a real interest in doing choral music and doing sacred music and he said to me you know pragmatically become an organist and you can do all that stuff because there is a like as we talked about earlier a dearth of organist I mean there's really a need and there's a surplus of choral people and a surplus of pianist it's a surplus of all of that but if you go organ you go one go right to the heart of it and then you can do everything else you can do they will church will hire an organist they won't hire just a choral director you know unless it's a very big Church that was very pragmatic advice but also I think very it guided me very a long way so I'll play on the organ one of the continuing sacred music some of the sacramental things were influencing me so I applied to the school in West Michigan called Hope College which is a member of the RCA Reformed Church in America Dutch Reformed and they had a very good organ program that all emphasized you know a lot of interaction with the professor it's a small studio but a very strong program and my mom had gone to this institution so she she of course was all over it and she raved about how wonderful West Michigan was as an area so I kind of applied there that fall of my senior year and then also the senior year at my high school we had to write this senior thesis and it was a project that we'd actually begun our previous year in high school which is it was a very it was wonderful opportunity and the whole premise of the thesis was that you had to begin the first half was you know understanding systematic theology from whatever tradition you came from so for me it was using the Westminster Confession and the Catechism and then the second part was defending a sort of theological aspect of it making an argument for the church an apology for some aspect of theology and then the third part was vocation and you also wanted to have kind of a integration between those three parts and so I'm going through the the low side of this as a junior in high school and what do you do as the presbyterian when you get to angelology you know what do you what do you even do so I begin to reading Aquinas on angels because who else writes in the West on angels except for Aquinas that I'm beginning to read this guy and he's talking about the nine choirs and he's talking about you know Staton's rebellion and all and the nature of demons in the nature of angels and the immaterial beings and therefore they're you know man is the superior creature but they you know transmit knowledge immediately because they don't the physical function of the body and you're and I'm a-goin they're going like I have never heard anything like this before but it was amazing and I think in this guy he believes what he's talking about was gonna say like I'm gonna pause there yeah with that cuz I mean with all those and my inquires vanch all that but the point is he takes his serious he takes it seriously these are real thing he's not just I mean he's not just making us off I mean he's a yeah you think there's laws there doesn't come back that's a great place to bring back just a moment with more of Jonathan story [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi and our guest is Jonathan bading former Calvinist I've rudely interrupted him in the midst of his finishing his thesis oh well right so I was a so we were with Aquinas right and so I was looking at all these you know you can get you can get through sin with the Westminster you can get through all these things but in you really begin to look at Aquinas and I go you know what even is this and then I began to reference back to our my the early exposure to ethanol and looked at a confessions a bit cuz even a Gustin has that lovely bit at the end of confessions about music and him being drawn he felt like it was a temptation to the carnal to love the music independently apart from what it was transmitting and he had that big crisis with it but even today he concludes you know that music should still be there because it's worthy of the temple because it is so beautiful it's big paraphrase obviously anyway and then what I wrote about my second part of the thesis was I was defending actually traditional church music and I'll even remember what even would even I meant my traditional church music but I essentially as you know in that world there were just these very you know intense debates about traditional hymnody versus prison worship music and there are there's two camps and they never agreed and all of sacred music in the Protestant world can be summed up by those two camps you know all of the debates are over those two things and then how do we integrate them into contemporary forms or how do we integrate and then you have your two congregations right you got your traditional service you got your contemplator contemporary service or whatever you want you have this kind of thing um Protestantism so I was pretty much defending him that II the funny thing is you can invite family and friends to your thesis defense and then a sorry for the vocation section I talked about being a church musician because what I wanted to do so we divided we invited one of our assistant pastors from our church to come to this this thing and I don't really have a follow up conversation with him but I remember being like halfway through the thesis delivering my thesis and being like what if I just argued you know this is this is a severe departure from what I have been grown up from you know I'm spiritually speaking as an Anglican and not really fitting within the the Calvinistic approach the liturgy anymore anyway so then I that was that was a good a good end I went off the college began setting the organ there and like I talked about where I felt like as a keyboardist I couldn't lock into rhythm I couldn't lock into how to feel confident how to move the music as as a keyboardist my organ teacher I truly think is it's quite literally exercised me as as an organist through four years of study where he pretty much wrote back everything I had learned it pretty much read taught me he built me back up as a keyboardist and that was it's one of the most moving and and and one of the things I'm most proud of having gone through in my life because and what I'm grateful for him for because he just it was it was quite a labor of love to do all of that too and he's a wonderful pedagogue one of the things he said to me as a freshman remember I played this Bach piece for him and he was like oh oh no oh no let's let's go through this and he sat me down and he said music when you perform music just like we talked about you aren't creating music you're merely revealing it this music already exists in the cosmos and he starts talking about boëthius you know and the music at the cause the music of the spheres which is boëthius this great thing so once both uses dangerous do because he's a Roman philosopher and he's a Catholic so you're already swimming in those waters but boethius talks about you know that that all of music exists in the other in the universe and we merely have manifestations of it here on earth and he essentially said that he said you're when you're playing the organ especially at church you are any music whatsoever it's like you're tuning into a radio station and however well you play the music is how well the connections coming in you know once again that's totally reversing our entire modern idea of music you don't create it's not a creative expression it is revealing objective beauty in various expressions of it and I think through that I began to understand music on a whole different level and one that actually I really do think led me into the Catholic faith because you could apply that principle to every aspect of our theology to write is that as Catholics we are always our entire liturgical life is appealing to the other to the hep to heaven and heaven comes and dwells among us in liturgy and it brings us at the sursum Corda right we lift our hearts up into heaven in in the liturgy so around this time I'm reigning Anglican but I'm kind of jaded towards Anglicans because I was part of this one obscure branch of Anglicans and I came to West Michigan but I couldn't find a church that would let me even commune because they barred me from communing because I wasn't part of their Anglican Church I began going like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing here I just started in a relationship with the girl I would marry her name's Madison and she was a Baptist and our opening conversations with our relationship was religion and we would sit at lunch on Sundays after we both got our respective churches I was singing at that Reformed Church at the time and couldn't stand it and she would go to her Reformed Baptist Church and we would just talk about this stuff and I'd been reading a lot of this Catholic stuff online and but I got to this point in my sophomore year where I was so depressed couldn't feel like I was moving forward at all I new orthodoxy wasn't the answer because I wasn't I was a Western and I loved the West and I knew that it just wasn't natural for me to be Orthodox and canoes emit sputter sputter doubt and I knew that Rome is the answer but I didn't trust her yet and I went to someone who's actually been a guest on the show dr. Jarod Ortiz who's a professor of religion at hope the one Catholic religious professor we have I think and I went to him and I said look I don't know what I'm doing I don't know what's right can we get lunch and talk and he's had this a lot in his time there especially at that school like hope and he said sure so he went got lunch and the brilliant thinking about his pedagogy was that you know he didn't explain to me the America conception he explained to me purgatory did explain any of the red flags he showed me the Catholic faith and what he said he said you need there was a winter break coming up an academic break and my girlfriend and I and a friend a couple other friends were planning on going on his trip to Chicago just around the lake just for the weekend and he said when you go to Chicago this weekend go to this parish st. John Kansas on the north side he said I went there as a student when I was at going to use Chicago liturgically there just he said just go just go there he didn't say anything so that exact that was out on Monday we're gonna go to John can't just on a Monday on new liturgical movement this website I've been reading since I was in high school I saw this advertisement for this traditional Latin Mass with some polyphony at this parish in Grand Rapids Michigan and I went what the heck and the ironic thing about it was that Calvin colleges choir was singing at this traditional Latin Mass now Calvin College is our rival school but they're also they're the other half of the Dutch Reformed world and they were singing at this trishna Latin Mass so I told Madison I said we do want to go to this on the Sunday so it was the first Sunday of Lent and she said sure like why not it was being at the traditional end they were they were singing Victoria who was a counter-reformation composer they were singing in his math setting at one of his mass settings at this traditional Latin Mass so we go to this it was middle of February we go into this parish on the west side of Grand Rapids it's old polish parish very baroque beautiful building stumble in first thing we noticed is that there's about 25 people lined up on the side of the church getting into this wooden box we didn't see them getting to the wooden box but we're like is this penance are they standing for penance or are they standing as a aesthetic discipline we didn't realize they're in confession line we hadn't started mass yet then we start mass they proceeded in I had seen professionals like that in Anglicanism but smells and bowels and smell the incense was going and father had beretta on and I was very impressed by that and then the in Troy began so the choir began doing Gregorian chant which is something I had studied a little bit in college and I was like okay this is really cool this is really this is really something else and the priest gets up there and it begins the prayers of the foot of the altar and then he ascends the altar steps and they begin to carry a and it's the six voice Renaissance polyphony and I wept like a baby I just I I just and I was in ecstasy for the rest of the mass I mean that was the moment in my life where I said like this has to be it I said I don't know why this has to be it but this has to be it because Christ revealed himself to me and his liturgy and and I began I knew that intellectually I could the church was it but I didn't trust her yet because I didn't actually see her living and for me it was traditional Latin Mass which like a lot of my actually my peers I would say there's kind of this trend in Catholicism right now with a lot of us being interested in in in nutritional Latin Mass being devotees of it it was that which really first said I need to be coming Roman Catholic and that mass was just ecstasy and I knew that it was Christ on the altar I knew that it was Christ that that decrease was elevating I had this just a sense of the real presence for the first time I never wanted to leave that again kind of I know knew and talks about that you know with going back to Anglican churches after he converted and being like they're cold there's a there's a coldness there because the real presence never leaves you it implants himself on you and anyway as soon thereafter we went to John Kansas that weekend - that was just another punch because we went to complan there we got there in the evening we went to compliment the canons we had a young priest there who said are you as the u.s. don't look familiar to this storied us he gave us a whole tour of the entire play as he showed us all the altars all the side altars all the relics which was huge right because that's full Catholicism full firehose you know and I said I really want to it was a crazy amazing weekend so then I went back to dr. Ortiz and I said the dr. Ortiz have you ever heard of this church sacred heart and west side of Grand Rapids and says oh I'm on the board of the Academy there and whatnot I said you got to be kidding me so anyway he said I know the director of music there and I'll connect you guys and I said sure because I was looking for a church job you know what Church musicians aren't that well off going through school so I got conversation with this director of music Daniel paged there at this this parish he came out the hall and actually to see me which is very nice and we began talking I found out he was a convert from Anglicanism himself began talking about books I was reading and he said come sing for me in the fall you know I have a higher University singers to come sing come sing for me I went to go sing for him and then we began our CIA at that time and from there it was pretty quick we came in that Eastern Madison actually studying abroad in the in the spring so she came in at Corpus Christi when she came home but I came in that Easter 17 I was wondering whether Madison it was having the same journey at the same time so yeah we went in there say a remember we went into the village religious IDI director's office and just kind of said we want to get married we believe the Catholic Church teaching we don't know we wouldn't be Catholic we don't know what to do levy wi-lai didn't uh kind of threw everything on him he just said okay stop take one day at a time see what happens and we were we both went in saying you know if one of us wants to swim and the other one doesn't and that's okay but which was so naive because the whole process actually sanctified our relationship and really I would say brought us to the altar literally but also it's really made his prepared us for marriage so she came in that corpus christi those summers so the summer before i converted in the summer after I converted I had an opportunity to with an art history professor at my college to go over to France and study music manuscripts in a monastery so that a 14th century chant manuscripts and catalogued them and that I obviously that was providential too because I fell in love with what is the real liturgical music of the church and I fell in love with chant I fell in love with like liturgical culture and the monastic living and I had the opportunity when I the second time worked I received go to daily Mass at the small thirteenth-century parish in France and I was like this is just amazing you know and then when I came back that Christmas it was actually the Christmas before I came into the Catholic faith our director of music at this parish got sick he was hospitalized for a week and Christmas week and so the director of Ledger said he was an RTI haywith called me and said will you sub for Christmas and I said sure so I had to do all the Christmas masses on the fly I had to direct the choir and play the organ and then when this director music left the next year Father or priestess father sirico he um he came to me and said well you've already had your audition you know for this job do you want the job essentially I was finishing up my senior year of school so it's a dream dream job and there I was I all stands with my first mass I remember being in the direction I was doing a Latin Mass for All Saints going how the heck did I get here when I did but it was one thing opened after another and now I am a parish musician direct to choirs Sacred Heart Parish and Grand Rapids is going through an interesting phase right now we're working on rejuvenating our culture and that leading that rejuvenation with with the liturgy that we believe that you know the church is old Maximus around Alexa credenza the law of prayers the law of belief and everything flows out of the wellspring of the church and so what we're trying to do is revive the liturgical life of our parish through excellence in music and art and liturgical celebration also working in Benedict the sixteenth vision of some participant with mutual enrichment that the ordinary formal benefits in the extraordinary forming the extraordinary farm benefit from the ordinary form and that they work together to get us through some of the mess we're in in terms of liturgy so yeah awesome Wow lots of questions I remember when I was a pastor as a presbyterian and every week I had to plan the worship yeah we didn't have a liturgical but we had a structure but I remember choosing the hymns and I remember my only even though I was well trained in music the only criteria that I used when I planned these different hymns okay was is this a vertical hymn or a horizontal right right so like Amazing Grace is a horizontal him because you're telling the people next to you about your experience of God right whereas holy holy holy is a vertical ham it's a prayer and so that was the only rule of thumb we had but there's more to it than that yeah talk about how one understands the place of music in this area I think my the biggest change for me in and leaving Protestants in me coming Roman Catholic was the question of the question in Protestantism is what do you sing when you worship God what parts of the service do you sing the question Catholicism is what parts do you not sing it's totally an opposite thought I mean the Liturgy of the church forever has been a song occasion and the reason why we do that is because when you sing something you're not you can't argue it you're not making a defense for it you're not making an apology for it you're not there's no rhetoric involved with it you're merely proclaiming it it's the only function that singing can do you're merely proclaiming what is there I think what enters to the traditional Liturgy of the church that there were texts and functions of texts functional functioning texts that existed in the mass like your propers right so the in troit accompanies the action of the priests is preparing for mass the gradual way now a lot of things responsorial Psalm but and the old master gradual in the Alleluia is what transitions the priest from the Epistle into the gospel the offertory what when when the priest begins his ablutions it begins blessing the gifts which will then become our Lord that is company by this text which is in a reflection on that you know all of our all of these aspects of the mass that they they have a literal function they're not garnish but they actually literally function and they have functioned that way for all of time with a little revision I mean that these texts these psalm text you know this Jerome says st. drum says you know the psalms of the mouthpiece of the church well we are constantly drawing from that mouthpiece and everything we do and so the question of what's vertical mother horizontal isn't really this because it's all just objective it's a it's the objective music of the church and you have this big question of okay what then kind of music is then worthy of the temple which is a humongous question I think the best attempt in our modern era at it was with st. Pius the tenth you know who wrote about you know that the music has to be universal has to be holy has to be beautiful and that it also has to stem from the organic music of the church which is I would say Gregorian chant so that our Platini and the music of the church even our organ music has a stem from the pathos and the ethos of that primitive and what I would say the source and the summit of our church music to which is chant it's both like that foundation of everything but also what we return to as well yeah we we've become so spoiled if you will in our generation we've got a catechism but we might have three catechism at all right I might have a dozen Bibles at home I got books everywhere right you know that but for the majority of the history of the church majority of Catholics couldn't read and didn't have books exactly but they could sing yes and it was the singing that communicated the substance of the faith yes for the majority of this and what they received in the mass what they they had a real better sense of oral participation that that we contemplate through the music that we caught that we can to play God through art through music then they would take that and they would build a beautiful music culture on the outside of the church's walls that flowed out of the liturgy so when your and that carried all the way through into the modern era so when you're having this question of the Western society is falling apart what are we gonna throw out our opera houses what are you doing about the symphony the way you redeemed those things is you redeemed Church music if you're redeemed Church music you've redeemed the holiness of Mother church's liturgy then he will redeem the music of society as well you are you going some of these absolutely beautiful older churches yeah which are now amplified with electronics yeah I can't hear a word what's being said yeah they were designed yes it recreated you fellows singing yeah and the only part that you would speak is you know at the sermon and then you have your little what is it called I came to think of it the term the dome that would then project the sound over into the people or you'd put the lectern right in the middle of the the Ambo right in the middle of the people as well but everything else is where they've domes above the domes above the altars yes they we are we're in the action of ascending into heaven right so we have domes that's why you have the Pantocrator on the top of the dome right all of that but at the same time it's also dogmatic no you got to hear father sing you know you got to hear what's going on the choirs got to sit there and they sing as well and that dome projects that I love it when our mic system breaks many of the speakers we haven't exercised those vocal cords anymore life to project I was telling someone if you want to look the way they used to preach right go on YouTube and find when Billy Graham preached in the Yankee Stadium in the 1960s right that well he could do it he could project email he had microphones they did Mac he was projecting and we've kind of lost it Chantell let's talk about chants my son Peter who's finishing up seminary he's great you do it a thesis on Jim oh no but talk about the significance of chant as that thread that goes through to make all of the music meaningful if you will right the beautiful thing about chant is that you can trace music illogically you can traced trace its substance all the way back to what was probably some in the temple in the Jewish day the reason it's not rhythm as we know it's not rhythm as it isn't it's in a meter but it's it takes on the rhythm of the spoken word but it elevates it right so if you listen to Gregorian chant it you know it's not 3/4 it's not for 4 it doesn't it doesn't like you would with certain types of music it's it's a free rhythm but it models the cadence of of human speaking so in that it elevates the proclamation of the gospel that much and then at the same time I think there's a real beautiful in car National incarnation alas pecked of it that the Holy Spirit breathes into chant right so when you have your melisma is when you have one syllable over over a significant word and you're just singing through that syllable you are allowing yourself to contemplate like electio Davina you're allowing it'll to contemplate what is the what is what the very bloom is you know that and how the Holy Spirit is breathed into that microcosm of the entire faith so real quick email for David from Georgia yeah I'm a new convert to the Catholic Church in my previous faith background wasn't liturgical at all I'm having a hard time with all that wrote prayers and some of the music and land that I don't understand right in my opinion my previous church seemed to have a much more dynamic worship experience what does Johnson suggest for me to get more out of the mass than we're out of the mass and better appreciate liturgical worship I'm intellectually Catholic but don't feel at home in the church on Sundays yeah right two things one I would say don't feel the need immediately to participate in absolutely everything the mass is the eternal wellspring there is always things that you are there will all be new aspects of the mass that you'll be contemplate so the best thing I can say is sit back and pray through the music you don't the music does not is not valid by you participating in it the music exists outside of you that's a historic understanding of Catholic music so don't feel the pressure to sing pray through the music that is being sung if you would have perfectly learned the music join your choir I speak as a choir director and it's a selfish intention but join join join a choir if one actually learned that aspect of it but I also would say and a great a great venue to experience that sort of contemplative participation before you enter into the actual music and the actual Latin rhythms of everything is to experience a traditional Latin Mass because it allows that for you doesn't it doesn't demand verbal participation as you as much as that even notes are may seem to that's you can still contemplate the Novus Ordo but but that let traditional at Mass really you get the sense of I can be here and God will speak to me and I don't have to sing to him at least with my voice that just be there's a patience there that I think you're thinking about your first experience there yeah that's your first mass it's in my experience as a Catholic in all the places I've been it seems that when you're trying to capture that aspect yeah the Catholicism it may be heard in your local parish depending on when it was built and the way it's done but all my experiences usually if I make a visit to the cathedral yes a meditative can visit to my local Cathedral yes it's a connection with Mother Church in a way yeah absolutely think of for example the Cathedral up until Ito Ohio which is absolute beautiful yeah beautiful I've seen that you know is that a good advice to many of our people go to the Cathedral and you might get more experience of connectivity than you might have in your little parish your Cathedral or your Basilica that which has been noted for its beauty for its architecture go to a place where you can well you really can't contemplate those mysteries in the space of the church and where there's actually a little space for you to contemplate those mysteries yeah I think that's really sound advice so Johnson thank you so much hey thanks for having your joining the program yeah bless you and you continue beautiful work thank you appreciate that music thank you very much and those of you who joined us today I want to remind you to check out CH network.org our website you'll find out more journeys like Jonathan's as well as resources to help you discover this great beautiful church that our Lord has given to us god bless you see you again next week [Music] [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 16,106

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Id: 4XVdEEr-l1w

Length: 55min 40sec (3340 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020