Taste and see...

Summer is here in full swing, complete with a couple of heat waves that made us grateful for the office air conditioning and wishful for some climate control in the Cathedral church (especially when the organ developed a cipher right before the 5 PM Mass).

This time of year is for slowing down a bit, in the church music world...for soaking up long conversations with colleagues, attending conferences, submerging ourselves in score study as we dream about what our choirs will sing in the fall.

Last weekend, our Summer Chant Schola sang the Mozarabic chant Gustate et videte at Communion. As we rehearsed the chant, experimenting with adding parallel fifths above the melody line and working on the inflection at the end of the Alleluia, I explained to the singers that this chant has been around since the sixth century, before the Islamic conquest of Spain and Portugal, where it originated. The text from Psalm 34 has been sung as a Eucharistic text since the days of the early Church.

This is probably the oldest thing we have ever sung together.

Yet somehow, every time we sing that text, it feels new. Taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Each time we encounter Christ––in Scripture, in the Eucharist, in the gathered Body, in our neighbor––we have a chance to discover something new. In Christ's presence, there is the constant possibility of being surprised (and delighted) by something we aren't expecting. It always feels fresh, full of potential, and sweet- like summer itself.

Maybe that's the reason so many contemporary composers have been inspired to create their own musical interpretations of this text.

Please enjoy a recording of Gustate et videte (courtesy of the St. Paul Seminary schola in our neighboring Archdiocese, which trains our seminarians for the diocese of Saint Cloud). While you're at it, enjoy your summer...and don't forget to leave space for Christ to surprise you with some bit of goodness that you weren't expecting.