I HAVE BEEN ABSOLUTELY dreading this day and this moment—but for all the best of reasons.
Apparently, I’ve been here a while. I began playing the organ at St. Cecilia on the Third Sunday of Advent—Gaudete Sunday—in 1989. My first week on the job I played for Msgr. Mackey’s funeral who retired as Pastor in 1988 after fifty years of service to St. Cecilia Parish. Mark Donohoe was in the choir that day. I was a twenty-year-old Berklee student.
In 1992, Fr. Michael Groden took a chance on a twenty-three year-year-old kid, promoting me to be the Director of Music at a time when this parish could barely afford to keep the lights on and pay the heating bill. He put his faith and trust in me to which I owe him—and many others here today—my life.
If you told me I would be standing here before you twenty-nine years later as your organist and choir director, I would say you were crazy. That’s not what I went to Berklee for! But God has a plan for all of us. It is rarely what you think. It brings to life what we pray and sing: Oculus non vidit: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things God has prepared for them that love Him.”
As a graduate of Berklee, I’ve often stated that I have gone absolutely nowhere in my career—because my dorm room—room number 608—was right over there…behind that St. Cecilia window and around the corner. It had a scenic view of the Mass Pike, Boylston St. and a bit of the old Mary Garden.
Now, according to the Waze App, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross is 1.1 miles down the road. So after nearly three decades, I can finally say that I just really haven’t gone very far in my career at all.
I DO WISH TO MAKE CLEAR, the Director of Music of the Archdiocese of Boston and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross is not a position of prestige. It is not a position of power. It is a position of service—needed now more than ever. While I go with joy to serve in this new role, truth be told, I am in no celebratory mood at this time. My heart breaks, and words cannot describe the unspeakable harm and pain suffered by too many for too long. Fury, anger, and exasperation barely begin to describe the mood of the faithful today. In Leonard Bernstein’s famous words: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
Nor is my new role to micromanage 288 parishes in the Archdiocese, but to offer guidance and support—liturgical, musical, and pastoral. It is to model what this choir—full of beautiful people—have been doing for many years: they pray through music and in doing so, these beautiful people, full of love in their hearts, bring us all closer to Christ.
For putting Christ at the center of our sacred song only strengthens the community. Put Christ at the center of our prayer and in our service to each other, and our bonds only grow stronger. You’ve always been doing it, and you need to keep doing it!
My new role in the Archdiocese is not a singular, isolated accomplishment. I didn’t do this by myself. This has been a shared achievement—one shared by everyone who has walked through these doors. Whether you have been here for years, a few months, or you are brand new to this parish, you have all had a role in this. There are too many over the course of twenty-nine years to list. I was just a kid when I started. Countless people have helped me learn and grow.
While many often kindly praise me for the music, it’s the hard working talented volunteers who put in hours of preparation each week, fifty-two weeks a year to whom we owe our eternal gratitude. (St. Cecilia choir sings year round.) I am nothing without them.
YOU CAN PROBABLY TELL I have absolutely loved my job, and I have loved being here. (You have no idea how much fun we have on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings. Probably a bit too much fun.) That doesn’t mean there have not been struggles. And there have been many. But struggle and pain are a blessing for they are the crucible through which we learn to better serve God and each other.
There is another reason—one quite non–musical—that has kept me here so long. A big reason was this: As long as I have been here, St. Cecilia Parish has been an intentionally welcoming environment that recognizes the dignity of every human being.
This was the tone set by Fr. Michael Groden upon his arrival in early 1989. It was another time and another era altogether. Up until 1996 (a landmark year in medical treatment) literally half of our funerals were for those who died from HIV/AIDS. Compounding the tragedy was that most of the families had been estranged from the deceased, having treated them as outcasts.
But this welcoming message has been beautifully articulated and exponentially amplified by Fr. John. It is a message that has been lived out and therefore proclaimed by example by all of you.
We do this not because we are different or because we have gone rogue. We recognize the dignity of every human being precisely because we are universal, because we are Catholic.
This is why I have loved being here. That I get pray with all of you every week.
The people with whom you make music every week is a very intimate relationship. And those you PRAY with…well, that is an even more extraordinary relationship. We get to do BOTH. The lines between prayer and music are more than blurred. They are one and the same.
And with that musical prayer comes a particular mission: You never know what pains, burdens, sorrows, and crosses are carried by those who walk through these doors. Through your prayer and through your song, you may affect people in ways you may never know. Know this and believe it. Keep doing it!
For several years now, I have been saying that I am the luckiest music director in the Archdiocese of Boston. I believe it’s been written in a few bulletins. The reason isn’t so much because I get to direct great musicians, which I do. But I am the luckiest because of the people I get to do it WITH and the people I get to do it FOR—all of YOU!
I have been blessed with friends old and new whom I consider family. I met the love of my life here—right in that choir loft up there. Four children later—Kara and I hold this community dear. I have been blessed and showered with countless riches from all of you—enough blessings and love to fill several lifetimes.
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE CATHEDRAL PARISH and to the people of the Archdiocese whom we will serve, I have a message for you: Like a father or parent who loves their child long before they’re born, I will love you as much as I have loved everyone here. Now that’s saying a heck of a lot. And you can hold me to it.
St. Augustine says, “Singing is for the one who loves.”
There’s a lot of love in this room. I look out today and I am seeing nearly thirty years of love. I may be leaving my job, but this will always be my home.
I want to say THANK YOU for allowing me to be your Music Director for all these years.
THANK YOU!
I am truly the luckiest Director of Music in the Archdiocese.
Finally, I would like to finish with a prayer you can find at the end of today’s music program. You may pray along with me if you wish:
CHORISTERS’ PRAYER
Bless, O Lord, us Thy servants who minister in Thy temple.
Grant that what we sing with our lips — we may believe in our hearts,
and what we believe in our hearts — we may show forth in our lives.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.