While not as well known as Christmas carols and Christmas music, music during the liturgical season of Lent plays a key role, a priest and musician told Fox News Digital.
“Music plays a threefold role for us during the Lenten season,” said Fr. Simon Teller, O.P.
Teller is an associate chaplain at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is a Catholic priest, Dominican friar and fiddle player for the Americana/folk band, The Hillbilly Thomists.
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“Lenten hymns help get us in the mindset of the season,” said Teller.
Just as songs like “Silent Night” put people into the Christmas spirit, “a similar thing happens to me when I hear the first verse of Lenten hymns like ‘Attende Domine,’ or ‘Forty Days and Forty Nights.’'”
The music during Lent is “part of the ‘smells and bells’ of Catholicism,” said Teller. “In order to be drawn closer to God, we surround ourselves with things we can taste, touch, smell and hear —symbols that bring us closer to the deeper spiritual mysteries we celebrate.”
The chants and hymns associated with Lent serve to “take us one step closer to Jesus as he fasts for 40 days in the desert,” he said.
Additionally, music can assist with the expression of contrition, said Teller.
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“Lent is a time of lamentation; a time when we confront our sinfulness, our weaknesses and our past mistakes; and a time when we raise our hearts to God to express sorrow and remorse for the ways in which we have offended Him,” he said.
“Music gives us a medium through which we can express this contrition to God.”
“Lenten songs like the Parce Domine give shape to our Lenten lamentation.”
Examples of music as a way to offer lament to God can be found in Psalms, noted Teller.
“Lenten songs like the Parce Domine give shape to our Lenten lamentation,” he said.
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“The traditional hymns of Lent give us words through which we can express our contrition, and haunting melodies that intensify this cry of the heart that we raise to Christ as we prepare to celebrate the mysteries of His passion during Holy Week.”
As Lent continues, the amount of music during Catholic liturgies begins to wane.
This, too, is purposeful, said Teller.
“The absence of music plays an important role during this penitential season,” said Teller.
“Lent gradually decrescendos into the silence of Holy Saturday — the day when we remember that Christ descended into the grave.”
The heart of Christianity, he said, “is the mystery that Jesus, the eternal Word of the Father, fell into the silence of death out of love for us.”
He added, “Traditionally, churches all over the world fall silent from the celebration of Christ’s death on Good Friday until the Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday evening.”
During this period, “Christians put away their hymnals, lock the organ case and murmur their prayers in a hushed voice to commemorate the silence of Jesus’ tomb.”
“In this way, the very absence of music heightens our awareness of the death of Christ,” said Teller.
“His death frees us from sin and opens up for us the way to eternal life.”
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