Saint Cecilia and Singing the Mass

Saint Cecilia is one of the most famous and most venerated of Roman martyrs. Legend has it that she, her husband Valerian, and her brother-in-law Tiburtius were martyred during the reign of Emperor Alexander Severus, about AD 230.

Her name appears in the First Eucharistic Prayer (the Roman Canon) among Rome’s other beloved martyrs, and when Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire in the fourth century, a church was built where her house had stood. This little church survives to this day as Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.

Her body was discovered in AD 822 and transferred to this church. In 1599 her grave was opened and her body found in a coffin of cypress wood. It lay incorrupt, as if she had just fallen asleep. The sculptor Stefano Maderno was allowed to see the body, and he sculpted her as she appeared, cut throat, tied hands, and all.

Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music, and often times you will find a small statue or stained glass of her in the choir loft of older churches.

With the publication of the Third Edition of the Missale Romanum, the Church once again placed an emphasis on music, specifically that most liturgical of musics, chant. Looking at the English versions of the Missal, you will see that the musical notation of the Ordinary of the Mass is included with the text, instead of in an appendix at the back as in former editions.

The Mass is meant to be sung. That we don’t sing it – or rarely sing it – is a tragedy, and completely at odds with the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium promulgated by the Second Vatican Council.

I should also like to draw your attention to a talk given by Monsignor Andrew Wadsworth back in 2010, entitled Towards the Future – Singing the Mass. Msgr. Wadsworth was the head of ICEL, the International Commission on English in the Liturgy. These are the guys responsible for the translation of the glorious English Roman Missal.

Read the whole thing, but here’s a taste:

Maybe the greatest challenge that lies before us is the invitation once again to sing the Mass rather than merely to sing at Mass. … This means not only the congregational acclamations of the Order of Mass, but also the orations, the chants in response to the readings, the Eucharistic prayer and the antiphons which accompany the Entrance, the Offertory and the Communion processions. These proper texts are usually replaced by hymns or songs that have little relationship to the texts proposed by the Missal or the Graduale Romanum and as such a whole element of the liturgy of the day is lost or consigned to oblivion. …

We are much the poorer for this, as these texts (which are often either Scriptural or a gloss on the Biblical text) represent the Church’s own reading and meditation on the Scriptures.

Back in 2018, I wrote up an essay and resource for singing the propers of the Mass, called Antiphony Reborn. Many new resources have been published since then, and I suppose it’s time to update that essay.

So, on this her feast day, let us invoke the prayers of Saint Cecilia for the future restoration of the singing of the Roman Rite it all its beauty and glory.

O God, who gladden us each year
with the feast day of your handmaid
Saint Cecilia,
grant, we pray,
that what has been devoutly handed down concerning her
may offer us examples to imitate
and proclaim the wonders worked in his servants by Christ your Son.
Who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Amen.