2023-12-31 11:18:25
Joy, prayer and humility are the three key attitudes recommended by the Pope, Saturday December 30, during the audience at the Vatican with the international federation of Pueri Cantores. To his young guests who help others to pray through song, Francis reminds that it is “important that each of them keeps their heart close to Jesus, not only when they sing, but always.”
“What you do is very important, because with your voices you help communities to pray, to open their hearts to the Lord; and it is fundamental for the life of the Church.” This is what the Sovereign Pontiff declared to the members of the international federation of Pueri Cantores. Founded on November 11, 1944 by Mgr Fernand Maillet, director of the Little Singers at the Wooden Cross, it brings together choirs of boys, girls, mixed choirs with sometimes adults for male voices. The meeting with these children’s and youth choirs of sacred song was the ideal moment for the Holy Father to provide some advice as part of their service and mission as cantors.
Joy
“Singing is joy.” This is what Francis first notices, especially when we do it in chorus. And “the joy of your singing is a gift that you have received from those who composed the music that you perform, from those who teach it to you and from those who have transmitted it to you, sometimes even through the centuries”, he explains. Referring to the Bible, the Holy Father emphasizes that “God loves him who gives with joy” (cf. 2 Cor 9:7). “Therefore,” he adds, “when you put your enthusiasm into singing, you give a great gift to those who listen to you,” in a world where there is so much need for joy; where many, even “young people, are prisoners of anxiety or boredom”. Through song and music, we can touch hearts, give beauty and restore joy and hope in life, notes the Bishop of Rome.
Singers from the International Federation of Pueri Cantores
Prayer
Prayer remains fundamental, because “you are not artists like the others, you do not put on a show. You help others to pray with your sung prayer. Francis therefore invites these young singers “to keep their hearts close to Jesus, not only when they sing, but always”, in prayer and love. “If your heart is full of love for Jesus,” said the Pope, “this comes through in the voices and it is like an arrow that hits the mark, reaching the hearts of people.” Saint Augustine taught that “singing is the characteristic of him who loves” (Sermon 336, 1: PL 38, 1472), and that he who sings prays twice, he recalls.
For the Holy Father, singing is an act of love: “When we sing, we pray with words and with music, with the heart and with the voice, with devotion and with art.”
“When you sing “Lord, have mercy,” or “Holy, Holy, Holy,” or “The Lord is my Shepherd,” you hear with the heart what you say because you have encountered God who is generous in forgiveness, who is holy, who is good and attentive to all our needs, and who walks with us always.”
Walk and grow together
Through singing, we send an important message to the community: “By singing and praying together, in harmony, by listening to you, waiting for you, by inserting the rhythm of each into the rhythm of all, says the Pope , you help the community to do the same, and you teach them how good it is to walk and grow together.”
Singers from the International Federation of Pueri Cantores
A school of humility
A virtue held by Pope Francis, who emphasizes that singing is a school of humility, because the singer is always part of a choir, in which we are at the service of each other, even the leader of the choir. choir which conducts. And “your song is even more humble, because it is in the service of God”, and “if it helps others to encounter the Lord, it also knows how to fade away at the right moment, to make way for silence, where everyone can listen in secret to the words that only Jesus knows how to say to each of us,” declares the Successor of Peter. Francis insists on the humility that every good cantor must have: “A cantor who seeks to put himself in the center, or to prevail over others, is not a good cantor,” says the Pope, inviting us not to seek to appear, but rather “to seek to blend into the whole, because in the unity, which comes from humility, your song expresses true friendship: with God, with others and with each other “, he maintains.
Expressing his thanks, the Holy Father concluded by encouraging these young, dedicated singers in their mission which requires so much effort, “just as living well together also requires effort. But you, with the harmony of your interpretations, the light of your faces and the beauty of your voices, you help us to understand that it is worth it,” he stressed.
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