Still, He Sang

Dear Friend,

For our staff reflection this week, Roy offered these words from the great composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” As a musician, it’s no wonder these words spoke to Roy’s heart when he received them recently as a gift, along with a beautiful painting by another gifted artist, John August Swanson.

Bernstein penned these words in November 1963, after hearing the news of President Kennedy’s assassination. Today, nearly 60 years later, as we honor the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, I hear a determined Bernstein echoing the challenge of Jesus to his disciples. On the day he is “taken up into heaven” he tells them to “go into the whole world”; in effect, they are to embrace the future. In the account from Acts, they seem understandably disturbed and unsettled, as they were now entrusted with the task of discovering new paths of love in a world shadowed by violence and disease.  

Bernstein’s words remind me of someone else who used music to win the hearts of his listeners. Without the intense, devoted, beautiful, and musical discipleship of St. Francis of Assisi, we would not exist as Mission Santa Barbara. From his experience with lepers Francis knew well how deadly disease could not only destroy lives, but also fracture and divide a fear-filled community. Francis knew first hand from his days as a soldier the trauma and horror of violence. Still, he sang; still he went forth.

Pentecost draws near and, as it did with St. Francis, the Spirit of God is renewing us as a community here at our Mission.  A new music is calling us to become its new instruments of peace and reconciliation.

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm, Pastor