From Gethsemani to Galway (2011)

Sometimes a graced moment comes along when events and circumstances can combine, and in that union the veil between this world and the next can become very thin indeed. Sacraments stretch that veil, helping us to get closer to the ineffable mystery of Divine Love. Experiences do, too, if we keep the ears of our hearts and the eyes of our minds as wide open as possible.

Some of these experiences are spontaneous, but sometimes they can also be found in planned events. At the very least, we can expand a tremendous amount of energy in the planning of them, and then we await what the Spirit of God might have to say.

On July 19, 2011, such a set of circumstances came together, and the result, at least in the opinion of many wo were there, was that there wasn't a whole lot of distance between the chorus in heaven and the chorus on earth. 

There was a convention: more than three thousand people had gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, for the annual conference of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians. There was a choir: fifteen current choristers and thirty-five alums, representing an ensemble celebrating thirty years of ministry in service to the Church. There was a repertoire: songs that had been written by a Trappist monk mere miles from Louisville (Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell, OCSO, from the Abbey of Gethsemani), and songs that had been written by the director and assistant director of the Folk Choir. 

And there was an assembly: when the doors of St. Boniface Catholic Church opened on that sweltering July evening, the people poured in, more than a thousand of them, all with their soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices, all wanting to hear, all wanting to sing. 

That assembly, like all of us, had been through more than your typical parish roller coaster ride in the past decade. Church closings, scandals, budget restrictions, a constant demand to do more with less - all these realities and many others have taken their toll on the spirits of those who, week after week, pour their God-given charisms out over Catholic congregations, constantly exhorting them in prayerful worship.

But this night, exhaustion and anxiety did not have the final word. For a little over an hour, two choir - the Folk Choir and the fifteen hundred people who crammed into that beautiful old church - joined their voices in one amazing amalgam of praise. They were not to be denied.

There is nothing like a live concert experience, when the energies are all so present, when the Spirit of God is made so obviously and audibly manifest. This recording captures what took place on that extraordinary evening, and so allows the grace of that concert ot be shared with a far wider audience.

A lot of things happened that evening, things that are perhaps best left in the realm of the inexpressible. But to hear songs that have been written at Our Lady's University - "Lead, Kindly Light," "I Will Run the Race," "Set Your Heart on the Higher Gifts," the "Lord's Prayer" - sung by more than a thousand people, in unfettered four-part harmony...this will remain, for all of us in the Notre Dame Folk Choir, a not-so-small foretaste of what is to come.