On Friday, March 27, the Sisters of the Holy Cross held a musical evening of reflection at the Church of Our Lady of Loretto on the campus of Saint Mary’s College. Providing an opportunity to prayerfully enter Holy Week, the Loretto Choir was joined by Notre Dame Folk Choir alumni, guest singer s, and Steve and Michele Warner – formerly of the Notre Dame-Newman Centre for Faith and Reason in Dublin, Ireland – in reflecting on the passion of Christ and what it calls us to as disciples. The evening was made possible in part by the Adeline Marozsan Trust and donors Robert and Terry Smith and was dedicated to Karen Schneider Kirner. The night opened with “A Lenten Journey of Music,” featuring hymns composed by Kirner, who serves as assistant director of music and liturgy for Loretto. Each hymn was preceded by a reflection. “Lent and Holy Week form a single spiritual movement that resonates deeply with the charism of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, whose mission is rooted in accompanying Christ and God’s people in suffering,” Sister M. Veronique Wiedowere said as the evening commenced. “Lent is a season of intentional walking-with. Through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the Church does not rush past pain or brokenness but learns to remain present to it,” she continued. “This mirrors the Sisters of the Holy Cross’s commitment to stand with those who suffer – not to fix or explain suffering away but to enter it with compassion, faith, and hope.” The first reflection was written by Sister Mary Louise Wahler and read by Sister M. Rose Edward (Goodrow). “When I began volunteering at the hospital, I was ‘doing’: cleaning, moving gurneys, serving water,” Sister Mary Louise wrote. “Soon, I found myself ‘being with’ patients: holding their hand, listening to their stories, smiling, looking into their eyes, and speaking words of comfort. That is when I began to learn what it truly means to accompany someone – to simply be there for them in their time of need. To allow Jesus’ healing touch and voice to flow through me however He wishes.” The personal stories that followed – walking with survivors of human trafficking in western Uganda, serving those with disabilities in Bangladesh, and sitting with an immigrant survivor of rape and abuse – embodied the call to accompaniment. After each story, the audience and choir sang hymns of trust and commitment to God. The closing hymn, “God of the Women,” felt especially fitting for an event hosted by the sisters, as its lyrics honored the “God of the women who answered your call, trusting your promises, giving their all.” “Our marvelous Karen Kirner blesses the entire Church with her compositions, and we delight in singing her music on a regular basis,” Loretto Choir member Sister Maryanne O’Neill said afterward. “Her compositions were so in tune with the themes in our sisters’ stories of working with the oppressed, downtrodden, unjustly treated. We can so easily give our all to pieces like ‘God of the Women,’” Concluding the first half of the evening, Sister Veronique reflected: “At the heart of the Holy Cross tradition is the conviction that suffering is not meaningless when united with Christ’s cross. As Blessed Basil Moreau taught, the cross and hope belong together. Thus, the sisters’ accompaniment in suffering is not despairing; it is paschal. They walk with those who suffer precisely because they believe resurrection has the last word over death, sin, and suffering, trusting in the promise of new life even when it cannot yet be seen.” “The Passion of St. John” has only been publicly performed once before. Written during the COVID-19 pandemic by Steve Warner, who spent decades as the director for the Notre Dame Folk Choir, it is heavily scriptural. “In writing sacred music, one must always begin with the word,” Warner shared. “It must be logos-centric. The music can’t get in the way of the word but must illustrate Scripture in the most graceful and compelling way.” The composition relies strongly on the performance of the narrator, played by Michele Warner for Friday’s performance. Interspersed with her narration were the voices of Peter, Pilate, the angry crowd, and Jesus. Warner deftly crafted his work, and coached the choir, to bring the story to life. He encouraged the choir to approach the songs with feeling. “To sing accurately, you have to let your anger into your singing,” he counseled those portraying the angry mob. “We’re not used to that kind of rawness in our liturgy, yet that’s the compulsion of the story,” he told Today’s Catholic. “It’s not sung sweetly but aggressively. It’s an emotional catechesis that translates to a conversion experience in the listener.” This catechesis was felt throughout the composition’s 30-minute duration – at times carried by the three-part women’s choir singing Old Testament prophecies, and at other times through the poignant portrayal of Jesus by Holy Cross Father Cameron Cortens, a Folk Choir alum. Father Cortens sang Christ’s words with a tender meekness laced with heartbreak. He said the emotional valence of the music “drew me more in spiritually to the mystery of the cross.” Likening it to an imaginative prayer experience, he said it allowed him to “pay attention to what the crowd was singing and what it would have felt like for Jesus to be standing there as the people He came to save and love are crying out for his death.” For Caleb Cobb, another Folk Choir alum, praying the words while singing as a member of the angry mob made him recognize ways we all crucify Christ by rejecting His love. “We have the Resurrection to look forward to, but for now [it was an opportunity] to just sit with the text – how we sometimes fail and are sometimes like the people who cry, ‘Crucify Him!’” he said. The composition concluded with an optional epilogue, “Alas! And Was This Not the Child,” told from the vantage of Mary, who stayed at the foot of the cross – a fitting end to an evening begun with a call to remain with those who suffer. As the choir’s voices rose in meditation, they stood beneath the chapel’s “Mother of Sorrows” mosaic depicting Mary in contemplative grief, seven swords piercing her heart, the prophetic words of Simeon surrounding her. This added particular resonance to the first verse: “Alas! And was this not the Child who laughed on Mary’s knee? But now the mother keens His loss beneath a death-stained tree.” Yet, the story did not end there. Accompanied by woodwinds and strings, the choir rang out the final words: “My hope is real, as is His life: His life, His word: my breath.” Afterwards, Kirner expressed the hope that everyone present “will take to heart the biblical texts on which our music is based and will take Christ out into the world through their own good works and actions.” The post Sisters of the Holy Cross Host Lenten Musical Reflection appeared first on Today's Catholic. ...read more read less