Author: John Schultz

Opera lovers are used to weird stories: mythical heroes, ghosts, birds in leading roles and even gold-miners.
But making an opera about Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth?”
I can already hear the crickets.

O you who bear the pain of the whole earth,
I bore you.
You, who, when your hem is touched, give power,
I nourished you.
Who turns the day to night in this dark hour,
Light comes from you.
O you who hold the world in your embrace,
I carried you.
Whose arm encircled the world with your grace,
I once held you.
O you who laughed and ate and walked the shore,
I played with you.
And I, who with all others, you died for,
Now I hold you.
May I be faithful to this final test:
In this last time I hold my child, my son,
His body close enfolded to my breast,
The holder held: the bearer borne.
Mourning to joy: darkness to morn.
Open, my arms: your work is done.
– Madeleine L’Engle

To all the St. Blogs “parishoners” out there:
Do any of you know a charismatic Mass where the music is predominantly Gregorian chant? If so, name the time and place.

This past weekend my brother, Steve, who be will ordained a deacon on June 7 for the Diocese of Arlington, traveled to New York for the papal at St. Joseph Seminary on Saturday and Yankee Stadium on Sunday. He’s posted some photos from the Youth Rally on Saturday and promises to post some from the Mass in Yankee Stadium soon.

The photo is a link to the set on his flickr.com account.

UPDATE: Steve just told me that EWTN decided to use the photo for one of their websites.

They did a great job of editing it!

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him may’st rise;
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, Just.
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The cross taught all wood to resound his name
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.
Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or since all music is but three parts vied,
And multiplied;
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.
– George Herbert