Pope Emeritus Benedict Today: The Obvious Superiority of the Great Western Sacred Musical Heritage is a Convincing Proof of the Truth of Christianity

Click on the image for audio excerpts of the Emeritus Pope's Discourse

Yesterday Pope Benedict gave the following discourse in Italian while receiving a honoris causa doctorate from the Krakow University.

Your Emminence!
Your Magnificences!
Illustrious Professors!
Ladies and Gentlemen!

At this moment I cannot but express my greatest and cordial thankfulness for the honor which you have destined for me in conferring upon me the honorary doctorate. I thank the Chancellor, the dear Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, and the academic authorities of both universities. The fact especially gladdens me that this event deepens my relationship with Poland, with Krakow, the home of our great saint John Paul II. Because without him my spiritual and theological path would not even be imaginable. With his living example he has also shown us how the joy of great sacred music and the task of the common participation in the sacred liturgy can go hand-in-hand, solemn joy and the simplicity of the humble celebration of the faith.

In the post-Conciliar years a very old contrast was manifested with renewed passion in this matter. I myself grew up in Salzburg marked by the great tradition of that city. There it was a matter of course that the festive masses accompanied by the choir and orchestra were an integral part of our experience of faith in the celebration of the liturgy. It remains indelibly imprinted in my memory how, for example, from the sounding of the first notes of Mozart's Coronation Mass, the sky seemed almost to open up and you might taste very deeply the presence of the Lord. Next to this, however, the new reality of the Liturgical Movement was nonetheless already present, especially through one of our chaplains who later became vice-regent and then rector of the major seminary of Freising.

Later, during my studies in Munich, I increasingly entered very concretely into the Liturgical Movement through the lessons of Professor Pascher, one of the most important experts of the Council in the liturgy, and especially through the liturgical life in the seminary community. So gradually the tension between the participatio actuosa in conformity to the liturgy and the solemn music which enveloped the sacred action became perceptible, although I did not yet feel it so strongly.

In the Constitution on the Liturgy of Vatican II it is very clearly written that "The treasury of sacred music is to be preserved and cultivated with great care" (114). On the other hand, the text highlights that fundamental liturgical category, the participatio actuosa of all the faithful in the sacred action.

That which then in the Constitution is still peacefully together, in the implementation of the Council was often in a relationship of dramatic tension. Significant sectors of the Liturgical Movement believed that, for the great choral works and even for the masses for orchestra, in the future there would be room only in concert halls, not in the liturgy. Here there could be room only for the singing and the prayer in common of the faithful. On the other hand, there was shock at the cultural impoverishment of the Church that necessarily resulted from this. How to reconcile the two? How to implement the Council as a whole? These were the questions that were particularly striking to me and to many other believers, to simple people, no less than to persons in possession of a theological education.

At this point perhaps it is right to ask the basic question: What, in fact, is music? Where does it come from and to what is it directed?

I think you can locate three "places" from which music comes.

One of it's first wellsprings is the experience of love. When men were seized by love, there hatched for them another dimension of being, a new greatness and broadness of reality. And it also led them to express themselves in new ways. Poetry, singing and music in general are born from this having been struck, by this unfolding of a new dimension of life.

A second source of music is the experience of sadness, being touched by death, by pain and by the abysses of existence. Again they hatch, in the opposite direction, new dimensions of reality that can not be answered in speeches alone.

Finally, the third place of origin of music is the encounter with the divine, which from the beginning is part of what defines the human. A major reason is that here is the totally other and totally great that arouses in man new ways to express himself. Perhaps we can say that actually also in the other two areas - love and death - the mystery of God touches us and, in this sense, it is in the being touched by God which comprehensively constitutes the origin of music. I find it moving to see such how, for example, in the Psalms even singing is not enough for men, and they call on all the instruments: the hidden music of creation is awakened, its mysterious language. With the Psalter, in which the two reasons of love and death also operate, we find ourselves directly at the origin of the music of the Church of God. It can be said that the quality of the music depends on the purity and the greatness of the meeting with the divine, with the experience of love and of pain. The more pure and true that experience is, the more pure and great shall be the music which is born from it and develops.

At this point I would like to express a thought that has lately been captivating me ever more, the more the different cultures and religions come into relationship with one another. In the realm of the most diverse cultures and religions there is a great literature, a great architecture; a great painting and a great sculptural heritage. And everywhere there is also music. Yet no where else in the cultural field is there a music of a magnitude equal to that established in the context of the Christian faith: from Palestrina to Bach, Handel, up to Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner. Western music is something unique, which is unparalleled in other cultures. This should make us think.

Of course, Western music goes far beyond the field of religion and the Church. And yet it still finds its deepest source in the liturgy in the encounter with God. In Bach, for which the glory of God is ultimately the aim of all music, this is quite clear. The great and pure response of Western music has developed in the encounter with the God who, in the liturgy, is made ​​present to us in Jesus Christ. That music, for me, is a demonstration of the truth of Christianity. If you develop a response like that, you have met the truth, with the true creator of the world. For this reason, the great sacred music is a reality of theological rank and of permanent meaning for the faith of all Christianity, although it is not necessary that it be performed always and everywhere. On the other hand, however, it is also clear that it can not disappear from the liturgy and that its presence can be a special way of participating in the celebration of the sacred, in the mystery of faith.

If we think of the liturgy celebrated by Saint John Paul II in every continent, we see the full breadth of the expressive possibilities of the faith in the liturgical event; and we also see how the great music of Western tradition is not foreign to the liturgy, but was born and raised by it and in this way contributes anew to shape it. We do not know the future of our culture and sacred music. But one thing is clear: where the encounter with the living God really occurs, who in Christ comes to us, there is born and grows again the response, the beauty of which comes from the truth itself.

The activity of the two universities which confer on me this honorary doctorate represents an essential contribution so that the great gift of music that comes from the tradition of the Christian faith remains alive and should help to ensure that the creative force of faith is not extinguished in the future. For this I sincerely thank all of you, not only for the honor you have given me, but also for all the work you do at the service of the beauty of the faith.The Lord bless you all.