a jo y f u l noi s e ~ Liturg y Arts Group
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After each intention, the group recites together, “Lord, hear our prayer.” This is how rehearsals begin each Wednesday afternoon for the Liturgy Arts Group, an 80-member organization formed in 1983. The group provides singing, instrumentation, and artistic accompaniment at Sunday night liturgies throughout the year and special campus events such as the Mass of the Holy Spirit and the Baccalaureate Mass. Members of the group also go forth from Chestnut Hill to sing and play Masses at destinations such as MCI-Framingham, a state prison, and a Boston children’s home. Making music is an expression of faith for these young musicians, who gain an evolving sense of their roles and potential roles as lay leaders in faith communities. Ask what they like about the Liturgy Arts Group, and the students will invariably talk about the community. “They minister to each other. They take care of each other. There’s a lot of friendship and camaraderie,” says Margaret Felice ’02, a former member who is now an associate director of the group, as well as a master’s student in the School of Theology and Ministry and the liturgical music director at Boston College High School. “This group has opened my eyes to what ministry is really about,” said Michael Morton ’11, an A&S communication major and treasurer of the Liturgy Arts Group, taking a break from the rehearsal with Clare Sweeney ’10.
A human development and English major in the Lynch School who is the group’s president, Sweeney added, “You don’t have to be a priest to be a leader at Mass. You could be anyone. You could be a singer.” Indeed, the Liturgy Arts Group aims to help students acquire skills that allow them to “plug into parishes back home” and elsewhere as liturgical arts leaders, says campus minister and group director Meyer Chambers. Catholic leadership today is open to increasing numbers of lay people, volunteers, and professionals who have different gifts to offer, he points out. “We give them the platform,” says Chambers, referring to the training and experience gained in liturgical ministry, “and they step up to it.” Sweeney stepped onto the platform while she was studying in Spain, in the fall of 2009. The church she attended in Madrid, which attracted a large international congregation, featured a choir that sang “so beautifully it made me cry,” she recalled. After one Mass, she mustered the courage to ask for an audition, and promptly took her place in that church’s music ministry for the remaining months of her stay abroad. Now Sweeney is ready to lead. She plans to do graduate study in speech pathology at the University of Virginia in her hometown, Charlottesville. She has already arranged to volunteer as music minister at the Dominican church that serves the university. 5
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