After a wonderful lecture tonight by Fr. Z, a student asked the most fruitful question: which is better at Mass, silence or music? The lecturer, as one would expect, offered an excellent response more learned than anything I could muster. But I offer the following thoughts in tribute to my dear friend Peter Kwasniewski.
Silences comes in many shapes. There is a silence of despair; there is the sudden silence at a beautiful sunset; there is a silence of awe; there is a silence of confusion and confuddlement; there is a silence of intimacy and closeness. Of the many shapes of silence, some are appropriate at Mass and some are not.
What defines a silence are the noises around it, as a frame defines a door. The silence one hears just after a crash and just before a scream is defined by the crash and the scream. The silence that comes after Gregorian chant and before the priest’s sacred announcement is defined by the music before it and the words following.
So in the end, one cannot choose between music and silence, because music is what defines the silence as this kind of silence rather than that. One may as well ask whether we should prefer the silhouette or the white paper around it.
When I am at a high-entertainment Mass with guitars and yodeling music, the silence between the sounds has a definite and nameable character: it is dead time. It is the silence we hear between acts.
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Peter has promised that he will write more someday about silence and liturgy, so I gladly donate to his work any “rights” to the content of this post.
