my earliest introduction to the church bigger than the enlightenment congregationalism of walnut street baptist, a severely georgian building filled with the hymns of watts and, at least in the evenings or wednesdays, of crosby, was in the modestly romanesque blessed sacrament (roman catholic) church. at walnut street the choir entertained us with anthems and contatas by handel and stainer, standing up front behind the pulpit and in front of the baptistry, all the while attired in robes that coordinated well with the adam green walls. at blessed sacrament the choir was invisible, but filled the dark red brick space with ethereal, heavenly, music that wounds its way amongst the plaster virgin and attendent saints to join the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven in one great hymn of unending praise.
i knew this was holy music because on the christmas eves i attended midnight mass at blessed sacrament, snow would be falling when we left in obedience to "ite. missa est. alleluia."
that music was of course gregorian chant, not written by pope st. gregory the great (ca. 540-604) but developed and systemized and encouraged by him.
these days neither gregorian chant nor gregory the man are so widely appreciated as they were from the time he, among other achievements, saved rome from the lombards, until my childhood, a period of thirteen and a half centuries.
it is about this change of attitude towards gregory that is so much of and so representative of our "modern thought" that occupies my meditation in the night watches early in the morning of his feast.
he really did exhibit in his own life the humility that let him honestly call himself the servant of the servants of god, yet he exercised the office of the roman papacy in a way that tenaciously upheld the primacy of the roman see. he did this largely because he had been an ambassador, the apocrisiarius, of pelagius ii to constantinople and was convinced that the eastern empire was hopelessly decadent.
he was very successful in strengthening the church in spain, baul, and north italy. he encouraged the spread of benedictine monasticism. he was most successful in the conversion of the english, sending augustine with forty monks from his own monastery.
his writing was extremely influential, ranging from topics such as his "liber regulae pastoralis," which described his vision of the pastoral life of a bishop, the pastor of souls, to the organization of the entire roman catholic order and worship, which in part continues even after vatican ii.
i cannot imagine a contemporary movie about gregory which would not introduce the necessary jungian, neo-gnostic darkside which we would assume for the pontiff. we just do not make movies with heroic early medaeval popes. we are so profoundly anti-nomian that the world "regulae"--rules--of pastoring is an immediate turn off.
yet gregory was only taking seriously what jesus had said. "no one can serve two masters," and he recognized thirteen centuries before dylan that "everybody has to serve someone."
we often, it seems, pretend that this is not true. few of us any more pray each day the "collect for peace" from gregory's sacramentory (no. 1345), describing god as the "author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom." (the original latin is more vivid and terse: "whom to know is to live, whom to serve is to reign.:)
rather we prefer what we sometimes call, oxymoronically, "chaos theory." after all, it releaves us from any nagging feeling that we should pick up our bedroom. but, to continue with the words of gregory's collects, we are left not only at the merch of "our unruly wills," (no. 1120), but abandoned to the "fear of any adversaries."
so i wonder, as i lie fearlessly and snugly in my bed this cold lenten morning (lent may mean spring, but it's a mostly cold spring so far), whether i have any of gregory's many writings. i find i have only this one lenten hymn, no longer set to gregorian chant:
"O Kind Creator, bow thine ear
to mark the cry, to know the tear
before thy throne of mercy spent
in this thy holy fast of Lent.
Our hearts are open, Lord, to thee:
thou knowest our infirmity;
pour out on all who seek thy face
abundance of thy pardoning grace.
Our sins are many, this we know;
spare us, good Lord, thy mercy show;
and for the honor of thy name
our fainting souls to life reclaim.
Give us the self-control that springs
from discipline of outward things,
that fasting inward secretly
the soul may purely dwell with thee.
We pray thee, Holy Trinity,
one God, unchanging Unity,
that we from this our abstinence
may reap the fruits of penitence."
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Words: attributed to Gregory the Great, sixth century;
trans. Thomas Alexander Lacey, 1906
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