Putting our Alleluias away

In a couple of weeks it will be Lent.  I've been spending some time getting things together for the upcoming season, given that I have a small group of young choristers who need to be encouraged to look inquisitively on the spectacle in which they are a part from week to week.

Let's face it, the Church can either be dreadfully obscure and boring, or an enchanting place where all things seem possible.  It is frequently obscure on the very things that matter most.  Children interact with the world by asking why things are the way they are.  They already see things through the imagination.  Sadly, many people who have spent a while around churches find it difficult to deal with this.

So, I've been putting my mind to how young choristers might be able to see Lent in a positive way without slipping into solecism and focusing solely on the haberdashery.  Here are a couple of principles.

Lent should be viewed as something other than a time when we give things up.  The most liberating thing I was ever told about Lent is that it is a time for taking things up -- doing things that we might make excuses to avoid at other times of the year.  For instance, using the daily office, following a study program, doing a personal spot of moral weeding and so on.  You might resolve to stop mumbling about the things you've been disliking since Christmas, and either to do something to address the problem, or to just force yourself into taking a broader perspective.  The point is to use the season to move ourselves into a different -- slightly or radically different, as it may be -- way of seeing the world.  Without that, we can't really expect to understand what Easter is all about.

All the same, Lent does have a particular liturgical expression.  One of the most notable changes is the disappearance of the Gloria and the Alleluia.  It's one change that children will notice straight off, because suddenly they have to pay attention to what happens at the end of the second hymn.  Now I think about it, it's not only children who have that problem...

So the major point in helping choristers to appreciate the wonders of Lent is in drawing their attention to the way the time is used.  One side is the positive -- deliberately tackling something enriching.  Some tailored activities for during the sermon are in preparation on that front.

The other point to highlight is the missing elements of the service.  Lent can be a very dry, bleak season for many people.  Paradoxically, some of the richest music has been composed for Lent and Passiontide.  Now, we can't expect choruses from the St Matthew Passion (not this year!), but there are other ways of seeing the removal of joyful elements from the service in a different light.  We put these things away in order to refresh our sense of what joy is.

In the next couple of weeks, I'm going to distribute papers with the word ALLELUIA emblazoned in big letters.  Choristers, children, adults -- anyone who wants to -- will be invited to decorate their paper as elaborately as they can.  After mass on 6 March, the papers will be placed in a box.  They will remain there until Easter day, when we will bring them back out again.