Saturday, September 29, 2012

The Annual Investiture Mass

On Thursday September 27th we celebrated our annual Investiture of the Choristers. Below is found the full text of Monsignor Mayo's Homily:

Dear Friends,

Today with the church throughout the world we celebrate the witness and work of St. Vincent de Paul, who with great apostolic courage worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor. Vincent is remembered in several places in our cathedral: He is numbered among the New Testament Saints found on the West Mural in the Apse and he is in the stained glass of the East transept window in the 9 o’ clock position. In both cases, he is depicted as cradling an infant in his arms, recalling his particular service to countless orphans and abandoned infants.

Remembering Vincent de Paul today could not be more appropriate. In yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune we read the staggering news that 13.5% of Utah’s population is living in poverty, and the even more troubling news of a heavily populated county where one out every four children are living below the poverty line.

The advocacy organization KIDSCOUNT recently reported that between the years 2005 and 2010 the number of children living below the poverty line in Utah rose a shocking 45%: from 11% in 2005 to 16% in 2010.

These figures come from a very prosperous nation and don’t begin to account for the ongoing tragedy that is the lives of some many fellow human beings: slums in all of the world’s major cities are rapidly on the rise, and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow, prompting our Holy Father Pope Benedict to write extensively about this issue in his latest Encyclical letter to all of the world’s bishops.

St. Vincent took a different path in following the Lord Jesus. In hearing the gospel, Vincent became painfully aware that the Lord was present in the poor and that we, as his disciples must always be involved in immediately giving them comfort and finding broader systemic solutions to economic policies and practices that keep people trapped in poverty. Vincent recognized that to be a Christian, service to the poor is not a nice thing that one does occasionally: it is an essential practice that is regular, sacrificial and ordinary. St. Vincent wrote that “…we must try to be moved by our neighbor’s worries and distress. We must beg God to pour into our hearts the thoughts and feelings of mercy and compassion, and to fill our hearts again and again with these thoughts and attitudes.”

Our first reading today highlights the unusual path that Vincent followed: perhaps not wise by human standards, nor powerful nor ranking among the noble and proud of society. In our Gospel we read of Jesus of Nazareth being moved with pity at the sight of the crowds – the very heart of our own Lord broken upon seeing the difficult circumstances of so many and calling his disciples to work on their behalf. St. Vincent answered that call.

Dear Choristers, all of this is by no means disconnected from your service in this Cathedral Church. You are in fact the Royal and Priestly Choir of the Poor: you serve all who come to this place for comfort in grief, to mourn the loss of loved ones, anxious about the loss of employment or a home, trapped in homelessness, and more. You are not the musicians of the elite concert hall for the aesthetically sophisticated or the extravagant performance house open only to those of means and social status.

No: you are the musicians and servers in the Temple of the Great King and our Great High Priest, the one who emptied himself, who in his birth became poor, born in a feeding trough among animals in a barn; the God who became small and vulnerable for us. His birth, life, teaching, death and resurrection invite all of us to open our hearts – to change – to see in a greater concern for the poor the answer. It won’t be another economic system, or bureaucratic institution or political party: the solution will only come in the changed hearts of those who have encountered the Lord and now live not only for themselves but for others, and recognize the solidarity they share with all human life on this earth.

Boys and Girls you are remarkable and dedicated servants of this great King. We here today and so many others are the beneficiaries of your commitment and excellent service. Your service and music-making advances the subversive and still misunderstood message of Jesus of Nazareth, a message embraced by St. Vincent de Paul, and a call to both you and me to always seek first God’s Kingdom, to be agents of God’s great mercy, and to recognize and serve our loving and saving God in those who are poor.



Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Coming Soon!


A new CD recording of the musicians from the Cathedral and Choir School is just about to be released featuring the best of our live concert performances from the 2011-2012 season. Watch for details on the release in the coming weeks!

Monday, September 17, 2012


The Annual Bishop's Dinner to benefit the Cathedral is scheduled to take place this Thursday evening, September 21st at the Grand America Hotel. This is an important evening of support for our Cathedral Church. If you are interested in participating, contact Laurel Dokos at ldokos@utcotm.org or visit the Cathedral's website at www.utcotm.org.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Choirs return to their service


On Sunday September 9th, the Choirs of the Cathedral of the Madeleine and the Madeleine Choir School return to regular service at the Sunday 1100 AM Mass and the Daily 515 PM Masses Monday through Thursday.

This Sunday, the boys and men will sing music of William Byrd, G. P. da Palestrina and Johann Fux.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

A Visitor from Rome

Today we had a special visitor come to all of the classes of the Choir School. Christopher Gray, an alumnus of the Choir School and a Seminarian for the Diocese of Salt Lake City studying in Rome stopped by on his last day in the states: he leaves for Rome Thursday morning to begin a final year of preparations prior to ordination.

On October 4, Christopher will be ordained a Deacon in the Vatican Basilica, and on June 29, he will be ordained a Priest in the Cathedral of the Madeleine by Bishop John Wester.

Our community will keep Christopher in our thoughts and prayers as he enters these final months prior to ordination. Christopher is the first alumnus of the Choir School to enter priestly or religious life.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

We're Back!


Mr. Glenn's Back to School Address...

The Madeleine Choir School is a Catholic School. One part of the work of the Cathedral Church, the Choir School is under the leadership of Bishop John Wester, the Ninth Bishop of Salt Lake City who serves in communion with Pope Benedict XVI. The Choir School is a community of learners comprised of Catholics and Non-Catholics, persons of other religious traditions or of no religious practice at all. Every family and individual here is a welcomed and valued member of this community.

As the Catholic Church throughout these many centuries, we have not always been at our best. It does not require probing historical scholarship to identify some pretty serious mishaps along the years. We sometimes lose our focus, forget what is most important and can get seriously off track.

Today, August 28th our church recalls a particular saint – a fourth century African by the name of Augustine. Today is St. Augustine’s day – St. Augustine is found in the great window of the west transept of the cathedral at the 6:00 position. You can’t miss him – he is a bearded saint, with the vesture of a Bishop, holding a heart; but not just any heart: Augustine is holding a burning heart.

Augustine is remembered as a passionate seeker of the truth, in a sense desperate to know the ultimate meaning and purpose for human existence, and struggling to live his life in an authentically human manner. He had a slightly overbearing Catholic mother – perhaps a fourth century power mom. He did not have particular interest in her faith, so his search began. He became an avid student of philosophy, and was quickly absorbed by the works of Plato and their exploration of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. In the end, Plato still did not satisfy Augustine’s search for truth and happiness.

He travelled to the vast city of Carthage – a North African Las Vegas – what happened in Carthage supposedly stayed in Carthage – and Augustine sought human happiness in sensual pleasure. Again, he found that in the great pleasures of the human body ultimate answers about human life and purpose were not found.

He travelled to Milan, and there encountered the preaching of St. Ambrose about Jesus Christ. Augustine then found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the beginning of an answer. It was in this individual who taught about mercy, forgiveness, the gift of self, and the most important human mandate: the call to love – that things began to make sense for Augustine.

Augustine, who wrote one of the great classics of western literature, The Confessions, focused the rest of his life on this mandate to love. His later teaching about morality and ethics was conveyed as the Ordo amoris or the right ordering of love.

Let’s face it, when we get things screwed up as a church, or as a school or as individuals, it is when we get our loves out of order. When we adore things or possessions, or when we adore other people rather than loving them as ourselves. Getting our loves rightly ordered is how we get this human enterprise moving in the right direction.

So what will keep our community of learners at the Choir School on the right track? The Choir School, like all human communities, is not a fantasyland. There will be hiccups, missteps, disagreements with other parents, some adversity, and more. While we strive for excellence and will always respond in the best possible way to any concerns you have, we all need to rightly order our loves as we work together on behalf of these incredible children and young people.

Let’s work to strengthen our community by kindness, by forgiveness and forbearance, by the extension of mercy and compassion, by building each other up rather than tearing each other down, by the engagement of open hearts and open minds. We are a community responsible for the formation of these young people, and we will form them well if we rightly order our loves.

How does this love manifest itself today in the learning community at the Choir School? Certainly in our teaching – in our preparation of these young people – in our expansion of their hearts and minds through the arts and literature, in their knowledge of history, in their mastery of science and mathematics, in the nobility of their souls, in their commitment to the common good, and respect for the dignity of all human life.

Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI recently addressed the Bishops of the United States about the great work of Catholic Schools. He said this:

“In every aspect of their education, students need to be encouraged to articulate a vision of the harmony of faith and reason capable of guiding a life-long pursuit of knowledge and virtue. In a period of great cultural change and societal displacement not unlike our own, Augustine pointed to this intrinsic connection between faith and the human intellectual enterprise by appealing to Plato, who held, he says, that ‘to love wisdom is to love God’. The Christian commitment to learning, which gave birth to the medieval universities, was based upon this conviction that the one God, as the source of all truth and goodness, is likewise the source of the intellect’s passionate desire to know and the will’s yearning for fulfillment in love.”

Together with you, we are charged with forming these young people to be authentically human, to engage the culture and be agents of positive change. Through their personal character, academic skills and moral life, it is the hope of this community of learners that our graduates will be rightly ordered in their loves.

And so, by our words, our actions, our participation in school activities and in the academic and character development of these children, this small community can be the progenitor of very positive and effective change, further building a civilization of love and extending God’s rich mercy to all.

We are embarking on a great adventure – let’s do so working together, and let’s have a great year at The Madeleine Choir School.