Two performances to be offered in March
A longtime Lenten devotional concert is stepping into new territory with an expanded choir featuring singers from across the archdiocese.
The 40-member choir representing several parishes will offer two performances of “The Way of the Cross” in March through a collaboration with the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.
The concert features a mixture of music — everything from Mozart to Taizé — for each of the 14 stations intertwined with narrated reflections written by Paige Byrne Shortal, a longtime and now retired choir director at St. Francis Borgia Parish in Washington.
The choir at St. Francis Borgia has been performing the devotional concert in Lent since the mid-1990s; a similar version was performed at St. Francis Xavier (College) Church when Byrne Shortal was there in the 1980s.
The reflections make a connection between Christ’s suffering and the suffering of the modern world. For example, the fourth station (Jesus encounters His mother) is sung from a mother’s point of view and relates her experience of great loss to the losses each of us experiences today.
“It puts you in the right mindset for Lent and a deeper understanding of what Jesus went through and what He sacrificed for us,” said Katie Alexander, St. Francis Borgia’s choir director. “It’s finding that connection in a world where it’s very hard to do that — it’s a very distracting world.”
Byrne Shortal connected with Dawn Riske of the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians to sponsor the concert and open the choir to other singers. Orin Johnson, director of music and liturgy at St. Margaret of Scotland Parish in St. Louis, is stepping in to direct the performances.
One of Johnson’s compositions, “Remembering Home,” will accompany the 11th station (Jesus is nailed to the cross) and pairs two songs of exile — the Israelites’ lament from their exile in Babylon in Psalm 137, and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” a traditional African-American spiritual dating back to Civil War times. The narration references a sense of longing for home.
“Christ’s fall is our fall … that body of Christ is our body of Christ,” Johnson said. “We live everything as Christ lived, and Christ lived everything — except for sin — as we lived, and it’s trying to help folks make that connection to their faith life and spirituality.”
Byrne Shortal noted several members of the choir recently lost their spouses and others have experienced other types of loss. Their participation makes the performances more meaningful, with some describing that “it’s what makes Lent for people,” she said.
Riske, director of music ministries at Christ the King in University City, said that she sees the performances as an example and sign of hope in the local Church since All Things New.
“There are opportunities for something new to come out of the changes, and it’s that Body of Christ that’s coming together in whatever format — and it’s new,” she said. “But you can go, all right, I’m just done with this, or let’s see what we can do with what we have. It’s the hope out of All Things New.”
“There’s an energy in this group of people who are forming a community of prayer and song,” Johnson said. “It’s a faith sharing community that is going to exist for these three, four moments in time in this unique way and never exactly like this ever again. There’s something profound and exciting just pondering that.”
Stations of the Cross concert
WHAT: “The Way of the Cross: A Concert Prayer of the Stations of the Cross,” featuring performers throughout the Archdiocese of St. Louis and directed by Orin Johnson
WHEN/WHERE: 3 p.m. Sunday, March 9 at Mary Mother of the Church, 5901 Kerth Road in south St. Louis County (Zoe Vonder Haar of St. Margaret of Scotland Parish will narrate); and 3 p.m. Sunday, March 16, at Most Sacred Heart, 350 E. 4th St. in Eureka (Pastor Father Joe Kempf will narrate)
MORE INFO: Admission is free, and a freewill offering will be accepted. Sponsored by the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians
