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Kansas City, Mo., May 3, 2018 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A newly-released album by a chart-topping community of Benedictine nuns in rural Missouri is devoted to the hearts of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but is dedicated in a particular way to Saint Joseph’s paternity.

“St. Joseph has shown himself a father to us very poignantly in recent months, both spiritually and temporally, so this CD is our little votive to his paternal heart,” Mother Cecilia, prioress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, told CNA.

The Hearts of Jesus, Mary & Joseph at Ephesus was released to coincide with the May 1 feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Funds from the sale of the album will support the construction of the expanding community’s priory church, which has $2 million remaining.

The album can be purchased from the nuns’ website at https://music.benedictinesofmary.org/ or at Amazon. Digital copies are available from iTunes.

Construction of the priory church.

Mother Cecilia reflected that “Devotion to the Pure Heart of St. Joseph seems to be burgeoning in popular piety as connected with the Two Hearts. While there have not yet been official approbations of its explicit revelations … there is nevertheless a strong case in favor of this general devotion especially in the addresses of out recent popes.”

“The heart being the symbol of love and of conformity to the Divine Will, and St. Joseph being the patron of the Universal Church, it seems an apt devotion especially in our times amidst a crisis of fatherhood.”

She added that the theme of the album was suggested by Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect emeritus of the Apostolic Signatura, who was leading a retreat at the priory.

The cardinal “asked about a recording, to which I replied that we had thought of doing one in honor of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, but were torn since we had also promised one to St. Joseph,” Mother Cecilia recounted. “His Eminence turned to us and said simply, ‘You know what you should do is one to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the most Pure Heart of St. Joseph.’ The Sisters spontaneously broke into applause at the direct answer to the dilemma.”

The album includes 22 tracks, eight of which are original pieces.

One of the original compositions, “Hymn to the Three Hearts”, is by a guest composer, Lisa Nardi, who was introduced to the community’s music through her classical radio station, WQXR. The song includes lyrics written by the sisters at the priory.

“She was so taken by what she heard, that she reached out to us with a proposition to compose a piece for a future recording,” explained Mother Cecilia. “We happily took her up on her kind offer after hearing some of her other works, which were beautiful.”

The Sacred Heart of Jesus, being the oldest of the three devotions – revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 1670s – included on the album, has a great deal of music dedicated to it, the prioress said.

“We had a hard time narrowing down which songs to do. We included our originals, ‘For Love of Me’ and ‘The Heart of the Infant King.’ The lyrics of the former was actually a poem by St. Alphonsus, and the latter by one of our Sisters, who had just read the writings of Mother Louise Margaret de la Touche, author of The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood. We included a hymn by the great American champion of Gregorian chant, Dr. Theodore Marier, who wrote a very moving hymn to the Sacred Heart in his days at Manhattanville, and the well-known ‘Cor Dulce’ with propers of the Mass.”

Hymns to the Immaculate Heart of Mary “were a little more sparse,” she said. Among those chosen for inclusion on the album is “I Am Thine”, an original which has been sung at profession and investitures at the priory, “so it is very much beloved by our community.” The ‘Sub Tuum’ “was a challenging piece by Charpentier,” a French baroque composer. It is one of the community’s “first ventures” into music of that era, “but one we enjoyed very much.”

“We had an original, ‘The Blessed Heart,’ written 2006 in memory of a seventeen-year-old young lady who was to join us, but suffered a stroke shortly before her entrance at the age of seventeen,” Mother Cecilia added.

Mother Cecilia said the nuns “were a little dismayed by the generally narrow repertoire of Hymns to St. Joseph, especially songs that mentioned his heart, so sought to remedy the situation!”

The community has sung the “Hymn to St. Joseph” every Wednesday since 2007. And “Blessed Be St. Joseph” is an “entirely new piece,” the chorus of which was inspired by the invitatory for the feast of St. Joseph. The song’s verses “came from Fr. Olier’s prayer quoted by St. Peter Julian Eymard in his Month of St. Joseph,” Mother Cecilia explained. “Fr. Olier had a profound influence on St. Louis Marie de Montfort, and it was really a delight to set such beautiful words to new music.”

Life in the community is marked by obedience, stability, and “continually turning” towards God. They have Mass daily according to the extraordinary form, and chant the psalms eight times a day from the 1962 Monastic Office.

The nuns also support themselves by producing made-to-order vestments, as well as greeting cards.

Though the community practices limited enclosure, their music albums have brought them international renown and popularity – they have been Billboard’s Best-Selling Classical Traditional Artist several years in a row, and their albums have topped Billboard’s Top Traditional Classical Albums.

Sales of The Hearts of Jesus, Mary & Joseph at Ephesus will support construction of the priory church, which was begun in May 2017, and is due to be completed in September.

“In two short years, we have been blessed to raise $4 million dollars in funding, but we still have about $2 million left to go,” Mother Cecilia said. “We have great confidence that St. Joseph, to whom we entrusted the entire project, will see it through to the end, inspiring souls to assist us in raising this last amount.”

[…]

Washington D.C., Jun 13, 2019 / 03:09 pm (CNA).- Faculty at US seminaries have emphasized that spiritual fatherhood is an essential component of priestly identity, amid calls in some corners for priests not to be referred to as “Father”.

“Priests [are] like the father of a family – the spiritual family of the Church. It [is] a reminder to priests that they [are] to be like a father to a family,” said Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, O.P., chair of the pastoral studies department at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, Calif.

The priest “exercises authority in a paternal that is a loving way and does so in a way in which God the Father himself exercises his authority over creation, that is, out of love,” he told CNA.

Cardinal John Dew of Wellington has said he no longer wants to be called “Father”, but “John”, suggesting that dropping the title Father could combat clericalism: “All I am trying to do is get guys to look at what clericalism might look like and what attitudes might need to change.”

Cardinal Dew, who in an Oct. 4, 2005 intervention at the Synod on the Eucharist suggested that the divorced-and-remarried could be admitted to sacramental Communion, cited an article by a French priest written in La Croix International suggesting that not using “Father” could “transform” the Church amid the clerical abuse crisis.

The New Zealander cardinal also noted the increasingly egalitarian aspect of society.

By contrast, the Second Vatican Council’s decree on the ministry and life of priests, Presbyterorum ordinis, while acknowledging priests’ role as disciples of the Lord in common with all the faithful, emphasized that “priests of the New Testament … exercise the most outstanding and necessary office of father and teacher among and for the People of God.”

The Vatican II document added that the faithful “should realize their obligations to their priests, and with filial love they should follow them as their pastors and fathers.”

And the newest edition of the Congregation for the Clergy’s ratio fundamentalis on priesthood – which was issued in 2016 and guides priestly formation around the world – noted that priests are called “to exercise a true spiritual fatherhood in the communities entrusted to them,” and that the priest should exercise “his pastoral responsibility with humility as an authoritative leader, teacher of the Word and minister of the sacraments, practising his spiritual fatherhood fruitfully.”

“Consequently, future priests should be educated so that they do not become prey to ‘clericalism’, nor yield to the temptation of modelling their lives on the search for popular consensus. This would inevitably lead them to fall short in exercising their ministry and leaders of the community, leading them to think about the Church as a merely human institution,” the ratio continued.

Neither Presbyterorum ordinis nor the ratio called for or suggested that priests no longer to be called “Father”.

Father John Kartje, rector of Mundelein Seminary outside of Chicago, told CNA that referring to a priest as “father” was first seen in the epistles of St. Paul, who identified himself as a father to the new believers of the Church in Corinth.

He said the use of the word ‘father’ is not meant to express tyrannical authority or abuse of power, but it is to be used as it was by St. Paul.

“The Church of Corinth was a Church that [Paul] founded. I think it was a Church of great endearment to his own heart and he refers to them as his beloved children. He writes in verse 15: ‘Even if you should have countless guides to Christ, you do not have any fathers, for I became your father.’”

“It’s a term of endearment and affection that [St. Paul] really cares for these people, but also that he does provide them with a servant leadership,” Fr. Kartje said.

He also said that in the early centuries of the Church bishops were referred to as “papa” and abbots of monasteries were referred to as “abba”, both of which are forms of “father”.

Fr. Pietrzyk said a priest is a spiritual leader of the community. He said authority is part of the Church and scripture, but it is not despotic ascendancy. As seen in Christ’s washing of the apostles’ feet, he said it is exercised paternally and lovingly.

“Christ tells his disciples on more than one occasion that they are to exercise authority… but he reminds them that they are not to exercise that authority in a way that lords it over the people,” he said.

“The apostles exercise authority, but they do it in a way different from the world, different from civil authorities. They do it out of service to the people of God. I agree with the cardinal [that] that needs to be at the forefront of the bishop’s understanding, but you don’t do that by not calling yourself father. You do that by being a father.”

Fr. Pietrzyk noted that St. Patrick’s Seminary renewed its curriculum recently. In doing so, the faculty compiled a list of characteristics to emphasize in priestly formation.

Spiritual fatherhood was at the top of the list.

“At St. Patrick’s Seminary, our primary goal in forming men to be priests is forming them to be spiritual fathers. It runs in everything that we do. That means they are fathers, that they exercise authority within a family, but they do so mindful always of the spiritual good.”

[…]

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