St Cecilia's Day, St Paul's Cathedral

“What can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

2 Cor 4.18

We don’t know a lot about St Cecilia. She was probably martyred in the second or third century. It was said that ‘she sang’ as she was dying a cruel death and so she became the patron saint of music.

Much poetry and music has been composed in her honour, as was the anthem by Marenzio which the choir sang before the prayers: ‘While playing the organ, the virgin Cecilia sang in her heart’.

Benjamin Britten was born on St Cecilia’s day 99 years ago and composed his Hymn to St Cecilia with words by WH Auden.

Many of you will remember the former Dean of Westminster, Michael Mayne, who in his book, Learning to Dance, (DLT, 2001) suggests three abilities of the artist or musician:

• they can show us what the world discloses when we learn to give it our full attention
•  they can remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent
•  and they can enable us, in WH Auden’s phrase, ‘to break bread with the dead’.

In other words, artists and musicians use: the natural world; the spiritual realm; and our collective memory - to give us a deeper understanding and a different perspective on the here and now.

How often I’ve come here to Evensong with many things weighing on my mind, and after sitting quietly before God, listening to Scripture and bathed in the music of the centuries, I regain my spiritual balance and can again take the long view of life, the universe and everything.

God and music are very much tied up together in my own life and vocation, which is probably true for many Christians, and indeed people of many faiths.

So St Cecilia became a catalyst for reflecting on how the gift of music nurtures our faith and helps to bring integrity and wholeness to our lives.

Let’s go back to those three suggestions of Michael Mayne and apply them to the role of music in Christian life.

Music can show us what the world discloses when we learn to give it our full attention.

Much poetry and music contemplates the wonders of creation – think of Haydn “the heavens are telling the glory of God”.

And this contemplation of nature and the beauty of human ingenuity – such as music and poetry -  can point to their divine Initiator if we will listen to our hearts.

CS Lewis died on St Cecilia’s Day 49 years ago, the same day the President Kennedy was assassinated.

He takes up this point and echoes the warning of St Paul not to worship the creature rather than the creator:

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing... They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (The Weight of Glory, SPCK, 1954, p8)

Music can also “remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent” – to use Michael Mayne’s second phrase.

Music has a remarkable ability to transport us beyond ourselves, whether it is Faure’s Requiem or dancing to industrial techno. It gives us glimpses of what could be, hints of the divine, immortal longings.

Soon it will be advent and Christmas and the song of the Church will be the coming of Jesus Christ.

It will wonder that the fabric of the temporal world has been ripped apart by the birth of a baby. The virgin conceives; the supernatural invades the natural; the dawn from on high breaks among us and John preaches that Jesus will baptise, not with natural water, but with the transcendent fire of the Spirit.

Finally, in Michael Mayne’s third point, music allows us to ‘break bread with the dead’ as Auden puts it.

In the Roman Catholic canon of the mass, there is Saint Cecilia, mentioned by name for over a thousand years and still today.

I can never forget the first time I presided at a Solemn Requiem for a dear friend: the coffin in the middle of the church, the unbleached candles, and the Duruflé Requiem with choir and orchestra. The veil between heaven and earth was very thin.

Here, at this Table, we break bread with the dead day by day: with the innumerable company of the saints all gathered around the altar. We take the bread and the wine and remember Jesus, the centre of all history and the focal point of the human race.

And not only the poetry of the liturgy, but the power of the music draws us deeper into the unseen world of the love of God shown to us in our Lord Jesus Christ.

“What can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” 2 Cor 4.18