The prophet Elijah was on the brink of despair. God had demonstrated his power spectacularly on Mount Carmel, but now his life was in danger: Queen Jezebel, with the complicity of the majority of the Jewish people, was seeking him to put an end to him. “I alone am left and they seek to take my life,” he says, unburdening himself in his prayer while fleeing to a cave in the mountain (1 Kings 19:10). “Then the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-12). There, in that gentle breeze, Elijah recognises anew the presence of the Lord, and can resume his dialogue.
Our daily lives too are sometimes shaken by winds that we must face, earthquakes in which we must remain firm, or fires we must extinguish. At those times, it can be difficult to find calm and intimacy with God, the gentle breeze. “God’s voice does not impose itself; God’s voice is discreet, respectful — allow me to say, God’s voice is humble — and, for that reason, produces peace. And it is only in peace that we can enter profoundly into ourselves and recognize the authentic desires the Lord has placed in our hearts.”[1] Music is one of the paths towards that peace: not because it is itself the voice of God, but because it has the power to guide us towards the space within ourselves where we can, like Elijah, encounter the “breeze” of the divine.
A door to the depths
There are melodies that accompany us from the beginning of our existence. Already in the maternal womb we perceive the rhythm of our mother’s heartbeat, feel her lullabies and calming songs, and perhaps even hear the music our parents play for their own enjoyment. From the very first months of our lives, sound forms part of the maternal-filial bond and the identity we acquire. When a baby is born, the first thing it does is sing, with an intense cry, drawing out a single note. That cry is essential if the child is to begin breathing. Music and feelings are naturally connected. Music awakens our emotions, accompanies them, intensifies them, and even helps us to interpret them. “Music, great music, relaxes the mind, awakens profound sentiments and is, as it were, a natural invitation to raise one’s mind and heart to God in every situation of human existence, both joyful and sad. Music can become prayer.”[2]
It is unsurprising that, throughout the history of Israel, the people’s faith is often expressed through song. In the liberation from Egypt, the Jewish people responded to God’s action with music. They began to forge their memory and their identity in that song: “Thus Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done in Egypt... Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying: ‘I will sing to the Lord, For He has triumphed gloriously’” (Ex 14:31-15:1). Later, King David distilled his joys and tears, laments and loves, into the psalms that have been sung for centuries, up to our own times, in which the new People of God repeats them in the Holy Mass.
All forms of art are doors to knowing, understanding and loving the world, but music, perhaps because of our early contact with it, the simplicity with which we perceive it through hearing, and the way it stimulates our brain, directly questions our interiority. It urges us to search for the truth we intuit through sound. Music expresses “the interior dynamism of man’s existential self;” it opens a door to the deepest part of ourselves. This is what happened to Saint Augustine, as he recounts in his Confessions: “When I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of the Church in the early days of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved, not by the singing but by what is sung (when it is sung with a clear skillfully modulated voice), I acknowledge once more the great benefit of this practice.”[3]
Immediate access to almost any type of music is a very recent phenomenon that makes an emotional use of music possible. We can resort to it to intensify a state of mind, console ourselves, or escape for a moment, and thus attend to a real human need. However, that approach to music can make it a very ephemeral experience, reduced to producing short-lived reactions. In reality, music is capable of much more: it can move us profoundly, without manipulating our feelings; it can stir emotions without simplifying; it can open a space for meaning that goes beyond an immediate reaction. But this experience requires time, attention, and presence: an interior willingness to learn to let the work take its time, and an openness to listening also to what we don’t fully understand and what doesn’t move us right away.
Something that happens within
Music is present in different ways in our day-to-day lives: it motivates us to exercise, entertains us as we travel, helps us concentrate on specific tasks, and weaves the special closeness that comes from singing with family or friends. We can also find music to inspire us when we want to pray, in the liturgy or other contexts. In all of these scenarios, music is not something that happens only outside ourselves, but also takes place within.
Therefore, it is only natural to spend time thinking about what music we choose to allow into our interior. Music is not just background accompaniment: the lyrics we listen to and the melodies that envelop us can shape our affections, our way of seeing the world, our approach to relationships with others, and even our perception of God. “Music is also a path to encounter God, because beauty arises from God’s beauty and elevates the soul,” the Prelate of Opus Dei said in Lima, Peru, talking to a member of a rock band at a gathering with families. “In the beauty of music, we get a glimpse of God’s infinite beauty.”[4]
Over the centuries, the Church’s tradition has developed abundant musical wealth to help Christians, and many other people, draw closer to God. It is “a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art. The main reason for this pre-eminence is that, as sacred song united to the words, it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy.”[5] Song has long been a fundamental element in liturgical celebrations, from the Old Covenant to the great works left by renowned composers and the immense richness of the Gregorian tradition. The Church continues to encourage her children to appreciate this way of relating to God.[6]
But we do not need to be in a liturgical context or listening to explicitly spiritual songs to find God in music. A heart in love recognises God in lyrics that refer to love, disappointment, suffering, hope, and beginning again after a fall. Saint Josemaría often used popular song played in the music festivals of his time even for prayer, putting himself in the place of the lover singing each verse to God: “As I have often told you, and I don't care who knows it, I have also used the words of popular songs, that almost always treat of love, to keep up my conversation with Our Lord. I like them, I really do.”[7]
Saint Josemaría describes the ideal of a life “made up of verses of human love” for God.[8] This ideal requires not only transcending the threshold of immediate emotions, but also that of frivolity. Sometimes, beyond the inevitable exposure to superficial songs, we find ourselves consuming music that distorts the value of people and relationships. It is, therefore, important to discern whether the music we hear anaesthetises our capacity to relate to others and distorts our dignity as sons and daughters of God, or whether, on the contrary, it favours authentic communion with others. Listening to good music is a way of preparing ourselves to “listen to life” more deeply, not closed in on ourselves, letting beauty touch our heart and keep it aflame. That kind of listening is good training for contemplation.
Silence makes space for the melody
Imagine a concert hall in which, upon entering, we hear people talking, some coughing, a great deal of laughter… Then a bell rings, signaling that the concert is about to begin. The audience falls silent in quiet expectation, their senses preparing to take in the melody the orchestra is going to perform. We are not just getting ready to hear something, but opening all our faculties to an experience that involves our full being and that we touch the deepest fibres of the heart. At the end of a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, Pope Benedict XVI remarked that, “in a way, through sound, music leads us to another world and harmonises our interior. In thus finding a moment of peace, we see, as if from a height, the mysterious realities that man tries to decipher and which the light of faith helps us to understand better.”[9]
Our heart is like that concert hall, and we need times of silence to be able to hear the sounds of our life. Each note and melody is important, but we have to learn to pause in order to decipher the meaning those sounds express; to listen to them in connection with the work as a whole. Just as music requires silence, we too need it to experience, understand, and care for our interiority. Silence makes space for the melody, and also for the unfolding of our interior lives:[10] only with silence can we find our truth, God’s liberating truth.
Furthermore, when we discover the value of silence, music also becomes a path of listening. It tunes our heart to perceive what the noise of the world and our own interior noise sometimes prevents us from seeing. “The Word speaks, but He also keeps silent and listens, like a newborn baby,” the Prelate of Opus Dei wrote several years ago. “As He did in the temple, there are many more episodes where Jesus again keeps silent and listens: when He writes on the ground while being questioned by those who wish to stone the sinful woman; on the mountain when He prays in silence to his Father; when He is nailed to the Cross... And also today, in the Eucharist, Jesus continues to listen to our words.”[11]
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“I am convinced,” Pope Benedict XVI once said, “that music (...) really is the universal language of beauty which can bring together all people of good will on earth and get them to lift their gaze on high and open themselves to the Absolute Good and Beauty whose ultimate source is God Himself.”[12] In a world in which familiarity quickly turns into routine and algorithms enclose us in uniformity disguised as novelty; in an era in which unfamiliarity leads to fear, music invites us to pause, listen attentively, and notice what we usually miss: that there is always more beauty for us to discover. Something within us awakens before a new melody or the well-placed silence between the notes. Music breaks the armour of habit and uniformity, and invites us to look at the world with new eyes. That is the very essence of wonder: an inner disposition that allows us to marvel at the most ordinary things and an inner ear that allows us to distinguish the “gentle breeze” of God's voice.
[1] Pope Francis, General audience, 21-XII-2022.
[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Address at the end of a concert, 17-X-2009.
[3] Saint Augustine, Confessions, X, 33.
[4] Msgr. F. Ocáriz, Gathering with families in Lima, Peru, 4-VIII-2024.
[5] Vatican Council II, Sacrosantum concilium, no. 112.
[6] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1156.
[7] Saint Josemaría, Friends of God, no. 184.
[8] Saint Josemaría, The Forge, no. 435.
[9] Pope Benedict XVI, Address at the end of a concert, 18-XI-2006.
[10] Cf. Saint Josemaría, The Way, no. 281, on silence as the “door-keeper of the interior life.”
[11] Msgr. F. Ocáriz, In the Light of the Gospel, “Listening: Silence in Action,” 20-II-2020.
[12] Pope Benedict XVI, Address after a concert for his 80th birthday, 16-IV-2007.