16 Hymns

 We are now settling into the community of our second church in the Algarve. When we first moved here, we struck gold on our very first Sunday, having tried and failed to find a suitable church for several years. Luz had a beautiful church in a wonderful setting, a lovely English Anglican priest, a group of people who were impressively welcoming, and even a very passable choir. This was one of happiest discoveries of what I came to name Genesis week, our first frenetic week here.

 

Luz only had two challenges, and we could have (and might still) return and accept them. The first challenge was location, nearly an hour’s drive from our home. With a midweek rehearsal, we could spend up to four hours per week on the road there and back. The second challenge was the Anglican liturgy, a shame in what is after all a predominantly Catholic country.

 

 So I, and especially my wife, were very happy around easter time when we heard of a Catholic church, twety minutes drive from home, offering a community a weekly mass in English. Kudos to the local clergy, who try hard to embrace an unfamiliar second language to support a community. We have been worshipping there ever since, quirts and all.

 

This new church (for us) is also in a lovely setting and has a beautiful historic building. In common with most such churches, there had been previous attempts at English-speaking masses, but these were stymied and usually wiped out by the pandemic. It is only in the last eighteen months or so that some churches have been able to start rebuilding. There are many obstacles. The clergy is often less than fully engaged. The community grows and dwindles through the seasons and growing a stable reliable core is tough. Of course we share access with an established local community, whose time-keeping is not ideal. There are shortages in everything, most notably song-books in English.

 

One big bonus for us was that the new church English-speaking community had an ambition to develop a music program. A singing-teacher with a good voice and intelligence was tackling music on her own when she was available. Many masses were spoken or largely-spoken.

 

We arrived into this situation at an excellent time, for them and for us. I could add some sound to give more of a choir feel, and my wife could join in too and help with other volunteer needs too. Without feeling in the least bit guilty, we were able to help to shape the community into one that can grow and support the priests while offering a meaningful mass for the congregation. We are very far from a finished article, but our efforts are clearly welcomed.

 

In the absence of sufficient books and with a clear goal to involve the congregation where possible, we have had to take quite a pragmatic view of the music to sing. We have to build from a low base, so it would make little sense to choose difficult songs that few knew and fewer could master quickly. It was suggested that we initially limit ourselves to just 6-8 hymns altogether. I could understand what this idea was trying to achieve, but found it hard to support it. The same songs would come up week after week, and everyone would surely get bored sooner or later. Yet we needed to avoid in erring in the opposite direction, because that would effectively exclude the congregation from a lot of the music.

 

After a while I came up with a possible compromise. We were being encouraged to sing four hymns each week. They would be at entrance, offertory, communion and recession (the end of the mass). We should limit the verses we chose to sing to keep things short – after alla Portuguese mass would follow ours each week and people started to drift in if we stretched our time. But I hoped we could make it work, with enough repetition to support gradual familiarisation but no so much as to bore everyone (including ourselves).

 

So I set myself a little quiz. We all seem to live via little quizzes these days. Myself, before my morning coffee I’ve usually hacked my my through worldle, nerdle, wordle, byrdle and connections (usually failing at the last and blaming the American dominance. My quiz was to name sixteen hymns to become our repertoire for the next few months. My sixteen would just be a draft, others could make proposals and we could swap some hymns in and out as we wished.

 

I had a few goals for the exercise, beyond the obvious ones of creating congregational engagement, building familiarity with a popular and manageable set of hymns over time. I tried to minimise the effect, but inevitably some of my own biases slipped in. 

 

The overall idea was to choose sixteen hymns divided into four groups of four. The first group would be opening songs, mainly chosen as an invitation to worship together with joy. 
My thought for the second, offertory, was to think of the songs as prayers. Thay part of the mass is a chance to reflect, maybe offer some penance as well as thanks.

 

The third hymn is sung as the priest offers communion. Ideally it should usually evoke thoughts, some reflective, of the eucharistic sacrament itself. The recessionary hymn, sung when mass is actually over, I envisaged as a triumphal celebration.

 

I had been intending to close out this blog with a list of my sixteen hymns. But then I thought this might take away the quiz element of the challenge so chose a different path. I will leave the challenge open and not include the list, but I will add a second blog comprising little more than the list. Perhaps some can be inspired.

 

This opportunity came to me by chance and I’m very grateful for it. I enjoyed the challenge and fine-tuning my own solution, and have also learned from the feedback of others.

 

So, if your morning routine is feeling a little tired (or too American) I offer you what for me was an excellent quiz, and indeed one which seems to be serving a good purpose to a deserving community as it grows. Go on, have a go! And then, recognising how your list, my list and everyone else’s list wilh be riddled with bas, see what you make of my sixteen hymns