Don't Be a Christian Like a 13-Year-Old Piano Player

30th Sunday of the Year

A symphony conductor once observed that when a child begins learning piano and is playing a piece of music they accent every single beat and labor through every single note. This can be hard music to listen to because it’s hard to hear how the notes fit together as they are being played as ends in themselves rather as parts of a larger idea. But as the child starts to mature, they then start to think of notes in pairs, and then in measures, and then full phrases, and finally the whole piece as altogether; and, gradually, the music becomes more fluid and, well, more musical. But there comes a time when the child has entered adolescence, is no longer all that interested in taking piano lessons, is tired of playing the same song over and over again, that the notes all flow into one undecipherable, unmusical mess. And at that point they either have a teacher who inspires them to continue playing, or they just quit playing piano altogether. What is happening in those stages of development is that the fundamental rules that govern music, like beat, start out at the front of the child’s conscious awareness of piano-playing but over time and with experience take a deeper hold and recess further out of view. This is simply the general psychology of how we learn to do something: driving a car, playing a sport, speaking a second language. But in all those examples, it is possible for us to become the no-longer-interested teenager in whom the rules are so far from our minds that we are no longer good at what we do. And this applies also in the development, and decline, of our Christian living.

Most of us start out, either as a child or as an adult, with the Ten Commandments as the basic rules for how we should live. We are taught to examine our conscience before confession by going through how well we have done in regard to each. We classify our sins by them and confess how many times we have taken the Lord’s name in vein, how many times we’ve lied, and so on. This is good, and actually all that is required for the sacrament of reconciliation. But as we think more deeply about our lives, we start to recognize that our sins are not isolated events separated from each other but are, in fact, intricately connected. A sin of anger might be preceded by a sin of pride and followed by a sin of despair. Going a step further, then we begin to see ourselves in relation to God not only as a poor, wretched sinner that needs saving but as a person with whom he desires to have a real and eternal relationship. At this stage, living the Christian life is more than just not breaking the Ten Commandments but living up to the highest call of charity that demands selfless love in every respect of our lives. Now we might think itself of Christ’s two great commandments in which he summarizes the whole law and all the teaching of the prophets: love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.  At the end of the day, all we need to ask ourselves is how well we have loved God and loved neighbor, and this is as complete an examination of conscience as any.

As I said, I think this development is similar to how a child learns to play piano. The focus moves from beats to pairs of beats, to measures, to phrases, to eventually seeing the whole song from start to finish as one composite whole. But what happens in those adolescent years where the teenager has all the notes down but plays them in a hurried and confused way is also likely to happen in our Christian lives. We may know that we are supposed to love God and love neighbor, but we may rush through the loving business so quickly that we hardly do any real loving at all. To put it another way, we may check all the boxes of what we think we’re supposed to do that we convince ourselves we have being Christian down pat, when in reality we are not paying enough attention to the individual notes and phrases that we’re blowing through for the sake of getting to the end of the song. If you are familiar with Beethoven’s famous “Moonlight Sonata”, you know that the arpeggiated chords need careful and deliberate attention for the piece to be moving and powerful. No one wants to hear a 13-year-old (and here I have my younger self in mind) carelessly tear through the piece at lightening pace because he doesn’t want to play Beethoven anymore. And if the analogy holds, and I think it does, no one is going to want to join the Church if we act like a bunch of adolescent uninterested, lackadaisical Christians either. So, Christ the Teacher calls us back to the fundamentals, to pay close attention to how he wants us to live as his disciples, and to make sure his teaching reaches every corner of our lives, so that the whole of our lives will be one, complete, wonderful, and attractive song of praise and glory of God whose life is alive in us.

But this will require us to change, and this change will not come easy, and it will not happen without honesty, vulnerability, docility and a sincere openness to grace on our part. It is very hard to unlearn a piece of music in the way you have learned it and to play it in a new way. But a good teacher can hear what’s not right and say what must be done to play the piece as it ought to be played. A good teacher is firm and uncompromising but also patient and merciful. And a good teacher will lead their student through pieces of increasing complexity and difficulty for them to be fully proficient in their art and become able to teach others. Christ is this teacher par excellence. And each Sunday he teaches us with his Word proclaimed to us at Mass; and each day he invites us to pray so that his Word may speak directly to our heart, showing us where we’ve not got it right and what we must do for our lives to be what they ought.

In close, I think of the early Christians in Thessalonica. Saint Paul writes to them, “For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth not only in Macedonia and in Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything.” When Paul wrote those words, most of the New Testament had not yet been written. It is possible that this letter is the oldest Christian text we have. He praises the Thessalonians for proclaiming the word of God when the word had not yet been written. He can do so because they proclaimed it with their lives. They lived love of God and love of neighbor so convincingly that others came to faith by their very example. So may the same be said of us. Amen.

Homily preached October 28/29, 2023 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, Hampden.