The beauty and power of music can bring us into the presence of the Divine

A book on sexual passion, which was authored by Cardinal Fernández of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, has recently been rediscovered. It claims, without subtlety or embarrassment, that sexual climax ushers one directly into the presence of God. Unsurprisingly it has caught the attention of the Catholic world, raising objections and questions.

The idea that anything can automatically usher us into the presence of the Godhead is a tenet of magic, not faith. Magicians, occultists and scientists have always been drawn to the opportunity of hoping to be able to make something happen instrumentally. It offers the attraction of pandering to our lust to appear to be in control.

But we are not in control. Especially not in relation to any concept that has to do with God. In that aspect of reality, precisely because we have free will, all the intimations of the possibility or even probability of encountering God simply bring us up to the gateway of the moment of the surrender of our will. Anything else is either dictatorship or robotics – or magic.

But what many have found both offensive and depressing in Cardinal Fernández’s fascination with sex is his willingness to ignore all the other aesthetic profundity that surrounds us. Nature, form art, architecture, mathematics, poetry and, above all, music are all suffused with intense and overwhelming beauty.

One longs to ask the cardinal: if one was on a quest to find anything likely to usher us directly into the presence of God, why pick sex when there is music? Whatever else music does for the human heart, theologically and spiritually part of its effect is to play a critical role in softening up the human will in preparation for the great potential act of surrender to God upon which all promise of bliss will depend.

My first encounter with musical bliss was as a choir boy, aged nine. I found myself singing an uncomplicated but utterly invigorating anthem called “With a voice of singing” by Martin Shaw. Wholly unsophisticated as I was I was thrown into a cloud of ecstasy by it. It gathered itself, stretched and exploded with joy.

Light shone, clouds sparkled, dust and angels danced. And it quickly brought me to that fatal crossroads that every human being comes to before an encounter with beauty. Which was to win my heart? Was I to love the beauty itself, or the creator of the beauty, for whom the beauty I had fallen in love with was only a foreshadowing?

Would the heart be surrendered to God or to the music? The journey deepened and intensified on meeting Palestrina, Tallis, Byrd, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert; was this God, or echoes of God?

It is a dilemma particular to all church musicians. What is particularly poignant for those who make the act of total surrender to God himself is how many people, especially how many musicians, get stuck half way. They mistake the creature for the creator. They attribute to sound itself, to the physics and mathematics of noise, the longing, joy, hunger, pain, hope, happiness and ecstasy that noise and air carry to pierce the human heart

If anything actually could instrumentalise the presence of the divine, it ought to be music. If anything were by its own nature to create a bridge under our feet for us to walk into the presence of the living God, it ought to be, might be, should be music.

But still, all it has the power to do is to soften our heart and shock our mind so that it might become ready to abandon the pretence of self-sufficiency in all things.

Each of us has our particular musical moments of meaning and deepest intensity. One of mine is at the end of the Marriage of Figaro, where the Count falls to his knees to beg the Countess for forgiveness after a plot full of intrigue, deception, betrayal and manipulation, begging for a pardon he has earlier refused her.

“Contessa, perdono,” he cries, “forgive me”.

She replies in one of the most exquisite moments of music ever conceived: “Più docile io sono, e dico di sì” (“I am kinder: I will say ‘Yes’”). The setting is theatre but the music transcends the place and builds a bridge towards the gate of heaven from where all forgiveness overflows and pours. No musical Sanctus could carry more perfectly the compassion, mercy and affection of God than those few phrases of melodic mercy.

The Puritans lost and always lose their nerve in the face of beauty. They don’t trust the soul to be impatient with idolatry. They want to deprive us of beauty in case we make the wrong choice. God and the Church are wiser. Both overwhelm us with beauty, but also with choice.

The soul always has to make an active choice for God. Nothing on this earth, no ecstasy (especially physical), automatically conjures up access into his presence. But if we are going to allow human longing to inform us of our hunger for God, it might be both more tasteful and effective to allow music, rather than sex, to carry us there.

This article first appeared in the February 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our multiple-award-winning magazine and have it delivered to your door anywhere in the world, go here.

(Photo: choir at the Brompton Oratory, London)

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