One of the most beautiful sounds in the world is a mass written for multiple voices, polyphonic music from the Middle Ages. (Perhaps my favorite is William Byrd's Mass for Five Voices.)
The composer Thomas Tallis was writing music during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. One of his greatest compositions begins:
Spem in alium nunquam habui/Praeter inte.
I have never put my hope in any other but in you.
It is a 40 part motet, created by eight choirs of five voices each singing in harmony and it is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
I tell you all of this to tell you about a chapel your mother and I visited in The Cloisters at the north end of Manhattan in the past week. (She went a week earlier than me after a meeting downtown.)
The Cloisters, a convent that was brought to the U.S. stone-by-stone by the Rockefellers and turned into a museum of medieval art.
Here in 2013, as the trees across the Hudson River burst into reds and orange and yellow -- an artist created a sound installation that includes 40 speakers. One speaker for each human voice in the motet that is played in one of the chapels of the Cloisters.
The speakers ring the chapel in an oblong circle. As you enter the chapel in the midst of the music, you hear the voices rising together in a glorified prayer. It is breathtaking.
But here in this installation, you are able to slowly walk the room and as you pause before each speaker, you can hear the one individual voice that is one part of this joyous hymn of praise. Here, at one speaker the deep bass of a man. At another the impossibly high voice of a woman. At still another the voice of a young child, as clear and moving as any adult voice.
The photo below is taken while sitting on a bench letting ALL the voices joined in unison wash over me.
As I sit in my own meditative silence that makes me feel like a boat bobbing on this sea of sound, the voices seem to rise and rise and rise until the very last note.
And then, all day long in that space, it will loop back around again.
But sitting there, I realize that the space between the songs is filled with what the museum guide says is "three minutes of audio". I had expected some introduction, some dry announcer presenting facts about the music.
Instead, what the artist has done is leave each of the microphones open for three minutes, capturing the sounds of each person: one person clearing her throat, another person whispering to a neighbor, in the background the sound of the conductor trying to get them all together.
And there, listening to the all-too-human voices preparing to sing a composition that sounds like the voices of angels coming together in a grand Hallelujah, I have the very profound sense that this too -- these sounds of preparation and anticipation, these adjustments before singing out in prayer, are the Mystical Body of Christ. This collection of humanity, the baritone checking his cellphone, the soprano rustling papers will, at the right moment, come together in a song of astonishing beauty.
This then is what communion is: a coming together of human beings in praise of God. Sometimes it's a little messy, you can hear the imperfections in how we live our lives in preparation for this moment. But when you get a glimpse of it, when you hear -- or see or taste or touch -- what beauty human beings are capable of doing together, you understand what heaven on Earth means, you understand what being together sharing in this Mystical Union can really mean.
And here's one more part of the miracle: you were there, listening. Somewhere off in the distance, you may have heard a voice singing out. And in some ways that voice was singing to something in you -- inviting you to come out, join us at the table, as we bow our heads and say: Amen. In thanks and gratitude.
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