At times I receive the well-intentioned suggestion from a parishioner that perhaps we need not sing every verse of a song at Mass – it makes the Mass too long. Perhaps this comment arises from a misunderstanding of why we sing at Mass at all. First, we sing not just to accompany some action (such as a procession) but also for a bigger purpose. Last week I wrote about the Opening Song at Mass. The intention of that song is to gather us from our disparate lives, having been apart from each other for a week, and bring us back into one community. Singing only one or maybe two verses of a song does not necessary accomplish this…we’re just getting warmed up! Furthermore the texts of our songs and hymns convey a theological message that often is not complete unless we sing all the verses (I can hear those groans now!) Imagine for a moment you went to a musical (and paid good money too) and the players came to that core song of the production—the one you’ve been waiting to hear (think Don’t Cry for Me Argentina from Evita, Memories from Cats or All I Ask of You from Phantom of the Opera)—and decided to sing only one verse. You’d be pretty disappointed! Maybe even feel cheated?! We cheat ourselves out of a full experience of what a spiritual song offers when we only sing a portion of it. Only for serious pastoral need should we eliminate the verses of a song, and then only if it doesn’t skew the meaning of the song for us. Take for example, “We Three Kings” (Find number 107 in our Breaking Bread hymnal if you want to look it up). If we sing only the first two verses, we only hear about one gift: the Gold (and miss the Frankincense and Myrrh). Okay let’s get all three gifts in and stop after verse 4. But look how that verse ends: “Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.” Are we sure we want to end there?? Pretty negative isn’t it? It doesn’t exactly exude the joy of Christmas! That’s because that verse refers to the events of Good Friday. Ah! But sing verse 5 and it completes everything: “Glorious now behold him arise,…” There’s the hope! There’s Easter! So you see how this works. Failing to sing all verses of certain hymns often leaves us hanging in mid-air theologically. However, there are times in the Liturgy when the music really only needs to be as long as the action, such as at the Preparation of the Gifts. Here the choice of music (sung or instrumental) need not extend beyond the action of the collection, the presentation of the gifts and the preparation of the altar. In such cases, we try to select music that doesn’t require singing every verse to complete the theological meaning. Wow! Did you know there was so much thought behind the music at Mass?