Saved by Love

(Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on October 25, 2020 at Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See Exodus 22:20-26 and Matthew 22:34-40)

Similar to our Gospel from last week, Jesus this morning is confronted by a scholar of the law who asks Him, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Matthew 22:36).  There are a couple of caveats that we should know in order to understand this interesting dialogue.  

Firstly, the scholar of the law is not a man seeking to better understand the teachings of Moses or to learn some sage advice from the Master.  When he asks Jesus that question, St. Matthew tells us, he was testing Him; he presumes he already knows the answer.  

The second important detail is that the scholar is not asking Jesus which of the Ten Commandments He thinks is the greatest.  The Mosaic law consists of some 613 commands, not jus the Ten Commandments.  This is an expert in the law, seeking to test Jesus as to how He understands this great covenant God has made with His people.  

Jesus, who is the Master and Teacher, responds in a way that is remarkable and surprising.  He begins with the Shema, the great confession from Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mathew 22:37).  That answer would have been anticipated; this is indeed the first and greatest commandment, as our Lord clearly explains.  But then He adds something that would have been illuminating: “The second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).  He is placing love of neighbor on a par with love of God.

Then the Lord concludes with something that would have probably surprised the scholar of the law greatly.  He says: “The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40).  The entire law, all 613 commands, plus all the teachings of all the prophets; all of it depends upon these two commandments.  This morning I would like to reflect on the question, “Why?”

To answer that question we need to look at why there is a law to begin with.  God makes a covenant relationship with His people, promising to be their God and that they will be His people.  The entire law helped to define the terms or parameters of that relationship.  They were to be faithful to the law as a sign of fidelity to God.  When they failed to be true, God remained faithful.  It was then that He sent them the prophets.  In many different ways they communicated the basic message that God still loved them, God was willing to forgive them and call them back to Himself.  What he wanted most of all was a full response to that covenantal relationship that He had made with them.  

In a word, the whole law and the prophets depend on love of God and neighbor because they speak of that intimate relationship upon which everything else is founded.  Basically, it does not matter if you strive to follow all 613 commands of the Mosaic law if you do not have a personal relationship with God and strive to love Him.  It does not matter that you know the teachings of the prophets inside and out, if you do not have a real and growing relationship with God and show that by loving those around you.   

Our first reading this morning from the Book of Exodus describes well the essence of that relationship.  God speaks through Moses:

Thus says the Lord: “You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt”.

—Exodus 22:21

God is saying to them, I loved you, and cared for you.  You were enslaved and I set you free.  I have given everything to you, and brought you into the promised land.  You must now do everything in your power to treat others the way that I treated you.   Are there foreigners among you, or those enslaved by various circumstances?  Love them, as I have loved you.  

For us as Christians, the freedom we have received is not freedom from slavery in Egypt but freedom from slavery to sin and death.  Christ died on the cross for our salvation and to make us free.  We are to cherish that relationship He makes with us, and strive to love those around us in the way that we are loved by Him.

There was a film that came out in 1998 called, Saving Private Ryan.  I am sure that many of you have seen it.  It is a story about four brothers, very close in age, who are fighting as American soldiers for the Allies in World War II.  As the film begins we soon find out that three of those brothers have died in combat in a very short time, and only one is left: Private Ryan.  This news reaches the War Office in Washington, D.C., and a general there immediately sends out an order for the sole surviving brother to be found and brought safely back home.  An Army Ranger Captain and a small detachment of soldiers are tasked with carrying out this mission.

The opening scene of the film shows an old man slowly making his way towards a field in Normandy, France filled with crosses (and a Star of David) marking the graves of the soldiers who died there during World War II.  It is the present day, and he clearly has an attachment to this sacred place as he walks towards one of the crosses in particular.  His wife and their adult children follow a few paces behind.  The man falls to his knees before the grave and begins to weep.  The scene then changes back to June 6, 1944 and the Invasion of Normandy, where the Americans take heavy casualties to secure Omaha Beach and gain a foothold in German occupied France.  Immediately after that horrific encounter, the Ranger Captain receives his orders to find and bring back Private Ryan.

They finally locate the soldier and tell him the tragic news of the death of his three brothers and how they have been sent to bring him back.  Towards the end of the film a dramatic battle ensues and most of the men lose their lives in the fight.  The Army Ranger Captain is mortally wounded, but he manages to offer some final words to Private Ryan.  The Captain tells him that the rest of his life should be worthy of all that has been given to safeguard it.  

A moment later and the scene changes.   We are once again seeing that hallowed graveyard and the rows of crosses in present day France.  The cross marks the grave of the fallen Army Ranger Captain and the old man standing before it is an elderly Private Ryan.  He turns to his wife, with their children close behind, and with tears in his eyes says to her, “Tell me I’ve led a good life.  Tell me I’m a good man.”  She is taken aback by the question, at first.  Of course he has been a good man!  Then she smiles  tenderly and says, “You are.”

Friends in Christ, Jesus is not saving Private Ryan.  He is saving all of us.  We are called to be moved and motivated not by a heroic and selfless deceased soldier but by the living God who suffered and died for us on the cross.  We have a living and intimate relationship with Him because He was risen from the dead and now lives in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus loves us, protects us, forgives us when we fail, encourages us when we struggle and leads us everyday along the path of salvation.  That is the reason we exist and the purpose behind which our love is purified and made more perfect in this world and guides us on into the life of the world to come.

This week, we ask for the grace to find Christ at the center of our lives and allow Him to ignite the fire of that love by which we have have been saved.  We seek to love the lord our God with all of our heart, all of our soul, and all of our mind, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Caesar, God and Freedom

 (Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on October 18, 2020 at Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See Matthew 22:15-21)

We encounter two very interesting groups of people in our Gospel this weekend: The Pharisees and the Herodians.  It would be difficult to find two more diverse classes of people.  The Herodians, taking their name from King Herod, were sympathetic to Roman rule and the system of taxation in place.  The Pharisees, on the other hand, were faithful to the letter of the law and favored a free Israel and the liberation from all ties to Caesar.  What brought them together, St. Matthew tells us, is that they “plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech” (Matthew 22:15).  They are united in a plan to destroy Jesus, and come to Him with the question: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”

In fact, their trap was quite clever.  If Jesus says that it is lawful to pay the census tax, then the Pharisees will say that He is in favor of Roman occupation and not faithful to the Jewish law.  If he says, “No, the tax is not lawful,” then He will come across as opposing King Herod and the Roman government.  They really have Him closed into a small space.  His response, however, is both brilliant and challenging.  He says, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

It is brilliant because he captures the essence of the question at a level beyond what they were ever capable of thinking.  In saying, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” he is encouraging faithful citizenship from a faith perspective.  It is what St. Paul and the Apostles will echo in the New Testament, as well: Pay your taxes; vote; give proper respect to the authorities that receive their power from God.  Live well as a good citizen, Jesus is saying, according to your conscience.  

What becomes really challenging, for them and for us, is the next part of that response: “Repay . . . to God what belongs to God.”  In other words, while it is lawful to give back to Caesar his coins and the obedience to civil authorities that allows for good citizenship, everything else that we have and all that we are belongs to God!  Our entire will, our money, our families and relationships, our job, everything belongs to Him.  

It is challenging because we can sometimes have the mistaken idea that this sets up some kind of competition between us and God, as if He were the one opposed to full human freedom and perhaps ready to ask something of us that we are unable or unwilling to give.  Pope 

Emeritus Benedict XVI, in his inaugural homily in April 2005, expressed well this very concern:

If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that he might take something away from us?  Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful?  Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom?

Those are great questions.  If we look at our culture and our society today, where vocations are so lacking and fidelity to the Church’s beautiful teachings can be so lax in the world around us, is  not this mistaken sense of freedom a significant part of the problem?  Men are not confident to say, “Yes” to God in a vocation to the priesthood, and men and women are not confident to give themselves completely over to a religious vocation because they fear that God may take away something beautiful.  Couples very much in love with each other nonetheless hold back from a full commitment in marriage because they fear losing out on something, or that giving themselves to each other in that Sacrament and inviting God deeply into their relationship will somehow diminish what they have.  Pope Emeritus Benedict continues:

If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great.

Saying, “yes,” to God completely, giving to God what belongs to God (which is everything), is the very path to freedom, happiness and joy.  Discovering that is one of the great challenges and mysteries of life, and to walk the path of true freedom in Christ can be the most exciting journey.  To live in freedom, though, means to let go of the things that hold us back and that can be difficult and even painful.  

There is an excellent book by an author named Ursula Le Guin called The Tombs of Atuan.  It is part of her fantasy fiction series, “Earthsea Cycle.”  The main character in The Tombs of Atuan is Tenar, a young woman whose life is dedicated to safeguarding and protecting a remote,  underground part of the earth.  As a young girl of only 5 she was given over to this work, destined to live beneath the mountains and serve the mysterious powers of darkness that lurk therein.  

There is little light in that underground world, but she favors the caverns and caves beneath the main chambers, which are in total darkness.  She has walked many years within that unlit labyrinth, and she has no fear of the dark.  One day, however, she is completely surprised to find a man in that place where no man has ever been.

The man named Ged, wandering through the tombs of Atuan, is a wizard, like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings.  He is a good character, seeking a treasure within those caverns that will allow him to wield tremendous good in the world outside.  But he is no match for Tenar, who strategically cordons him off within that place and then locks him in.  

Her very reason for being in these tombs is precisely to guard them from people like Ged, so her next move would certainly be to hand him over, which would mean his demise.  But she is fascinated by him.  He represents the outside world, a world that she has never seen.  He represents the light, whereas she has spent her entire life in darkness.  

Reluctantly at first, but then increasingly so, she engages him in conversation.  Eventually, he is able to help her see that this life she is living is not true freedom and power, but that leaving it would give her a new and different life.  She hesitates.  “I don’t know what to do,” she confides, “I am afraid.”   Ged breaks it down for her in the most simple of terms.  He tells her that she must make a choice, use her freedom: “Either you must leave me, lock the door, go up to your altars and give me to your Masters . . . and that is the end of the story—or, you must unlock the door, and go out of it, with me . . . and that is the beginning of the story.”  She makes the decision to leave and go with Ged.

As they break free of that place and enter into the mountains, Tenar is filled with joy and utter exhilaration.  This is the outside world, this is all that she has been missing!  When they travel down the mountain pass and reach Ged’s boat at the seashore, they begin to sail away.  Only then does Ged begin to feel relief and he shouts in exhilaration to Tenar, “We’re away, now we’re clear, we’re clean gone, Tenar.  Do you feel it?”  The author continues and says:

She did feel it.  A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart.  But she did not feel joy as she had in the mountains.  She put her head down and cried . . . She cried for the wasted years in bondage to a useless evil.  She wept in pain because she was free.

This week Jesus Christ calls us to complete freedom.  He calls us to “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  We are called to give God everything.  In many ways that journey is exhilarating and joyful, but it could also be painful and challenging as we let go of all that holds us back from being true sons and daughters of God.  This week we pray for the grace to be good citizens, but especially good Christians who are willing to “Repay . . . to God what belongs to God.”

Perspectives

 (Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on October 11, 2020 at Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See Isaiah 25:6-10, Psalm 23 and Matthew 22:1-14)

There are many experiences in life that come down to a matter of perspective.  Two different people can see the same thing, and have completely different perspectives on what happened.  Our Gospel for this weekend offers a few very interesting perspectives.  In the Parable of the wedding feast, we might be tempted to look at the king from a limited perspective and see him as harsh and demanding.

He offers this magnificent wedding feast for his son and those invited refuse the invitation.  Not immediately deterred, the king sends out servants to persuade them, and that is when things get a little difficult.  Some ignore the invitation, choosing instead to tend to other commitments on their farm or concerning business.  That can happen.  Others mistreat the servants and even kill them.  The king's response is immediate and decisive: “The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city” (Matthew 22:7).  Wow, there is no room for subtlety there!  Finally, there is the man who comes to this feast where both the good and bad are gathered.  But when the king sees that the man is not wearing the proper wedding garment, he is not merely asked to leave.  No, the man is bound, hand and foot, and cast into the darkness outside!  

It can be troubling to see this parable from the perspective of a harsh king.  Of course, that is not what the parable is about at all.  It is not a parable about an ill-tempered ruler, or time management, or about proper dress codes and just desserts.  

It is a parable about eternal life.   It is the story of our salvation and the totally gratuitous gift of heaven that God is extending to each and every one of us.  The point of the parable, the main perspective, really, is that we have been invited to the greatest experience of our existence, eternal life with God.  Refusal of the invitation is simply not a logical or reasonable option.   

From that perspective we can now see that those who ignore the invitation, those who find farm and business more important, those that are threatened by God’s totally gratuitous offer and strike out violently, these are the ones who act harshly and  hence are ill-tempered and ill-fated.  We see that the man not properly dressed did not come to the feast with the appropriate dispositions, and presumed that he could enter on his own terms and not the king’s.  By their decisions, or by simply not making a choice at all, they have forfeited the greatest and most valuable gift they could have ever received.

In his fictional work, The Great Divorce, Christian author C.S. Lewis offers a pithy summary of this critical choice through the perspective of one of the main characters.   Basically, he says that there will be “two kinds of people” in the end.  There will be those who have said to God, “Thy will be done.”  Like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and perhaps in many moments as challenging as that, they have said to God, “Thy will be done.  I want what you want, even if it is difficult.”  But then there will be those to whom God must say, and with great sorrow, “THY will be done.”  Some may have refused or ignored the invitation; others may have acted in violence and rebellion, but in the end they will sadly be given their own way.  “THY will be done.”   It is a challenging perspective.

One final perspective that I would like to mention, however, is the one found in the Resposorial Psalm this morning, Psalm 23.  It is totally compatible with the main perspective of our parable, and shows us the heart of the king in the love of a shepherd:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  

In verdant pastures he gives me repose; 

beside restful waters he leads me; 

he refreshes my soul.

There are many times in our lives when we do not listen well to God’s invitation or are tempted to be rebellious and stubborn.  With great love, God follows after us, seeks us out, and leads us to the very place where we will find rest and refreshment.  He goes to the extreme of entering into this world to find us, and gives His very life to save us.  We could not be treated more tenderly or lovingly than that!  

There is a wonderful poem written in the 16th Century by the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross.  He tells the story of salvation in poetic verse, from the perspective of the shepherd:

A lone young shepherd lived in pain

withdrawn from pleasure and contentment,

his thoughts fixed on a shepherd-girl

his heart an open wound with love.

He weeps, but not from the wound of love,

there is no pain in such affliction,

even though the heart is pierced;

he weeps in knowing he’s been forgotten.

There were many, we are told in the Gospel, that refused the invitation that God offered.  Many more ignored it and found other things to do.  The Sacred Heart of Jesus is wounded when we forget about Him and are ungrateful.  God’s response to that ingratitude and forgetfulness is striking and amazing.  St. John of the Cross continues:

That one thought: his shining one has forgotten him,

is such great pain

that he bows to brutal handling in a foreign land,

his heart an open wound with love.

Jesus comes, knowing that He will be ignored and refused.  He comes, knowing that He will “bow to brutal handling in a foreign land,” even though that land was created by Him, and fashioned for the receptivity of love.  In fact, it is this very brutality that God will use, in the most surprising way, to save us.  St. John of the Cross concludes:

After a long time he climbed a tree,

and spread his shining arms,

and hung by them, and died,

his heart an open wound with love.

-St. John of the Cross

“Stanzas Applied Spiritually to God and the Soul”

This is God’s invitation to the banquet of eternal life.  Christ climbs upon the cross and stretches out His shining arms to welcome us.  Isaiah the Prophet, in our first reading this weekend, describes that same invitation and sacrifice:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.  On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever . . . For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.

—Isaiah 25:6-10 

The mountain that Isaiah is referring to is the mountain of Calvary.  It is there that God will mount the wood of the cross and destroy death forever.  It is on that mountain that He will offer His body and blood as the sacrifice that will open the gates of heaven for us to enter.  It is His body and blood, offered as a rich feast in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, that gives us access to the very life of God and the resurrection.  We are invited this morning to nothing less than this.

Today God leads us to the place where we most need to be.  He is calling us and reminding us that He knows more than we do what is necessary, essential and good for us.  Today we look to the perspective of God, and remember:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  

In verdant pastures he gives me repose; 

beside restful waters he leads me; 

he refreshes my soul.

Music Will Save the World

(Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on October 4, 2020 at Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80 and Matthew 21:33-43)

“Beauty will save the world.” That is perhaps one of the most often quoted lines of Dostoevsky, from one of his greatest novels.  Countless essays, articles and even books have been written trying to interpret what he meant.  I will not add to that this morning (truth be told, I already tried to do so in a previous homily on this blog!).  What I would suggest this morning is a paraphrase of Dostoevsky’s quote.  I would suggest, from our readings this weekend, that music will save the world!

Our readings this weekend begin, actually, with a song.  Isaiah the Prophet sings for us:

Let me now sing a song of my friend, my friend’s song concerning his vineyard.  My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside: he spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines: within it he built a watchtower, and hewed out a winepress.  Then he looked for the crop of grapes, but what it yielded was wild grapes.

—Isaiah 5:1-2

But that song is suddenly interrupted!  It turns into a lament, and becomes even a polemic as the owner of the vineyard contends:  

Inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard: What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?—Isaiah 5:3-4  

It is a rhetorical question that could only have left an awkward silence.  What began as a pleasant song has now turned into a strong rebuke: 

The vineyard is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished plant; he looked for judgment but see, bloodshed!  For justice, but hark, the outcry!

—Isaiah 5:7

This song, it would seem, is OVER.  

And yet, looking at Sacred Scripture, it becomes clear that the song is not over.  It is far from ended! But it has changed.  

The Song of Songs, which is a love song between a bride and groom (Israel and the Lord), is literally filled with imagery and symbolism.  Many times the bride is referred to, among other things, as a vineyard (Song of Songs 1:14; 2:13-15; 7:8-12; 8:12) .  The bride in that song is longing for her bridegroom and lamenting that she has hurt him through her infidelity (see Song of Songs 1:5-17).  She is pining for him and seeking her beloved, he whom her soul loves (Song of Songs 3:1-5).

That longing is continued in our Responsorial Psalm this morning (Psalm 80).  We did not recite that Psalm.  No, we sang it!  We musically intoned:

Once again, O Lord of hosts, look down from heaven, and see.  Take care of this vine . . . O Lord, God of hosts, restore us; if your face shine upon us then we shall be saved.

—Psalm 80: 14, 19

We sang with the Psalmist that the Lord would shine His face upon us, that this would be our hope.  Psalm 80 sets to music the great desire that God would shine His face upon us and reinvigorate this devastated vineyard.  Our hope and desire is that the face of God would shine on us.  

That longing is answered in the Gospel of Saint Matthew this morning.  The face of God shines out upon the people gathered before Christ 2,000 years ago, and here before us this morning in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

Jesus Christ gives us the parable of the vineyard.  It is a familiar story for His listeners.  They have heard about that vineyard and even sung about it many times.  But there is much at stake as He relates that familiar story.  In great detail He tells about the rejection of the tenants and the killing even of the owner of the vineyard’s son.  The conclusion is even more dramatic than that of Isaiah.  Christ declares to those who are unfaithful:

The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.

—Matthew 21:43

Our eternal life in the Vineyard of the Lord is not automatic.  We are called to be faithful and to bear great fruit for our Beloved.  Have we considered that essential aspect of our life in the Church?  On a positive note, if we look at the end of the Sacred Scriptures, and the final Book of the Bible, we can hear the song of the blessed in heaven being sung with great joy (Revelation 5:9-14).  They sing together the Song of the Lamb who was slain and rose again, the Bridegroom who has taken them to live with Him forever (Revelation 19:5-8).  We are being called even now to join in that awesome song.

There is a beautiful story I heard many years ago by the Evangelical preacher, Steve Brown, of KeyLife Ministries.  The story is about two brothers, close in age.  The older brother was tall and good looking, a real leader who was loved by everyone.  His little brother was small in stature and hunched over, and often fell victim to the scorn and mockery of those around him.  One thing about that little brother, though, was that he could sing.  He had the voice of an angel!  People loved to hear him sing in the choir or whenever he was spontaneously moved to chant some magical melody.  

The two brothers went away together to a boarding school and, not surprisingly, the older brother quickly made many friends.  He was, in fact,  very popular .  The young brother was not well received at all and was bullied frequently.  One day, while the older brother was walking through the halls of the school, he heard shouting and laughter coming from one of the classrooms.  He quickly entered that place, and was sickened to see that some of the students had pulled his brother’s shirt up over his back, and they were pushing him around the classroom.  He wanted to run into the midst of them and stop it, but he was afraid.  After a moment’s hesitation, he decided to turn away and leave rather than risk losing some of the friends that he had gained at that school.  But before he turned away his little brother saw him.  The older brother never forgot the look upon his face.

Eventually the older brother finished boarding school and went on to be a very successful young man.  The younger brother, however, in the weeks following that terrible incident of his brother’s betrayal, left the school of his own decision.  Never again was he to sing in the choir and inside he became a different person all together.

Many years later, while the older brother was halfway around the world on business, he was out sitting beneath the stars on a beautiful summer night.  Suddenly he felt very close to God, but also felt the Holy Spirit convicting him of what he had done so many years before.   He was deeply moved by shame and sorrow, and made the decision to find his brother and do whatever he could to reconcile that awful situation.  

When he finally located the house where the brother lived, he was anxious that he might not be received as he knocked on the door.  Nonetheless, when his brother opened the door, he immediately welcomed him with open arms.  They embraced and wept, and then sat together all evening.  Eventually they were exhausted from talking, laughing and crying, and the older brother crashed out on the bed in the guest room and fell fast asleep.  In the morning, he was awoken to the most beautiful sound that he had ever heard.  It was the voice of his brother, and he was singing.

There are a lot of things wrong in the Church today.  We can read about them in the newspaper, and we hear about them all the time.  But one of the problems in the Church is that we are not singing as we should!   We have been forgiven for so very much, we have been given so very much; we have the Sacraments of the Church, the grace of God, the teachings of our faith, and so much love, we should be singing!  We have been touched so deeply by God that we should be able to forgive others, and be set free to sing.  

Christ in the Gospel this weekend is inviting us to sing in the vineyard once again.  He is calling us to learn anew the Song of the Lamb, and to rejoice in our Christian faith in a way that allows us to be transformed and to heed the exhortation of St. Paul to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).  

The world around us is literally dying to hear that song.  Because in the end, the world will be saved by music.  But in order for that to happen, we have to allow every aspect of our lives to enter God’s song of love.