Healing Music and Restoring the Traditions of the Catholic Church with the Benedict XVI Institute
--
Big plans are set for Saturday, February 11, 2023, for the world premiere of a new healing Mass honoring our Lady of Lourdes at The Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, CA for Frank La Rocca’s Messe Des Malades. EWTN will also be broadcasting the event live.
Messe Des Malades honors Our Lady of Lourdes and will surround the liturgy participants with a musical arrangement bestowing respite from the world. Guests will be transported to a restorative ambience, one reminiscent to that of an experience in the Grotto of Lourdes, in France. All this is to be performed by the Benedict XVI Choir, 20 world-class singers under the direction of Richard Sparks. Frank La Rocca begins his 4th year as COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE at the Benedict XVI Institute.
Here’s a sampling of Frank La Rocca’s music, in this 2019 video from his Mass of the Americas, The “Ave Maria” in the Aztec language, the language spoken by Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego in 1531.
It could be that Catholic Arts will be the draw for thirsty souls to return back to the pews and restore a more traditional Catholic spiritual life thanks to the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship.
In a time when Catholic Church attendance is down and controversy is all around, it’s precisely with this good timing that the Benedict XVI Institute is opening a door via Beauty to God: “the greatest art, the greatest liturgy the Catholic Church has ever produced is yet to come.”
The Institute’s founder, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco is igniting a renaissance of the Church’s elegance at a time when others would prefer to simplify and modernize it. Here he explains the organization’s core vision:
The Catholic Church still contains within it the miraculous, even without needing to be present at a shrine, per se. Miracles can truly happen anywhere.
Perhaps a healing miracle can be found during this February 2023 Mass at The Cathedral of Christ the Light for the Messe Des Malades: Honoring Our Lady of Lourdes on the World Day of the Sick; and in hopes, perhaps will replenish many souls-in-need with sacred liturgy and worship music.
