Well, first we have to understand that words cannot express the things that are sung by the heart, and Augustine gives the example of people singing while they are harvesting in the fields or other kinds of strenuous work. They start out singing using words, he says, but then after a little while there is a change. "As if so happy that words can no longer express what they feel, they discard the restricting syllables. They burst out into a simple sound of joy, of jubilation. Such a cry of joy is a sound signifying that the heart is bringing to birth what it cannot utter in words..." That reminds me of something in African and Mideastern music that's called ululation, or the improvisatory sections in Indian classical music. Or in jazz what's called "scat singing"; it comes from the charismatic music of the tradition of gospel music and spirituals. Outside of jazz, it's something that is virtually lost in sophisticated Western music, though there was a time that the cadenzas in classical sonatas were actually improvised. "If words will not serve, and yet you must not remain silent," Augustine says, "what else can you do but cry out for joy? Your heart must rejoice beyond words, soaring into an immensity of gladness, unrestrained by syllabic bonds." What I note here is that Augustine is speaking about music the way Saint Paul speaks about prayer:<em> We do not know how to pray as we ought but the Spirit prays in us in sighs to deep for words</em> (Rm 8:26).</p>
<p>I remember hearing as a kid a weird, kind of ghoulish, detail about the death of Saint Cecelia (maybe because we Italians, and Sicilians especially, have a kind of morbid interest in saints' bodies). Legend has it that she was martyred by being struck three times in the neck with a sword, but that she lived like that for three days, time enough for her to ask the pope to build a church on the site of her home. And the reason that Cecelia is the patron saint of organists is that as she lay there dying, music came out of the wounds in her neck, like music coming out of the pipes of an organ. As strange as that sounds, what a rich mythic symbol that is for this what Augustine is talking about: there is a music inside of us, just like there is prayer inside of us.</p>
<p>One place where this comes together for me is in a poem by Jessica Powers (the late cloistered Carmelite nun, Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit) that she calls simply "The Kingdom of God." In the second half of the first verse she says:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Beauty holds court within</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">a slim young virgin in a dim shadowy place.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Music is only the echo of her voice,</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">earth is only a mirror for her face.</p>
<p>She is speaking about Beauty here, as a personification of the Divine, and she keeps reminding the reader that this Beauty is not "toward the stars," not "on the hills of moon," not "in some quiet arms," not under the lighted leaves. Rather, "Beauty holds court within," so come home and find "a timeless heart under your own heart beating, / a bird of beauty singing under your mind." I carried that poem around for months wanting to set it to music, and suddenly one day I was inspired to add to it a refrain from the words of Saint Augustine's <em>Confessions</em>, the climatic moment of his conversion when he calls out to God, "O Beauty ever ancient, O Beauty ever new, how late have I come to love you. You were within me, but I was on the outside." He too intuits this, knows this, believes this––that the ever ancient, ever new Beauty that is the Divine is within us. It is the source of songs beyond the syllables, the well of the <em>sighs to deep for words</em>.</p>
<p>This is a little known secret that is at the heart of Christianity: that we have a great Beauty inside of us. If God is the fullness of Beauty (one of the philosophical transcendentals), and if we are in the image of God, then that Beauty is th foundation of our own being. We keep looking for it outside of us like deer that sniff around for the musk, not knowing that the musk is coming from inside of them! There's a great contemporary jazz singer-songwriter named Kurt Elling who I like very much. His songs are sprinkled with all kinds of allusions to spirituality. One is called "The Beauty of All Things." It goes like this:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">There is something within you,</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">there is something in everything that is:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">unbelievable beauty,</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">flowing from deep inside,</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">don't be shocked or surprised if I</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">lift your disguise.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Realize that</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">I can see it in all things, all,</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">but especially you.</p>
<p>That's why Jesus cleanses the Temple. as we heard about in today's gospel (Lk 19:45ff.). We hear it over and over again, so I won't trace every detail of it, but at first the Temple is a building; and then we find out, in John's gospel, for example, that the Temple has become a person––Jesus––when John tells us <em>He was talking about the temple of his own body</em> out of which was to flow the water from the right side bringing life and salvation from the cross, that image for Ezekiel that we sing at Easter time to refer to the Crucified One. But then, Jesus tells us,<em> that springs of living water shall flow from out of the believer's heart</em> (Jn 7:39), and Paul clarifies that<em> the temple of God is holy and you are that temple</em> (1 Cor 3:16-17). That's why the temple is cleansed; that's why the temple of our beings, our bodies and souls are cleansed––not because they are bad or evil, but because they are filled with great beauty, and we cleanse them to empty them, to purify them in order to set that song free, to awaken that prayer of the Holy Spirit praying within us, to unleash that spring of life giving water from within us to flow from our hearts and make glad the city of God. That is why our Saint Romuald tells us to "empty ourselves completely," because when and if we do we'll find that the Beauty ever ancient, ever new, holds court within.</p>