• “Shout with joy to God, all the earth. Sing you a psalm in his name. Give glory to His praise.”
• These words of today’s Introit are inviting us to rejoice in God and not only to praise Him but to give glory to His praise. How are we to do this? By singing.
• As human beings, singing is one of the best means we have to express the joy that is in our hearts and also give solemnity to our rejoicing.
• God has given us the great gift of our human voice and practically everyone around the world uses it at times to sing.
• The human voice is considered to be superior to all musical instruments for a number of reasons
  • Because it is an instrument that is part of our body, we are able to produce many more sounds with it, and especially we are able to form words.
  • Humans respond emotionally more to the sound of the human voice than to any instrument.
  • The human voice alone functions as both a wind and a string instrument at the same time.
• It is for this reason that humans have always made music using their voices, using it to accompany their work, their gatherings, and especially their religious ceremonies.
• And just as the Catholic Church provides us with the greatest act of worship of God, the Holy Mass, so too she provides us with the greatest music to accompany the worship of God.
• The need to compose proper music for the Mass has been so great that the Mass has often been referred to as the foundational pillar of Western music. It was because of the Mass that musical notation was standardized, that polyphonic music was developed, and that musicians had employment over the centuries.
• For a long time, in the history of the Church, all Masses were sung Masses; the Low Mass only came into being in the Middle Ages. St. Paul already speaks about singing in his epistle to the Ephesians, when he invites them to “be filled with the holy Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord” (Eph. 5:18-19). This is the epistle for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost.
• The Fathers of the Church spoke of the importance of singing at Mass:
  • St. Augustine explained that we sing at Mass to show our love for God.
  • St. Basil the Great says that our liturgical songs are like a spiritual incense that raises up to God.
  • St. John Chrysostom said these beautiful words: “Every believer is a musical instrument made by God, and at the same time a musician. If the musician (the soul) keeps the instrument (the body) pure and uses it properly, the two together raise to the Creator a hymn of praise that is pleasing to God.”
• The bottom line is that one of the main reasons for which God created the human voice is for singing, and the best possible use of the human voice is singing to God at Mass.

• We call today “Good Shepherd Sunday” because of the Gospel where Our Lord compares Himself to a shepherd. It is traditional today to speak of the question of vocations, because of the fact that a priest is a shepherd of souls.
• The question of a vocation is a crucial one because it concerns God’s plan for our life. As Catholics, we believe that God has created each one of us for Himself, for us to dwell with Him forever in Heaven.
• Meanwhile, God creates us and places us on this earth, asking us to serve Him during this life. If we do that, He will give us the eternal reward of Heaven once this life is over.
• God has established two main paths to serve Him in during this life: the married life, and the religious life or priesthood.
• It is so important that young people take the time to ask themselves which of these two states of life would be better for them to choose. Both of them are good, and so it is never sinful to choose marriage instead of a vocation. But the vocation is a higher choice, because it is a higher way to serve God.
• Everyone in this chapel who has entered into their state of life had to, at one time, ask themselves these important questions: what should my future be? What choice should I make of my state of life? This is as much true of myself as everyone else.
• In today’s sermon, I want to explain two important differences between choosing a vocation and choosing the married life.

Why does the Church have us read about the patriarch Joseph on the feast of St. Joseph?