Music at the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco

A detail from a painting by Giovanni Cimabue, in the lower level of the Basilica at Assisi.

The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco

Music and Franciscan
Spirituality

If music alone were sufficient to inspire us to holiness, there would be far more saints in this world than there are now.

But, as Saint Francis showed with his life, in imitation of Christ, holiness requires deep faith and sacrifice, the letting go of all that we tend to think we cannot do without, in order to let the great glory of God fill its place.

And yet Saint Augustine discovered that though he initially wanted to do without music in the Church, he found the effects of Christian chant so profoundly beautiful that he had no choice but to recognize the “great utility of this institution.”

Saint Cecilia playing the organ. One of the stained-glass windows in the Saint Francis of Assisi Church.

Saint Cecilia playing the organ. One of the stained-glass windows in Saint Francis of Assisi Church.

And so we at the NATIONAL SHRINE OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI continue to value the institution of sacred Christian music and the arts in general. Our Patron loved the arts, particulary in his youth. The early Franciscan biographers report that Francis of Assisi played an instrument and loved to sing. He evidently spoke several of the languages of his day and certainly produced hymns and poetic works in Latin and the vernacular. Indeed, the poetry of Saint Francis stands at the very beginning of that same Italian literary tradition which also includes such luminaries as Petrarch and Dante. History justly remembers Francis as the Troubadour of the Lord.

Music has always been a medium to express the rich diversity of shared emotion; it reveals the heart and mind of the human person. The Church and the Franciscan Order, therefore, have nourished and encouraged the fine arts with the hope that the spiritual dimension of our humanity may thus find both an avenue of expression and a source of inspiration in them.

Rid yourself of what is old and worn out, for you know a new song. A new man, a new covenant; a new song. This new song does not belong to the old man. Only the new man learns it: the man restored from his fallen condition through the grace of God, and now sharing in the new covenant, that is, the kingdom of heaven. To it all our love now aspires and sings a new song. Let us sing a new song not with our lips but with our lives.

From a discourse on the psalms by Saint Augustine, bishop
(Office of Readings, November 22:
Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr)

Many are those who know all the words and sing all the notes, and yet never quite learned the song. Through your experience at this beautiful Shrine, and through your own humble imitation of Christ, may you learn the song.

For more information:
Concerts in Church —a declaration of the Congregation for Divine Worship, November 5, 1987.