Singing history

For his mass on Mother’s Day, Pope Leo “surprised the crowd” by singing the “Regina Caeli” prayer, a Latin prayer honoring the Virgin Mary “which recent popes would usually just recite and harked back to the old Latin Mass of the past.”

According to CNN’s website, “The surprise singing of the prayer was met with thunderous applause and joy from the crowd. It was a moment of joy and celebration, marking a new era in the papacy.”

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Ephesians 5: [19] Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
[20] Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;

For the Bible Believer, spiritual songs are to come out of sound doctrine applied to experiences. It’s a song in your heart that comes out of taking the sound doctrine and saying, “This is what’s working in these circumstances.” Not the circumstances working, but the doctrine, explains Richard Jordan.

By the way, it’s a fascinating thing to study music in church history. Through the Dark Ages, the church at large didn’t sing.

They had a thing that’s very popular today; they had professional musicians that sang and the congregation listened and watched and didn’t understand most of it because it was in Latin.

They had what were called chants. You know what Gregorian chants are? That’s just occultic kind of moaning. Some of them are quite beautiful with the harmony, but there’s no doctrine in them.

There’s no Colossians 3: [16] Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

And the average person can’t do them because the average person can’t keep a tune like that. So you have the “professionals” doing that stuff.

When the Protestant Reformation came along and the Bible got spread around, you know what came along with it?

When you come into the Reformation era, two books were popular: the Bible and a song book. I’ve got in my study two little red books called “The Hymns of Tersteegen” from the 18th century. People like you and me with our little song books.

We sing songs today—Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” We sing Charles Wesley’s “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviors’ blood . . . Amazing love how can it be that thou, my God, should die for me.”

We sing songs from that era because the Word of God brought the singing back! That’s why we sing a lot of congregational songs. I’d just assume have everybody sing. The singing is just the natural expression of that inner harmony.