I have never sung in our Christmas concerts—as I often tell people, “I sing, but not in the choir!” Actually, my own apostolic assignments and where I have been stationed mean that I have only ever attended two of our Christmas concerts in seventeen years in the convent! But I am a part of these Christmas concerts every year.
I distinctly remember the first time that I said to someone, “We are starting our Christmas concert tour soon.” Not, the Sisters are going on tour, but we are going on tour. And it did not sound strange to me, because we really are going on tour.
This year, seven Sisters will be on the stage singing. One Sister will be operating the lighting and the sound. Dozens of Sisters will welcome people to the concerts in New York, Boston, and New Orleans. But fully one hundred and twenty of us will be praying and offering our lives so that God’s grace will flow abundantly in the lives of those who hear the Sisters sing.
This is the grace of a mission that is rooted in the consecration of our lives to God. We were called to religious life and to the Daughters of St. Paul, not to write books or design websites or sing in concerts, but to give our lives totally to the one who loved us so much that he came to be with us and to give his life for us. It is because of this total gift of God, that calls forth the total gift of ourselves, that we write and design and sing.
The Sisters who are singing this year are singing precisely because of the abundance of this total gift of God. Sr Anne Joan (soprano), choir member from our community of Metairie, LA, shared, “Over the past almost 30 years of singing these concerts, I have come to realize to what an extent we sisters really disappear as we sing, because the takeaway is not about us: it’s whatever that person, that family needs at this moment. It’s all for the people in the audience. And I think that people discover the meaning of Christmas in these concerts because of that: they are free to just enjoy the evening; it’s a night of grace, sung about and also experienced.”
The experience of God’s grace and total gift is also something that touched Sr Amanda Marie (alto), choir member stationed in our community in St. Louis, MO: “The song O Come, O Come Emmanuel has long been one of my favorite carols because it celebrates a God who keeps his promises. Each verse is a prophecy from the Old Testament that kept the Hebrew people alive with the hope that God would save them, even in the most desperate situations. And God did save them. He fulfilled every prophecy in the birth of Jesus Christ, who healed our broken relationship with God and restored us to life. As we sing these ancient prayers for redemption, salvation, and deliverance, we offer God the situations that assail us today with every hope that he is still with us to save us.”
The whole point of our Christmas concerts—indeed, the whole point of our mission—is that every person would know, in the situations that assail them today, that God “is still with us to save us.” This is the prayer, the desire, the grace that we ask—both the Sisters who walk onto the stage and lift their voices in song, and the Sisters who pray and accompany the concerts, singers, and audiences from afar.
In our missionary hearts, all of us Sisters know intimately the joys and hopes, the pain and struggles of those who walk into the theaters to attend our concerts. Each Christmas concert season, my heart touches anew all of these longings and hopes, fears and hurts, dreams and prayers. And I pray—and all of us pray—because we are singing of God’s love.
Sr Sean Marie David (soprano), choir member from our community in Boston, MA shared her prayer, too: “I’m praying that our voices resonate with God’s love. Just as with the other expressions of our mission, these concerts are intended to communicate the beauty and the richness of our Faith. It is such an immense honor as well as a ton of fun to sing about Jesus’ birth and what Christmas means in our lives and in the life of the world.”
