What makes worship in the Catholic Church of 2019 different from everything else one experiences during the week—a place of true spiritual, intellectual, and emotional respite? We genuflect and kneel, and foster a spirit of quiet reverence because Jesus is truly present in the tabernacle and on the altar. External factors can bolster this catechesis: beautiful architecture that orients our minds and souls upward; the presence of Latin or Greek in the liturgy, and celebrating ad orientem, among them. Another is the music, which in our post-Vatican II era, can range from painfully pedestrian campy kumbaya to the magnificent, otherworldly splendor of Mozart’s Requiem. Thanks to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco and the Benedict XVI Institute, the American church might soon have more of the latter.

In 2017, Archbishop Cordileone commissioned a new “Mass of the Americas” to honor the December 8th feast of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, patron of the United States.  The Mass, which melds Latin polyphony and chant with traditional South and Central American music, was written by Benedict XVI Institute composer-in-residence, Frank La Rocca. It features a 16-voice mixed chorus, an organ, a string quartet, bells, and marimba. The Mass includes Spanish, Latin, and English, as well as Nahuatl—the Aztec language spoken by Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego. ….