“Habemus papam!”
The information was announced at the Vatican on 8 May. Additional information: The newest successor of St. Peter was born and raised in the United States. More additional information: He was an Augustinian priest, Robert Prevost by name. More additional information: He did his undergraduate work at Villanova University.
I teach at Villanova, one of two Augustinian institutions of higher learning in the United States. (The other is Merrimack College, just outside of Boston.) I was off-campus when the news reached me that afternoon. Having heard the news, I checked my emails. Sure enough, there was a note from CNN asking me if I knew the pope. (No, I do not.) I returned to campus to find that bells were ringing, and ringing, and ringing. It was a general clamor of bells which eventually settled into the university’s alma mater on repeat.
There is a lesson here. The powers that be at Villanova could have arranged for loudspeakers across campus: “Attention! Attention! The new pope, Leo XIV, is an Augustinian friar who completed a bachelor’s degree at Villanova University in 1977! Attention! Attention! The new pope, Leo XIV, is an Augustinian friar who completed a bachelor’s degree at Villanova University in 1977!” and so on. Administrators did not choose that option and I do not think that the logistics of setting up loudspeakers entered into their thinking. No, the point was to ring the bells.
The chiming of the bells, especially before they switched over to the alma mater, communicated information without using propositional statements. Those on campus who knew about events in Rome did not need any explanation. Those on campus who did not know about events in Rome would have to turn to someone and ask why the bells were ringing. In other words, the bells invited the possibility of human encounter and the formation of human community, however brief. Even when the bells began intoning the alma mater and those who knew the lyrics could sing along silently (or aloud if they chose), there would still be the question of why the bells were ringing and the invitation to encounter would persist.
There is something communal about the ringing of bells and something that transcends communication achieved by propositional statements. Writing about a church bell in Polk County, Wisconsin, Gordon Lathrop indicates a lesson that is at stake: “Just as the bell calls, musically, rhythmically, to bath, table, prayer, and word, so also the music in the assembly itself is not some other, fifth thing . . . Music is the very mode in which the congregation gathers around and participates in the central mysteries of the assembly.”1 Words by themselves, however lucid the prose or poetic the language, are not capable of sustaining the gravity, joy, lament, and awe involved in Christian worship. Music, instrumental only or also lyrical, is intrinsic to Christian liturgical celebration. The analogy of being reminds us that words spoken by creatures who inhabit time and space can never suffice to speak of the God who is not thus bound. Being borne up in song and perhaps enlivened by instrumentation, allows words to do at least two things. First, the words take on textures inaccessible to speech on its own. Though still falling far short of the majesty of God, sung speech inches closer to adequacy. Second, the unity of singing voices is a sacrament of the unity of the assembly in Christ which, is intrinsic to the church as a “sacrament of salvation” (Lumen Gentium 48), for God wishes to draw all “together as one people” (Lumen Gentium 9).
Villanova’s bells—and any other bells ringing in response to the announcement on 8 May—remind us that music is fundamental to Christian worship and indeed to Christian existence. Something to think about the next time one hears church bells on a Sunday morning.
1Gordon Lathrop, “Strong Center, Open Door: A Vision of Continuing Liturgical Renewal,” Worship 75, no. 1 (January 2001): 35-45 at 40.
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