Music |
Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles
By
Published: Oct 27, 2020
Category:
Classical
If a classical CD sells 500 copies a week, that’s good enough to propel it to #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical list. “Lent at Ephesus,” the second CD by the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, sold 8,000 in the week after its release. Most of the 22 nuns of the Benedictines of Mary didn’t know that their CD is #1 — and they liked it that way.
What does matter here: They live in isolation in a priory 45 minutes from Kansas City. Except for an hour a day, they don’t speak. Five hours a day, they pray and sing. Why sing? They quote St. Augustine: “Qui bene cantat bis orat.” (“To sing is to pray twice.”)
Their success is beyond unlikely. Most don’t read music. Only one, a former musician, has real training. Their greatest strength, one nun explains, is paradoxical: “I think that silence is the prerequisite for how we can sing together and listen for each other.”
They originally sang in praise of God. Them they discovered they needed money — the home they built put them about $2 million in debt. Their main enterprise was hand-stitched clerical vestments. To supplement that, they started selling homemade CDs. Music veterans launching a label for sacred music heard of the nuns and wrote them a letter. It arrived during a nine-day “novena” prayer aimed at finding a way to help them reduce their debt. Hand of God! [To buy the CD of “Angels and Saints at Ephesus” from Amazon and get a free MP3 download, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
“Angels and Saints at Ephesus,” their previous CD, also sold strongly. [To buy “Lent at Ephesus’ from Amazon and get a free MP3 download, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
If purity of intent matters in music, the nuns have an advantage over all other choirs. They make media, they don’t consume it. They’re just too busy for ego. Prayer, for them, is a full time job. Add taking care of the animals and sewing, they need every hour of a day that begins before dawn.
Separate from us, they offer us the fantasy of separation. Of spiritual certainty. Of great peace, the kind of peace described in Philippians: “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” For a glimpse of that, the cost of a CD is negligible.
For the website of the Benedictines of Mary, click here.
