For Cind Treser, who is busy designing clouds and painting sunsets.

St Patrick's Mass

This mass setting, like the album project, has been a work in progress. It began at St. Patrick parish in Seattle, where we were music leaders at the 10:30 Mass, with an innocent question to the liturgy committee seven weeks before the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the new building in 1991: Should we compose something for the occasion? We had in mind a simple psalm setting or a song. Instead, committee member Vicky Tiberio asked, "How about writing a Mass?" Before we could explain how hard it would be for us then-amateur composers to complete a task like that, rehearse it with the choir, and make assembly copies of everything in just seven weeks, the committee said it thought that would be a great idea!

So, we wrote one. For the first (and only!) time in our 12 years as music directors, everything sung that morning (March 17, 1991) was brand new and written by us. The assembly did very well in spite of the newness (we definitely rehearsed some of it before Mass!), and we received many compliments on it, then and since.

But as mass settings go, it was incomplete. Since it was Lent, we didn't write a Gloria and the gospel acclamation wasn't an Alleluia. You only sing one memorial acclamation at Mass. We did the Our Father as a call-and-response because it was brand new. The Credo we didn't even think about! We wrote only what we needed to get through the day, and it was a year before we picked back up and looked at how to fill in the gaps. The album project was even stranger. It was recorded in one day at Our Lady of Fatima in Seattle on Saturday, October 11, 1997, singing the last note a little after 4:00pm and then frantically coiling wires and rearranging furniture to get ready for 5:00 Mass (and then we did a wedding!). We hoped to have it out by Christmas. But an initial lack of money, confusion over who to ask for copyright permissions, and a decree from Rome that forbid the use of the psalter translation we had chosen led to years of delay. We finally re-recorded the psalm verses and secured the permissions in 2000. The final CD proof was duplicated on St. Patrick's Day 2001, ten years after it was originally performed. Is that what they mean by "in God's time?"

In many ways, we don't think that St.Patrick's Mass is finished. We wrote only one Lenten gospel acclamation. There are a few parts for the presider to sing. Acclamations for a sprinkling rite and intercessions could still be composed, or harmonies arranged for some unison works. We're still finding tempos, styles, and new ways to do everything. And who knows, the new Sacramentary might even get approved some day!

But there is no reason to think that it should be finished. We write music to serve the liturgy, and the liturgy is never perfect or complete. It has a backbone, yet allows for an infinite variety of flesh in its body. It has structure, but it is a living, organic prayer. You never know what is going to happen when people come together to worship! So we'll keep writing and arranging. You keep singing and inspiring. We'll all keep praying and praising. May "the work of the people" urge us to do the work of God.

Many thanks to all the people at St. Patrick, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady Star of the Sea, and all the other parishes where our music has been used. You have given us far more than we have given you.

~ Laura and David Ash, Feast of St. Patrick 2001

The Lorica, or St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer

"Lorica" is the Latin word for breastplate, a segment of a suit of armor made of either leather or metal. The word would be familiar to Patricius Magonus Sucatus, born a son of a Roman civil magistrate, deacon and tax collector in the fourth century after Christ. He might have wished for one when he was captured by Irish pirates as a teenager, but the experience brought him closer to the Christianity he had been raised with and had largely ignored until then. He eventually became a priest like his grandfather and then a bishop, returning to Ireland to succeed St. Palladius and become Ireland's second bishop. Patrick's work is the stuff of legend now, but he made his mark of evangelization upon the island nation, becoming their patron saint. Research now suggests that the "Lorica" prayer attributed to him was almost certainly written by someone else, perhaps as much as 400 years after he died. It nonetheless describes his faith and conviction and will be forever associated with him.