The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who lived from 1911-1980, dying at the age of 69, once said that “the medium is the message.” By this he meant, most agree, that the important thing about media is not the messages they carry but the way the medium itself which carries the messages affects human consciousness and society at large. Thus, it doesn’t really matter what you use your cell phone for, what news item or messages you receive on it, it matters only that you use the cellphone. Using the cell phone is the message. (We can postpone for a moment what that message is.)

So, about tonight’s concert.

I am not going to praise it, nor criticize or condemn it.

I am going to say that it was… astonishing… startling, remarkably so… and in being astonishing, it seems worthy of at least brief comment.

Consider: in the very back of the hall is a much-discussed sculpture representing Jesus at the moment of His resurrection. Some people hate this sculpture, finding it disturbing for its jaggedness. Others love it, finding in it evidence of the divine “power” that “trampled death by death,” and allowed Jesus to rise from the grave. In either case, this is a hall which has a depiction of the resurrection of Christ rising above the stage where the concert performers were gathered.

Consider (and you can see this in the photo I posted above): on the right side of the stage, there is a manger scene. A scene depicting the Holy Family in Bethlehem at the time of the first Christmas. A scene depicting the birth of Jesus, just as the central sculpture depicts his resurrection: so on the stage, there are depictions of the end and the beginning of Jesus’ earthly existence.

Consider: there is a Christmas tree on the far right of the stage. A tree celebrating the Incarnation of Christ, the Logos of God, into our world, marked by the fall of Adam and Eve.

Consider: Tonight in the Vatican, powerfully amplified musical instruments and a large choir accompanied by a dramatic light show performed a concert of great intensity and power, including a number of the film score themes composed by Hans Zimmer — arguably the most successful and influential composer for films of our time. This all occurred in the Paul VI Audience Hall in Rome.

The performance astonished me.

I was astonished by the engagement of the crowd. Every single seat in the hall was filled — in so far as I could see, and I looked up and down the entire hall, and at the people standing in the aisles and in the back. All these 7,000 people were silent, though many clapped enthusiastically at the conclusion of portions of the concert. Very few if any left the concert before it ended after more than two hours.

The mood was of rapt attention.

And I was struck by how different this gathering seemed from the times when papal audiences have been held here, on almost every Wednesday from November to April, when the weather is too cold for papal audiences in the open in St. Peter’s Square.

What was the difference?

The hearers of the music concert seemed to expect to be moved emotionally (and spiritually?) when the notes and words struck their senses and their understanding, in an interior processing of sounds and sights (the movements of the musicians and singers, but also the light show) in the context of a question about reality itself, and the place in reality of individual human persons, that is, in the context of asking whether one’s individual life has a purpose in “the great scheme of things,” or not.

The hearers in the papal audiences often seem to be expecting to hear something that confirms something that they already know and believe.

The listeners at the concert seemed to be expecting some new insight, some new revelation, about themselves and their place in the world.

Young people today speak of a “vibe,” a “vibration,” a quality of stance or attitude that can be sensed or perceived by others. And the “vibe’ this evening was that of a crowd of 7,000 being brought together into a type of community, a type of unity, by music, through music, through this music and in this context.

Consider: the role of Hollywood in the global “entertainment industry,” spinning tales and sharing dreams through films which are seen and reflected upon by hundreds of millions, or really, by billions; the role of Hollywood is a dominant one.

Consider: the role of Hans Zimmer, as the leading composer of music scores for many of these films; Zimmer’s role is a dominant role.

And yet, this dominant figure in the spinning of dreams around the world, on this evening, December 7, came to Rome to play his music on a stage where the Pope normally sits to give his catechesis, beneath a sculpture of the risen Christ, next to a simple manger scene, not far from a Christmas tree, in the presence of 2,000 poor people.

At one moment in the concert, the choral voices entered with power, overcoming the power of electronically enhanced instruments. Then, there was quiet, and the sound of the tick-tocking, as it were, of a clock, played by a timpanist, I think, as if sounding the passage of the moments of our lives in a place the Salve Regina hymn calls “this of tears the valley” (“in hac lacrimarum valle“) — in this fallen world.

Then the choir voices returned, as if the element of the human soul and its longings — its longing for the infinite, for eternity beyond time, for the wiping away of all tears, in the end, for holiness — persists through time, despite time’s passage, and beyond time.

Then the drums rolled, and the trumpets sounded, as if the voice of a higher being, and the unity of this music, implicit in these organized sounds and sung words, called out for the unity we call peace — not in syncretism, but in the true achievement of what is possible for human beings, which is to rise up, to go forth, to set out for a far-off home, a far-off reality which is already here, because of the resurrection depicted here, able to be heard and felt and understood in the longings of this composer and of these musicians and these straining voices of the singers in the choir.

And, throughout the hall, dozens of cell phones, hundreds of cell phones, a sea of phones, held up to record the concert, to record the music, and then to send it out, to post it to Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, sending in real time this concert out into the entire world, outside of this Vatican hall, to the ends of the earth.

And all framed by the resurrected Christ, rising above, and the humble manger scene, off to the right, and the little lighted Christmas tree, as the choir is singing, and the musicians playing, giving their music to us in space and time, under heaven. —RM

Continue reading: https://insidethevatican.com/news/newsflash/letter-71-2024-sat-dec-7-concert/