(School Mass): Feast of St. Gregory the Great (Fri., Sept. 3, 2004)

Pope St. Gregory the Great


Did you ever stop and wonder what Jesus might have been like when he was a kid your age? What did He do for fun? What games did He like to play? What did He and His friends talk about when they were by themselves? What kind of music did He like?

I bet you never thought about that! Well, of course Jesus liked music—just like you do! There were no CD players or radios or iPods 2000 years ago… but Jesus and His friends would have liked to sing, and maybe play some instruments like flutes and drums and lyres. Lyres were string instruments like ancient guitars. And they would have liked to listen to music, too. Not rock or rap or country, but the sweet music of their own day.

Today the Church around the world is celebrating the feast day of a special saint named Gregory. He lived almost 1500 years ago and he became pope… a great pope… so great, in fact, that he earned the title, “St. Gregory the Great.”

Poor Gregory didn’t want to be the pope. He didn’t think he was worthy of such an honor and such an important position. In fact, when Gregory found out that they wanted to make him the pope, he ran away and hid in a cave. Can you imagine? But they found him, dragged him out, and made him agree.

But back to the music. Gregory loved Jesus very much and he wanted to know a lot about Him. He especially wanted to know how Jesus prayed, because Gregory wanted to copy Him. He knew that Jesus gave us the words to the Our Father, so he also wondered if maybe he could see if Jesus left us any music, too.

A lot of the praying that Jesus Himself did was the psalms. Even today we pray a psalm at every single Mass. You know that we have a “responsorial psalm” after the First Reading. Priests and nuns and lots of lay people also pray something called the “Divine Office.” This consists of lots of psalms, too. So the psalms are an important part of Catholic worship, even today.

Psalms are actually songs. They were meant to be sung—and in fact, if you look carefully at your bible, you’ll find that there is little tiny print at the beginning of several of the psalms that give directions to the musicians!

So anyway, St. Gregory was clever, and he reasoned that Jesus must have sung those psalms! And that means there had to have been music! So Gregory set to work to see if he could find it.

Sure enough, Gregory “rediscovered” Jesus’ music! So he wrote it down in musical notation and taught some of the ancient monks how to sing it, too. The style of music is known as “Gregorian Chant”—and we still use it today! This kind of music is very, very special and quite different from most of the songs we know—even Church songs. But the Church tells us that everybody should try to learn a little of this music not only because it’s so beautiful but also because we think it can connect us a little bit more with Jesus. After all, what brings people together more than singing together?

Pope St. Gregory wasn’t called “Great” just because of the music. He led the Church for 14 years and wrote many books and was a great preacher and teacher. He loved all people and treated them with love and kindness. He was the first pope to give himself the title “Servant of the Servants of God.” All the popes since him have used this beautiful title.

St. Gregory especially loved the poor and strangers. Every day he fed them a good dinner. He was also concerned about bad treatment that people suffered. Once, before he became pope, he saw a group of blond boys up for sale in the slave market of Rome. He asked where they were from and was told that they were from England. Gregory felt a great desire to go to England to bring the love of Jesus to the people there who didn’t know about Jesus—and when he became pope, one of the first things he did was to send some of his best monks to convert the English to Christ.

In the last years of his life, poor St. Gregory suffered a lot because of very poor health. But that didn’t stop him from working hard for the Church until God took him home in the year 604.

So that’s the story of St. Gregory the Great! Whenever you sing in Church, think of St. Gregory. Remember that you’re singing for Jesus. Also promise Jesus that you will try to be as kind and loving to everyone just the way St. Gregory was. With a happy song on our lips and good deeds on our soul, we will definitely be on the right path to please Our Lord very much and make our way to heaven!

Amen.