Tag: Benediction

The Tantrum Song

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I’ve just got back home from my Holy Hour. Despite being brought up a practising Catholic and being in Catholic education for the majority of my schooling, I somehow missed out on many quintessentially Catholic experiences, two of which are Adoration and Benediction.

I remember an incident a few years ago when my girlfriend and I were asked to do the music at a healing Mass. We presented our song suggestions to the planning team and they were well received, but it was also requested that, at Benediction after Mass, we play “Tantum Ergo”.

At this point in my journey I was vaguely aware of what Benediction was, but neither of us were familiar with the hymn “Tantum Ergo”. We tried to “push back” on this suggestion and recommended other songs instead, ones with which we were more familiar. However, the planning team was adamant, we had to do “Tantum Ergo”…

After spending some time looking at the music we eventually concluded that it was “actually not too bad”. However, because of the unusually strong reaction to our suggestion to play something else, that hymn was forever dubbed in our minds as “The Tantrum Song”!

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“Master, it is good for us to be here…”

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Tonight, after Benediction, I felt drawn to tarry in the church a while longer than usual. Soon there were only one or two other people left in the church.

While sitting there, I felt a deep, tremendous peace; a peace I haven’t felt in some time.

As I sat there, just enjoying the moment, I was reminded of something that my patron Saint, St. Peter, said at the Transfiguration when he beheld the Jesus’ glory:

“Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah” – Luke 9:33

I know there’s a lot of theological significance in what Peter is saying here, but sitting in that church tonight I understood those words in a slightly different light. Peter was seeing the beauty of the Lord and wanted to prolong that mountaintop experience. He didn’t want to go back down the mountain just yet – he wanted to setup camp for a little while…

After Benediction, I, too, wanted to prolong the experience, remain in my pew and maybe setup camp for a little while…

The purpose of getting to higher ground isn’t so we can just enjoy the view, it’s so that, when we come back down from the mountain, we can approach the terrain ahead with a new perspective and with confidence.