Not all church songs are scriptural. Some are non-scriptural praise of God. Some are meditations on a particular virtue, or a particular facet of God’s love and mercy, or thanksgiving for what God has done for us. The actual text of “Amazing Grace” is non-scriptural, though its references are easily applied to scripture. But the text comes out of the experience of the former 18th century slave captain John Newton. There’s nothing wrong with that—but a living liturgical community needs more.

We hear the words of scripture read to us every week. But its quite a different experience to sing those same words in songs that stay in our hearts, bobbing up in times of need or happiness. One of the many reasons for the astonishing success of the St. Louis Jesuits was that they were writing and singing songs firmly based on scripture at a time when much of the liturgical repertoire in English consisted of 19th-century hymns from Protestant sources (“Alleluia! “Alleluia! Let The Holy Anthem Rise”), folk tunes (“Down by the Riverside”) and new non-scriptural compositions (“Where Charity and Love Prevail”). The songs of the St. Louis Jesuits are still firmly in the repertoire—because people love them and have sung them with all their hearts for decades.

Scriptural song texts have their own particular resonance in liturgy! When we hear today’s Gospel, we immediately think of Bernadette Farrell’s (or Bob Hurd’s) “Unless a Grain of Wheat,” or Lawrence Rosania’s “As Grains of Wheat” or whatever pertinent scriptural song in your community’s repertoire is created on the words of 2 Timothy 2:11.

It’s a double reinforcement: singing the song helps implant the scriptural text in our hearts and minds and bodies in a way that reading or hearing can’t. At the same time, reading or hearing the text calls up the song in our minds again and again.

Talk about a win-win!