Mater Dei Catholic Parish

A parish of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, served by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter

Choir Fundraiser table in Advent

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Dear Parishioners:

I will be set up in the parish hall the next three weekends in Advent, to bring greater awareness to the products that raise money for the choral program at Mater Dei.

  1. Choir CDs:  The choirs at Mater Dei have recorded THREE professional audio CDs now, of music at our parish. This fall we released our NEW choir CD of Marian music, that features the St. Cecilia girls choir! We also have an Advent/Christmas CD, and a Holy Week music CD. Please come have a listen and consider buying one (or more!),  as a special Christmas present for someone. ALL proceeds go directly to the Mater Dei Choir Fund.
  2. Maple Syrup: I also will have maple syrup and other maple/pecan products for purchase. This is a personal way I contribute to raising funds for the parish choir program, by bringing you maple syrup from my family’s farm in Vermont (made by my father and brother), and pecans from my own little homestead in Irving. A portion of every sale goes to the choir fund.

    The Mater Dei Choir Fund is used to take care of all costs related to the music program, as long as funds are available. Every summer, it helps take care of book/supply costs for new children/youth/adult choir members. Now this winter, we are planning to purchase surplices for the St. Gregory Boys Choir, so that they will be in traditional cassock/surplice choir boy attire when they sing, starting in 2018!
    The choir fund also is used to pay organist fees for feast days/festive seasons, and provide childcare during choir rehearsal to some of our most talented singers.

    Please consider supporting our efforts, if you are able.

    Blessed Advent to you all,

    Kimberly Walters
    Mater Dei Music Director

NEW Choir CD available October 8th!

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In conjunction with the month of the Holy Rosary, our parish’s kickoff of the capital campaign to build a beautiful church for Mary, and the celebration of our parish anniversary, the NEW choir album of Marian devotional music is now available for purchase in the parish bookstore!

Our new CD is titled “Mater Dei: Marian Devotion & Prayer”, and is a collection of Marian music you may often hear sung at the parish. We are excited that this CD, for the first time, features singers from one of the children’s choirs, the St. Cecilia girls choir!

This new album is the choir’s collective way of imploring Our Lady’s intercession for the success of our capital campaign.

Sales of our choir CDs primarily support the expenses of the Mater Dei music program, by helping with materials needed for the expanding children/youth choir program, and organist funding for feast days and festive seasons.

But please also join us in praying that our music recording efforts may eventually help our campaign to build a beautiful church for Mary.

May God’s will be done in all things. Infant Jesus of Prague, pray for us!

New Choir CD! Seeking Benefactor(s)

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The Choirs of Mater Dei Parish are in the process of producing a new choir CD this summer, and it will include singers from the St. Cecilia girls choir!
It will be an album of devotional Marian music heard often at our parish, and is in a way, the choir’s supplication to Our Lady to help us build our new church.

We have more expenses for recording and mastering production of this CD than we have for past ones, so I am asking if there are any parishioners who could be a benefactor to help cover this extra cost.

You could choose to remain anonymous, or, we could make sure to mention you in the album details as a benefactor of this new album.

If you are interested, or know someone else who might be, please feel free to email me or call me to ask for more details.

Please pray for our efforts as well!

Kimberly Walters

Mater Dei Music Director
music@materdeiparish.com
Cell: 817-975-2934

To new parishioners: Holy Week music at Mater Dei

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For those who may be relatively new to our parish community, I hope you will find the upcoming Holy Week in its traditional form to be prayerful, moving, and inspiring.

For those of you who appreciate the reverent music at our parish, please note that the choirs of Mater Dei have a professional CD of music from Holy Week at Mater Dei.

It is titled, “Lux in Tenebris: Holy Week at Mater Dei”, and can be purchased in the parish bookstore, OR, you can digitally download it online at: https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/luxintenebrisholyweekatm

All proceeds help support the choir program at Mater Dei.

 

Kimberly Walters – Mater Dei Music Director

Tenebrae at Mater Dei: Notes for this year

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For parishioners who may be new to our parish, or new to the Traditional Latin mass and its related liturgical traditions, or even if you have been a parishioner for awhile but never ventured to attend Tenebrae, I thought I would post a little about it and encourage you to attend.

What it is:

Tenebrae means “darkness” or “shadows”, and it refers to the chanting of matins/lauds of the Divine Office on the 3 days leading up to Easter Sunday: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.

Usually, in religious orders, this part of the office should be chanted when it is still dark outside, and sung by the light of candles only. In the earliest centuries, it was chanted shortly after midnight, but starting in the middle ages,  it became the common practice to chant it on the evening before in anticipation, to make it more widely accessible to clergy and laity.

So following this tradition of making it available for parishioners in a parish setting, we chant it on the previous night. That means on Wednesday night (tomorrow), we will chant the Matins/Lauds of Holy Thursday, and on Friday night, we chant the matins/lauds of Holy Saturday. Since we have the Maundy Thursday mass in the evening, we do not chant the Tenebrae service of Good Friday.

What to Expect:

The choir sits in the front pews of the nave, women/men on separate sides, and we alternate chanting the verses of the psalms. The priests attend “in choir” in the sanctuary, and chant the lessons that separate the psalms during Matins. There is a candle “hearse” at the front, shaped like a triangle, with 15 candles. As each psalm is completed, 1 candle is extinguished, until only the lone candle at the top is left; personally, I have found this to be a powerful reminder of the apostles abandoning Christ in his darkest hour. The candles on the high altar are extinguished while the Benedictus is chanted, and then the famous “Christus Factus est” chant is sung at the end, while the candle representing Christ is hidden, so there is total darkness. Then, traditionally, a “loud noise/commotion” (the strepitus) is made, represents the convulsion of nature following the death of Christ; the chaos of the world without a savior. This is done usually by banging books on the pews for several seconds, until the “Christ candle” is returned to view again. Then all commotion ceases. And all depart in silence & darkness.

Personally, I wanted to urge you to consider coming if you haven’t before, and experience this deeply moving, and prayerful part of Holy Week at Mater Dei. When I first encountered Tenebrae, I was struck by its intensity to help lay faithful enter into Holy Week with a greater degree of contemplation. It is like a mini religious retreat for lay people. And so I made it one of my first priorities to make the richness of Tenebrae available to my fellow parishioners at Mater Dei. It has also become the most treasured part of Holy Week for many members of the choir as well.

This year, on Friday evening, the Schola Marianum members will sing Allegri’s “Miserere Mei” at the end of Wednesday night’s Tenebrae, and  Victoria’s polyphonic settings of the responsories between the lessons during matins on Friday night.

When you come, there will be Tenebrae booklets available near the doors, for you to follow along with the choir, and meditate on the psalms/readings. If booklets become scarce, don’t worry! You can also find the service of Tenebrae in Latin/English toward the back of the missals that are at the ends of all the pews. It likely will be located somewhere after the Masses for the Dead.

If you cannot attend, especially because you have little ones to take care of, we are attempting this year to make a professional quality, live recording of the two evenings of Tenebrae. My hope is to make these audio files available on the parish website, so that more parishioners can experience Tenebrae, even from the comfort of their own home, and as digital download files on CD Baby in companion to the choir’s Holy Week CD, “Lux in Tenebris”.

 

More posts to come, on the music schedule for the Holy Week liturgies.

God Bless your Holy Week,

Kimberly Walters

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