The Song of the Lamb: Sacred Music and the Heavenly Liturgy

Liturgy is God’s gift to man. It brings to earth a glimmer of the peace, warmth, and liveliness of eternity, engaging all the senses: sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound. In Benediction, the Liturgy of the Hours, and the Mass, heaven touches earth, and we remember that the Word dwells among us. The Church invites everyone to the celebration.

Sacred music, then, should immerse us—however imperfectly—in the atmosphere of heaven. Yet how often does the sound of the liturgy leave us feeling empty, or distracted? How often does music at Mass seem to us like a mere concert or, worse, like kitsch?

In this groundbreaking book, Robert Cardinal Sarah, longtime prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, joins with Peter Carter, director of the Catholic Sacred Music Project, to dive into the spiritually rich tradition of Catholic sacred music, tracing it from the Church’s earliest days all the way through the Second Vatican Council and beyond. The cardinal minces no words in critiquing the liturgical confusion of our times, which has touched every corner of the Church. Yet he returns always to the true center: not aesthetics, but the beautiful person of Christ Himself, God incarnate.

Cardinal Sarah’s meditations on the liturgy—as the Second Vatican Council imagined it—offers a spiritual and practical roadmap to authentic renewal, including at the parish level. Read with an open heart, The Song of the Lamb will make readers fall more deeply in love with the Mass and with the Divine Office, and it will fan the flames of the liturgical renewal that Christians across the world have so long desired.