Saints, Scholars and Song

BBC R4 Sunday Worship – Sunday 7th September 2025

St Dominic’s Priory – The Rosary Shrine, London

SCRIPT

LEADER: Fr Matthew Jarvis OP

PREACHER: Fr Matthew Jarvis OP

CHOIR: Southwell Consort

DIRECTOR OF MUSIC: Dominic Bevan and William Dawes

ORGANIST/MUSICIANS: Martin Stacey (organist)

OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT

BBC Radio 4 and time now for Sunday Worship which comes from St Dominic’s Prior, in London and begins with the Dominican Salve Regina - Hail Holy Queen

MUSIC – Dominican Salve Regina

INTRODUCTION – Fr Matthew Jarvis OP

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.

Welcome to St Dominic’s Priory, also known as the Rosary Shrine, in north London. The Dominican Friars, formally known as the Order of Preachers, have been serving this place since the mid-nineteenth century, but the mission extends far beyond the parish, through our work in hospitals, schools, universities, and the Catholic Radio studio we have onsite.

We are joined by the Southwell Consort, who will lift our hearts in worship through the music of Palestrina – in this 500thanniversary year of his birth – as well as Tallis and Sheppard, English composers of the same Renaissance period.

In our readings today, we hear the Scriptures speak of God’s friendship with humanity. This friendship is clearly seen in the lives of the saints. I am thinking especially of two young men due to be canonised by Pope Leo in Rome today: Pier Giorgio Frassati, a lay member of my own Order and Carlo Acutis, born in London and now acknowledged as the first Millennial saint.

Everyone is called to become a saint, and everyone can be a saint, if we only let God’s grace work in us. This church is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary and is built to illustrate this form of prayer. The nave is flanked by 14 smaller chapels, each dedicated to a different Mystery of the Rosary. Generations of Christians have prayed here, and, in moving through the church, have followed both a physical and spiritual journey towards the last mystery: the Coronation of Our Lady and the Glory of All the Saints.

We can all take our place in the glorious stained glass windows above the high altar, as we lift our eyes to heaven to sing with the angels and saints, Holy Holy Holy…

MUSIC: Sanctus – Thomas Tallis

PRAYER – Collect for 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (modified)

Let us pray.
O God, by whom we are redeemed and receive adoption,
look graciously upon your beloved sons and daughters,
that those who believe in Christ
may receive true freedom
and an everlasting inheritance with Our Lady and all the saints in heaven.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

Fr Matthew Jarvis OP

Thank God we have the saints as role-models for us. They prove that it really is possible to live a radically Christian life, full of love for God and for other people.

Saints are role-models but they are also there as friends who help us along the way. This can sometimes be easier to feel with saints of our own times, including the two new saints – Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis – being ‘canonised’ today in Rome by Pope Leo XIV. Both lived what the world would call tragically short lives: Pier Giorgio died at the age of 24, from polio (presumed contracted during his work with the poor of Turin) on 4th July 1925. Carlo was born on 3rd May 1991 here in London, though his family moved to Milan soon after, and he was only 15 when he died of leukemia in 2006. So Carlo is actually four years younger than me – a Millennial Saint!

What’s remarkable about these two, is that they were, in many ways, ordinary young men, who, through their faith, did extraordinary things in the midst of modern life.

Pier Giorgio’s attitude was ‘not to drift along but really live’. He was the life and soul of the party, and the photos prove it! He gathered a close group of friends that called themselves The Company of Shady Characters. They loved mountain-climbing and festive dinners, calling one another silly nicknames for a laugh. Among friends, you don’t have to take yourself too seriously!

Carlo Acutis enjoyed playing football and computer games with his friends. In his spare time, he coded websites. He’s become known as “The gamer saint”.

Of course, these two young men also used the tried-and-tested means for growing in holiness: they both had a strong habit of daily prayer, focusing on the Eucharist and the Rosary. More importantly, they reached out to others in need and offered them the love of friendship.

SCRIPTURE READING - Hebrews 12:1-4 (RSVCE)

A reading from the Letter to the Hebrews.

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

MUSIC: Adoro Te Devote (Godhead here in hiding)
Metrical Chant arr. Gareth Wilson
Text: Thomas Aquinas (1227) trans. G. Manley Hopkins

We have so many saints depicted in this church: local saints of this capital city such as King Edward the Confessor and the martyr St Thomas More; saints with a global popularity like Francis of Assisi and Thérèse of Lisieux; and of course saints of our Dominican order, not just St Dominic himself but many others, such as Thomas Aquinas, the great philosopher and theologian, Albert the Great, polymath and patron saint of scientists, Catherine of Siena, mystic and one of the great ‘influencers’ of the 14th century.

Here in London’s Rosary Shrine, this great cloud of witnesses spoken of in the Letter to the Hebrews is very visible, even tangible. Just to one side of the sanctuary, we have the altar of St Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican theologian known – perhaps above all – for his beautiful theology and poetry on the Eucharist.

Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo knew the hymn composed by Thomas Aquinas, Adoro Te which we now hear in the translation by the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

MUSIC: Adoro Te Devote

Fr Matthew Jarvis OP

The life of every saint is centred on the Eucharist, and this is true of the two being canonised today.

Pier Giorgio went to Mass every day and spent long hours in Eucharistic Adoration, although it brought him ridicule from his peers and even from his parents. His love for Christ in the Eucharist was intimately linked with his care for the poor and marginalised in early twentieth-century Turin. As Pier Giorgio put it, ‘Jesus comes to visit me every day in Communion, and I return the kindness in such a small way by visiting the poor who belong to him.’

In the 21st century, Carlo Acutis showed the same love for the Eucharist, calling it his ‘highway to heaven’. A precocious computer programmer, he developed a website documenting Eucharistic miracles throughout history. He explained: ‘When we face the sun we get a tan, but when we stand before Jesus in the Eucharist we become saints.’

MUSIC: Adoro Te Devote

Fr Matthew Jarvis OP

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is recognised as one of the most influential composers of the late Renaissance. In the late 16th century, he occupied choirmaster positions at the major basilicas of Rome, especially St Peter’s. His rich polyphonic style became practically synonymous with the reforms of the Catholic liturgy in the wake of the Council of Trent. On his coffin someone carved the simple accolade: The Prince of Music.

Praising Palestrina earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV said that ‘Polyphony is not merely a musical technique; it is a form imbued with theological meaning. It takes the sacred text and “clothes it with fitting melody” so that it may better reach the understanding of the faithful... This dynamic unity in diversity is a metaphor for our shared journey of faith under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.’

MUSIC: Ave Maria - Palestrina

REFLECTION – Rachael Shipard

Reverence for Mary as the Mother of God has inspired many composers through the ages to set her words and devotional prayers to music. As a cradle Catholic, the Hail Mary was one of the first prayers I learnt and cherished. I mainly prayed it as the cornerstone of the Rosary, a powerful devotional meditative prayer promoted by St Dominic and his successors the Dominicans. I remember learning to pray the Rosary not only at home, but also in the car with a CD led by a lady’s soothing voice and surrounded by children outside under the shade of a tree. This is what my vision of heaven was.

As I became more involved in music, I discovered the Gounod Ave Maria, appreciating its accompaniment lifted from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. It was probably about ten years later that I realised that ‘Ave Maria’ was Latin for Hail Mary!

The different phrases, in the first part of the Ave Maria are each spoken by different biblical characters to Our Lady. The first line, ‘Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with Thee’, was the greeting given by the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation before she was told that she would miraculously conceive a Son.

The prayer continues with Elizabeth’s words at the Visitation: ‘Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’.

The second half of the Hail Mary consists of devotional words written by the Church, added sometime in the 13th or 14th century, as a prayer of supplication, asking Mary to intercede for our salvation. The words are: ‘Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.’

However, in the Ave Maria, composed by Palestrina that we sing today, the words of the second half are slightly altered. Translated from Latin the text reads: ‘Holy Mary, Queen of Heaven, sweet and kind, O Mother of God, pray for us sinners, that with the chosen we may behold thee.’

Singing such beautiful Renaissance polyphony has enhanced my Catholic faith and allowed it to blossom, especially when I am privileged to sing it in liturgical spaces that lend themselves to this music. Knowing that I am praying while singing or making any music for the Church encourages me to pay attention to detail, embracing the power of ensemble and communication as we lift our souls to God. In this space, singing Palestrina’s Ave Maria with its variant text focusing on a sweet and kind Queen, is particularly appropriate for us here under her stained glass mantle. It’s an opportunity to meditate on Mary as ‘Regina Caeli’, Our Lady of the Rosary and Queen of Heaven as we sing.

MUSIC Ave Maria, Palestrina

SCRIPTURE READING – John 15:9–17 (ESV)

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John.

At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.

SERMON – Fr Matthew Jarvis OP

It’s so ordinary, so human, that we easily let these words of Jesus go in one ear and out the other. ‘You are my friends.’ But that’s an utterly astonishing thing for this particular man to say! The disciples have come to know Jesus as the true God, made flesh and living among them. If friendship can only be based on some kind of equality, some kind of mutual relationship, can mere human beings be friends with God? Perhaps, more urgently, can God in Jesus teach us how to be better friends to other humans?

We need friendship more than ever, in these times of growing social isolation and what people are calling the loneliness epidemic.

A new report from the World Health Organisation estimates that ‘loneliness accounts for approximately 871,000 deaths each year’, and that’s counting for the years before the Covid pandemic made things worse.

When I was 15 and received the Sacrament of Confirmation, I had to choose a Saint’s name. I remember the Bishop raising an eyebrow when I asked for the name Theophilus. I don’t think he’d ever Confirmed a Theophilus before! But I had learnt what the name meant in Greek: ‘Friend of God’. I considered it both factual and aspirational: I knew God had offered me his friendship, and I aspired to return it as best I could. I’m still aspiring to do that someday!

Even as a teenager, I had grasped the profound Christian truth that God had become human, so that we might become divine. If he had never stooped down to our humble level on earth, we would never be capable of rising to the heights of divinity. And this happens through simple human friendship. Much later I would learn from St Thomas Aquinas the radical claim that God’s love (agape in Greek) should be understood as friendship (philia in Greek). Aquinas does not think that all love is friendship. He knows we may love wine or a horse, yet it would be absurd to speak of being friends with wine or a horse! Real friendship is based on mutual love – it’s a two-way thing – and it is founded on something freely communicated between the friends, without any obligation or coercion. In the case of God and us, this friendship is founded on God’s utterly free communication of his love (agape) towards us, which in turn enables us to love God back with the same love. As St John writes (1 Jn 4:19), ‘We love because [God] first loved us.’

As a Dominican friar, I have learnt the importance of friendship, not just theologically speaking but in concrete relationships. So many of our great Dominican saints were great friends!

This pairing in friendship is not the same as an erotic relationship in marriage. The love of friendship is not physical in that way, and it’s not exclusive either, even when your friend is completely unique to you – like the Fox of whom Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince says, ‘I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.’

A friend may be unique, but their love is open to a wider polyphony of friendly relationships. After all, ‘a friend of a friend is a friend’.

There is a beautiful resonance in this metaphor of friendship as polyphony. The best friendships allow others to flourish in their differences, and polyphony can feel like a good conversation among friends.

This listening and giving way to others is not easy. And sometimes friends have to hold each other to account. Pier Giorgio Frassati knew how to correct his friends gently when they went wrong, knowing that he was not perfect either. Once, he reproached a friend for having skipped an exam and had to admit: “Certainly, [my sermon] could come from a better pulpit, but what do you want, I’m writing to you because I’m your friend, that’s all” (August 24, 1924).

St John writes, ‘Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.’ So, if we follow Aquinas and read this word ‘love’ (agape) as God’s friendship, we can be bold to say: let us be friends, for friendship is of God…. God is friendship!

MUSIC: Agnus Dei, Palestrina

Our prayers will be accompanied by verses of the Eucharistic hymn Sacris Solemniis, written by St Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi, and set to music by the English Tudor composer John Sheppard.

MUSIC: Sacris Solemniis – John Sheppard (verses 1-2)

PRAYER 1

Let us give thanks to God for the beauty of music, the harmony of creation and human creativity; for great composers like Palestrina, Tallis, Sheppard and great poets like Aquinas and Hopkins. May our own lives reflect the beauty of God.

PRAYER 2

Let us give thanks to God for the example and support of the saints in heaven, that ‘great cloud of witnesses’ cheering us on in the race we must run after them. As Pier Giorgio Frassati strove always to live, not merely to drift along, let us pray for the courage to be great, to strive for the highest goals, to flee every temptation to be mediocre. May the Lord open our hearts with joy to the call to holiness.

PRAYER 3

Carlo Acutis looked out for people who were less privileged in life and did what he could to help – with a smile. Let us pray for the gift of friendship, both with those to whom we are naturally drawn and with others whom God may be leading us towards in unlikely friendships.

The Lord’s Prayer

BLESSING

Let us finish with a thirteenth-century Dominican blessing.

May God the Father bless us.

May God the Son heal us.

May God the Holy Spirit enlighten us,

and give us eyes to see with,

ears to hear with,

hands to do the work of God with,

feet to walk with,

a mouth to preach the word of salvation with,

and the angel of peace to watch over us

and lead us at last, by our Lord's gift, to the Kingdom.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

And with your spirit.

May almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Let us go in peace.
Thanks be to God.

MUSIC: Sing We of the Blessed Mother (Tune: Abbots Leigh)

CLOSING ANNOUNCMENT:

Sunday Worship from St Dominic’s Priory, The Rosary Shrine, in London, was led by the Prior, Fr Matthew Jarvis. The Southwell Consort were directed by Dominic Bevan and William Dawes and the organist was Martin Stacey. The Producer was Katharine Longworth. It was a BBC Audio North Production for Radio 4.

Next week, Sunday Worship comes from the historic Mynyddbach Chapel in North Swansea with the Morriston Orpheus Choir.