“And the Glory of The Lord Filled the Tabernacle” – Some Reflections on the World Premiere of Benedict Sheehan’s Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom

In the past thirty years, I have attended almost 7000 liturgies in the United States, Canada, Russia, and Greece. Some of these have been in small candlelit chapels in the desert of Mount Athos; others have been in magnificent imperial monasteries with a thousand years of history. I have beheld liturgies celebrated by patriarchs and liturgies celebrated by saints. But in terms of the musically sublime, I have never experienced anything so breathtakingly beautiful, so transparently luminous, so close to that border between heaven and earth as the premiere performance of Benedict Sheehan’s Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. There were moments during that performance that were so full of eternity, so full of wonder, so expressive of the “power of God and the wisdom of God,” that words, even as enthusiastic as these, fail to do justice to an experience in some way akin to that of the emissaries of Saint Vladimir who “knew not whether they were in heaven or on earth.”

My experience was by no means unique. The performance not only concluded with a standing ovation by an audience whose palms were long past being sore from enthusiastic clapping, but also with a change in the now radiant countenance of those whose hearts were visibly touched. The tears in the eyes of the listeners, the tears in the eyes of the singers, all bore witness to the shared experience of a reality that added something to each life, confirming the possibility of meeting God in a space of beauty and holiness created by an inspired composition and an inspiring performance. There happened to be a famous rock star attending the concert. He was also left speechless before a beauty that he found frankly overwhelming.

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