I am a believer in the use of worship (participation) aids to encourage assembly participation in the “singing of the mass”.  Not just any worship aid, but a very well thought out and professionally created worship aid with notes and music—not just a sheet with words. 

It is my goal as a minister of music to create worship aids that look professional, are pleasing to the eye and easy to read.  Any seasoned director of environment and arts will tell you that everything in the church, the vestments, the artwork, the flowers, etc. should all have a certain richness that draws the faithful into prayer.  On special occasions (during the Season of Christmas and Easter) I also have the worship aids professionally printed on 8 1/2 by 17 (folded) paper.  My regular Sunday worship aids are always legal size (8 1/2 by 14) folded in half.  I find that using 8 1/2 by 11 paper (folded) requires me to shrink the music and words of the hymns down too small.  I can’t imagine someone with bad eyes squinting to see the words and notes to a hymn on a standard piece of paper.

This brings me (finally) to the topic of this blog post.  Where can one find acceptable liturgical clip art to use in a worship aid?  I’ve searched the Internet high and low and with a few exceptions, I can not find good quality clip art.  The graphic at the beginning of this post is from Hermanoleon Clipart which I dare say is about the only Internet site I’ve found that has Catholic clip art that conveys prayer and worship.  I used this particular graphic for the cover art work for my Pentecost worship aid.  Much of what I see on the Internet is non-Catholic in nature and although some of it is high quality, it doesn’t meet my criteria or doesn’t represent our Catholic form of worship.  The worst clip art I found on my Internet search was of an animated cross with legs and arms and a “happy face”.  I can’t imagine what the creator of that graphic was thinking!

 
My all-time favorite Catholic clip art is  from Liturgy Training Publications called Clip Art for the Liturgical Year by Steve Erspamer, SM.  An internal search of the LTP web site for clip art may find you as frustrated as I was.  If you click on “customer service” and then “software” you’ll be taken to this location where they do refer to the aforementioned software but don’t really tell you how to order it.  The second graphic I used for this post, “Peace to You”, is an example of the art work on the Clip Art for the Liturgical Year CD. 

What are our guidelines for creating worship or participation aids?  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops actually published a documented called “Guidelines for the Publication of participation Aids“.  It doesn’t really mention much about clip art or artwork in a worship aid, but towards the end of the document, it does list various resources for graphics used in creating a worship aid.  My advise would be to use quality graphics that call you to prayer, and try not to use to many graphics in your worship aid because it tends to clutter things up and distract from the professionalism of the aid.  I normally just use one piece of clip art for the front of the worship aid.

Holy Week has come and gone.  It’s been so long since I was part of the congregation (and not the choir director) that I almost feel like I want to take one Triduum off and just enjoy the Three Days without feeling the pressure of being there with the music—no, as I think more about it, that would only work if I actually attended the Triduum at at another church.  I would even be more nervous at my church if I was there and not leading the music!

It has been the tradition at my church to create a worship aid for the Triduum and extend it on into the whole of the Easter season.  It has also been our tradition to acquire beautiful artwork to use for the worship aid cover.  This has served us well in the past, but as the price to use copyrighted art work goes up, I have taken to using artist in my own parish.  The worship aid cover in this post is actually from our 2006 Triduum.  It was created by Ted Sanders who has been in our choir for over 30 years.  Ted is a teacher, an accomplished artist and a fine tenor.  He also is a percussionist in our choir.  When I first saw this piece of art work, I fell in love with it.  I don’t really know that much about art, but it is one of those paintings (I believe it was done in chalk) that I can just get lost in—lost in prayer.

Back to this years Triduum — What really stands out in my mind?  What memories will I cherish the most?  I think the most beautiful moment was the dressing of the altar at the Easter Vigil.  I believe this liturgical movement was brought back from the Religious Education Congress in Los Angeles.  I have a friend who was taking pictures during the liturgy, so hopefully I’ll be able to eventually post a picture of the table.  For now I’ll just describe it—at the “Presentation of Gifts” we sang We Come To Your Feast by Fr. Michael Joncas (GIA Publications, Inc.)

Verse 1 from “We Come To Your Feast”

We place upon your table a gleaming cloth of white.
The weaving of our stories, the fabric of our lives;
the dreams of those before us, the ancient hopeful cries,
the promise of our future: our needing and our nurture
lie here before our eyes.

As we sang the hymn, two people dressed in native clothing from their country of birth processed to the altar with a small altar cloth made from their home country.  There were altar cloths from the Philippines, Guam, Vietnam, Mexico and Africa.  As they processed, they held up the cloth for all to see—and as each pair came up, they laid their cloth on the altar.  The last pair that came up laid the white altar cloth on top, but you could still see the brilliant fabric from the other cloths hanging down in front of the altar.  It really choked me up.  So many rich cultures coming together as one to pray and sing and celebrate our risen Lord.

Verse 2 from “We Come To Your Feast”

We place upon your table a humble loaf of bread:
The gift of field and hillside, the grain by which we’re fed;
We come to taste the presence of him on whom we feed,
to strengthen and connect us, to challenge and correct us
to love and word and deed.