CNA Staff, Dec 1, 2024 / 07:30 am (CNA).
A group of religious sisters is getting ready to hit the road for their annual Christmas concert. The Daughters of St. Paul Choir announced the dates for its “Come to Bethlehem: A Christmas Concert with the Daughters of St. Paul” tour, which will make stops this year in New York, Boston, and New Orleans.
The Daughters of St. Paul is a religious community that focuses on evangelization through social communications and media. They often release professionally produced Christmas and religious song albums as a means of spreading the faith.
The sisters have been putting on their annual Christmas concert for over 25 years, featuring original choral arrangements, inspirational stories, and audience participation all while focusing on the true reason for the season — the birth of Jesus.
This year the choir is made up of seven sisters: Sister Margaret Timothy Sato, Sister Anne Joan Flanagan, Sister Fay Pele, Sister Sean Mayer, Sister Mary Martha Moss, Sister Amanda Marie Detry, and Sister Tracey Dugas.
The tour will stop in New York on Dec. 5, in Boston on Dec. 14–15, and in New Orleans on Dec. 18.
Dugas told CNA in an interview that the concert serves for many as a “kickoff to what they need to feel like, ‘OK, this is how I’m going to integrate the real meaning of Christmas with all the hustle and bustle I have to face after this.’”
Dugas has been taking part in the Christmas concert since 1992. She first became involved by singing for the studio recording and then had her first live concert experience in 2007.
She shared her memory of hearing the sisters sing for the first time when she was just visiting the community and recalled feeling “moved and touched by the Holy Spirit.”
Now, being one of the sisters herself and part of the choir, she explained that they felt called to put on this concert because they realized that “music is such a sacred part of our worship of God.”
“It’s an expression of our prayer life,” she said. “So, the singing is much more an act of worship than it is a performance … We’re just leading out brothers and sisters in prayer and just inviting them to let their hearts be lifted.”
“We see it in people’s faces that something reaches into their memory or their hearts or their relationships where it’s God’s work.”
Dugas said she hopes those who attend a concert leave feeling “the closeness of God to every individual person” and knowing that “he cherishes, loves, and values us and just wants us with him forever.”
The Daughters of St. Paul was founded in 1915 by Blessed James Alberione in Italy. With the help of Mother Thecla Merlo, he created a community for religious sisters to communicate the Gospel through the “apostolate of the Good Press.” It wasn’t until 1932 that Mother Paula Cordero along with another sister landed in New York and established the sisters’ American presence through the publishing of books.
Dugas explained that in any of the sisters’ book centers, chapels, or houses, visitors will see statues of Mary where, instead of holding Jesus to herself, she is actually handing him away.
“That idea is that Mary gives Jesus away to the world and so that’s the position that we are in — we give Jesus through the word, through music, through image, through social media presence, through speaking, whatever means,” she said.
“Our mission is to reestablish or to reintroduce or re-announce that we are made for our ultimate goal, which is heaven. So being a culture saturated in communication that is always happening and how often it disintegrates us we’re called to be … as our mother foundress would say, ‘We’re just a drop in the bucket but we’re a drop that makes ripples.’”
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I wish the Sisters would come to my city! I love music and am very discouraged about the state of music in Catholic churches. Catholics just don’t sing and don’t care to sing! And I’m currently in a parish that values children’s sports more than children’s music, so the parish school doesn’t have a a true music education curricula and my little children’s choir has folded due to more interest in soccer and swimming than singing. I always remember that the early Church martyrs sang hymns as they marched into the arena to be horribly killed. I guess that when American Catholics are martyred, we will kick a soccer ball back and forth on our way to our execution. I apologize if I sound bitter and resentful–I was raised Protestant and miss the glorious singing and music, and the great hymns of the Church, along with the contemporary hymns of this era in history. I spent years learning to play the piano (and I’m very good at it), and I don’t seem to be useful in my current parish.