Dwelling
Psalm 84 composed by Dcn. Matthew Trovato, OSFS.
Music has been a steady stream that has carried me for most of my life. My interest and involvement in liturgical music certainly played an indispensable role in my slowly developing faith life throughout my years of school. I started composing short instrumental pieces as a hobby when I was 18, and during my Novitiate year I wrote my first hymn, “Everlasting Father,” with lyrics adapted from St. Francis de Sales’s famous prayer.
In the past, I have written instrumental pieces for friends as gifts and given them a copy of the sheet music and a recording to keep.
As Bill Grebe’s entrance into the Oblate novitiate approached, I asked if I could contribute by providing music for the morning prayer service.
Dcn. Matthew Trovato, OSFS, performing Psalm 84.
At every entrance into the novitiate, it is a tradition for the Oblates to chant or sing a version of Psalm 84. This was the Psalm recited by St. Jane de Chantal and her fellow Visitation sisters as they entered the novitiate at “La Gallerie” in Annecy in 1610. As I looked for a setting of Psalm 84, I could not find a version that I thought was uplifting and light enough for Bill’s special occasion. At that point, the thought entered my mind: “I haven’t written anything in a while.”
Composition only comes with inspiration, which cannot be forced, so I was grateful that as I considered what kind of melody this psalm should have, I felt drawn to a pattern of “short–long– short” that lifts in the middle, with a fairly swift tempo, all intended to match the joyful occasion for which it is written.
Writing this piece brought me back to the beginning of my novitiate in 2018. Not only did we sing a version of this psalm upon my entrance into the Novitiate, but soon after on our first retreat, our novice master Fr. Mike Newman, OSFS, asked us each to choose a Psalm that we found loving to share more deeply about in our group discussion, and I chose this Psalm for its resonance with the spiritual journey: It encompasses both the movement which qualifies all of life as a pilgrimage toward God, as well as the motif of dwelling in the Lord’s house—the symbolic description that points to our ability to rest in God’s presence inwardly in the midst of movement and activity.
Most poignantly for my own reflection, the Psalmist writes that, for the one rooted in the presence of God, “As they go through the Bitter Valley, they make it a place of springs.” This, to me, is the mature fruit of the spiritual journey: the ability to pour divine life into the world even in the midst of bitterness and apparent lack of hope, transforming those places into oases of mercy. The world needs such “springs” that only those dwelling in the Lord’s presence can provide.
Lastly, I cannot fail to mention how it was an honor to play and sing this piece at Bill’s reception into the Novitiate, as I watched one of my closest friends begin a year that promises to bring so much fruit for discernment and deepening capacity to consent to the love of God—the most fitting “note” with which to conclude!
Dcn. Matthew Trovato, OSFS
Oblate Seminarian