Suggestions

Guidelines for Using the Liturgical Song Suggestions

The Liturgical Song Suggestions are presented as a resource to help parish and school music ministry teams select repertoire for each Sunday Mass that is appropriate to the day, feast or season. It is also hoped these Liturgical Song Suggestions may help develop over time a common Core Repertoire of music across parishes. Your feedback, including suggested additions and deletions to the common Core Repertoire, would be most appreciated.

For each Sunday or Feast there is a summary of the texts of the day and a table of suggested songs, settings of the Mass parts and recommended Responsorial Psalms, including common seasonal psalms.

The table provides the recommended song titles with references to hymnal numbers or other resources in which the song is found. The table includes columns for the major parts of the Mass – Entrance, Penitential Act, Glory to God, Responsorial Psalm, Gospel Acclamation, Offertory, Holy Holy Holy, Memorial Acclamation, Amen, Our Father, Lamb of God, Communion, Song of Praise after Communion, and Sending Forth (Recessional). These columns contain check-boxes indicating which particular songs are recommended for each of these parts.

The recommendations are based on the appropriateness of the song to the texts of the day, feast or season, as well as the appropriateness to the part of the Mass as detailed in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Significant citations or references to the day's texts are indicated by an asterisk (*). Where songs have particular relevance to one or more of the day's texts, these are indicated in the Relevance column.

The summary of the texts includes the Entrance and Communion antiphons, the Scripture references, the Psalm response and the Gospel acclamation for the particular day.