Music reproduces for us the intimate essence, the temp and energy, of our spiritual being; our tranquility and our restlessness, our animation and our discouragement, our vitality and our weakness -- all, in fact, of the fine shades of dynamic variation of our inner life.
What prompts this surrender -- this total turning to God in self-donation and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. It is a recognition which becomes experiential in contemplative prayer, in a "knowing" that is beyond knowledge; it is the graced knowledge of love. Only such a gift can make unconditional self-surrender possible, for it is an experience of the unconditional love of a person,a personal God. It is such a recognition that breaks forth joyously in Daniel Berrigan's "All, all is gift. Give it away. Give it away."