Kryst says the power of chant — and in particular the antiphons that are an official part of Mass — allows St. John’s to join with the worldwide Catholic Church in worship. 

Similar to the readings at Mass, antiphons — short phrases from Scripture that are sung as a refrain at certain times during the Mass — change according to the day and liturgical season. “It unifies us with the rest of the Catholics in the world,” Kryst says. “When you have specific music written for a specific Mass and you use it, we are unified with all the different churches.”

Kryst, who grew up attending St. John’s, has served in the church’s music ministry since he was a boy, when he watched his mother in the role of cantor and began learning to play the piano and organ. He studied organ performance at Eastern Michigan University and returned to St. John’s after graduating. He is married and has two children, with a third due in October. 

Liturgical music, Kryst says, should be a part of the prayer of the Mass. Chant and the use of Latin, he believes, were never meant to disappear from the Mass after Vatican II. “Studying the documents of Vatican II, I discovered the difference between a ‘horizontal’ type of song and a ‘vertical’ hymn,” he says. “Horizontal songs talk about us, whereas a vertical hymn talks about the connection between us and God.”

Chant and the use of antiphons is a natural way to express this connection, he says, and many Catholics seem drawn to traditional Masses because they are seeking something different than what the world offers. “I see this drawing in the young families who are craving something,” Kryst says. “They want to come to church and have that divine experience they can’t have anywhere else.”

John Paul Hendrickson, who attends St. John the Evangelist with his wife and toddler, says his family is drawn to the Sunday noon Mass because of the traditional music and use of Latin. “Both of us like music that doesn’t distract you from the Mass, but adds to it,” Hendrickson says. “It feels proper and feels like it belongs there.”

He agrees that sacred music should be distinctive from other kinds of music. “I wouldn’t want to go into Mass and have music that reminds me of the world,” he says. “You step into Mass and there’s something going on there that transcends the building itself.”

As one of 12 children in a Catholic family, Hendrickson says he and all of his siblings have sought out more traditional aspects of the faith as they became adults. “As we’ve all grown up, every single one of us wants more tradition,” he says. “You can taste the truth in it.”

Father Canoy says he was exposed to traditional liturgical music, chant, and antiphons while in seminary in Detroit and that he has noticed a growing interest in such music over the last decade. “Perhaps it’s the noisiness of the world and the desire for something other worldly,” he says.

When he was assigned to St. John’s in 2014, Father Canoy says he conducted “fireside chats” with Catholics in their homes around Jackson. People were responding to his invitations to return to church, but he quickly realized that he was inviting them to return to the same liturgy that they had left, or was just slightly different because “for 10 minutes, there was a different preacher.”

He says he realized there first had to be a spiritual renewal among those already attending and an increased sense of the sacred before others could be drawn in. So, he says was open to Kryst’s desire to introduce chant and the traditional sacred music of the Church, and to use Latin during certain Mass parts.

“We didn’t jump into it right away, but first preached the Gospel anew and fostered a desire for a biblical worldview, as opposed to the secularity that has invaded even some of the Church itself,” Father Canoy says. “Sacred music is meant to be conducive to contemplating and entering more deeply into the significance of what is going on in the Mass. If you’re often at Mass finding that you’re waiting for it to be over or move more quickly, the antiphons and chant may rub you the wrong way initially, but the hope is that these elements help folks enter into that sacred space with the Lord, and the time becomes less of a concern.”

Music is an integral part of the Mass, Canoy says, adding that there are good, beautiful hymns and contemporary songs that the church uses in worship. However, St. John’s use of chant and Latin (the whole Eucharistic Prayer is said in Latin at the Sunday noon Mass) helps integrate the spoken and sung parts of the sacrament.

With sacred music, “you’re not singing at Mass, you’re singing the Mass,” he says. 

All the Masses at St. John’s now incorporate at least the entrance and communion antiphons, Kryst says. “There’s a place for everything, musically,” he says. “We’re striving to make the Mass as appropriate as possible by using the music that was written for it.”