I had a very prayerful and enjoyable experience this morning praying and singing with the 40 Days for Life vigil outside a local abortion clinic. There are several elements of it which I think might be interesting to those on this forum.

Our schola was invited to come and sing by the local organizers, and we accepted. On busy (and cold) Saturday only four of the schola were able to make it, but it worked out extremely well.

First of all, they had no idea or requests for what we were to sing, so I told the schola to bring their Requiem Mass folders and their PBC's . This turned out to be very fortuitous because, of the number of regular participants, there were several who either spoke only Spanish, or whose English was minimal, but their faces lit up when I said we would start with "Salve Regina". The Spanish speakers and the English speakers had no trouble singing that together, and that got their feet wet, so to speak, and we proceeded to sing (from the PBC) "Adoro te", "Jesu Dulcis", "Ave Maria", "Pater Noster", and "Christus Vincit". From the Requiem Propers we sang the Introit, Offertory, Communion, and "In Paradisum".

it was also very interesting because they all were familiar with square notes because their local parishes had pew cards with the new Ordinary in square notes, so just a little time singing with us and they 'knew' what the notes meant, and sang along very well, considering many of these antiphons they had never seen before.

Several of them were in tears and expressed great gratitude for us singing, especially the Requiem Propers, which they really felt were appropriate for the occasion. We also stirred up the local constabulary, who responded to complaints (from the clinic) that we were violating the noise ordinances (!?!?!?). So we were forced to moved back to the other end of the parking lot. We all got a good laugh out of it.