Praying with music (of any genre!)
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Sr. Allison Regina Gliot
So, I’m a religious sister. And I like hard rock music. That might strike some as strange, but praying with music -both religious and secular- has been a huge source of grace in my life.
Whatever your preferred genres are, I think most people would agree that music is a powerful force. Songs can stick with us for years (even decades!). They can uplift us in dark times, strengthen us to take action, and transform our perspectives and ways of seeing the world. We might even find that certain songs take on special meaning in our lives or can remind us of certain people and relationships.
Music can also help us reach out to God in prayer, expressing the deepest yearnings of our hearts or spurring us to intercede for others. Maybe we automatically think of church hymns or praise and worship music, and those are indeed beautiful ways of expressing our love for God. But our praying with and through music doesn’t have to be limited to traditional sacred music or lyrics addressed directly to God. Even popular music not created expressly for religious purposes can, in many cases, be an entry point for prayer when we approach it in a certain light.
The founder of the Daughters of St. Paul, Blessed James Alberione, spoke of the importance of being attuned in our prayer to “the cries of humanity:” the hopes, longings, joys, and sufferings of the human race. In listening to these cries and adding our own to the mix, we can bring them all before our loving God, surrendering to him all that we are and all that we hope to be. Popular music is one place where these cries of humanity are expressed most clearly in our world today. Artists sing about a huge range of subjects that are important to them or that they are struggling with, everything from love to mental health to social commentary. These messages and emotions often resonate with listeners in powerful ways.
As Christians, it is a good practice to pay attention to the songs that move us and ask ourselves why they move us. Maybe they are expressing the same emotions we’re feeling and making us feel seen and understood. Maybe certain lyrics stand out to us because they say something true about the world in a way we’ve never thought of before, or they speak to our own life experience. Maybe those lyrics are pointing to some hurt in the world or in our lives for which we are seeking healing. Or maybe a song moves us to react in a negative way because we feel that something about it is untrue or does not align with our Catholic values.
Whatever the reason, if a song is stirring something in us or striking us deeply, that is a good thing to take to prayer and share with Jesus. If we’re feeling understood, we can reflect on how God is with us and understands us more completely than we’ll ever understand ourselves. If we gained new insight about something, we can thank God for that gift and the way he is able to speak to us in such creative ways. If what resonated was a need or hurt in the world or in ourselves, we can bring that to him and ask him to flood the situation with his grace. And if something in the music was not consistent with our values or was spreading falsehood, we can pray for the artist, and for all those who will hear the song, and we can offer prayers of reparation for the harm it might do.
We can also, in these moments of prayer, ask Jesus what he thinks of the music and the messages it contains. What cries of humanity does he hear and respond to tenderly through that song? What lyrics might he speak through, and what lyrics might he change?
I can think of many times when bringing a song to prayer changed my life (my Confirmation saint is St. Cecilia, so it’s only fitting!).
Listening to the song “Does Anybody Hear Her” by Casting Crowns started me on my path to discerning religious life. The song begins with, “She is running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction,” and is about a woman slipping through the cracks and needing someone to reach out to her. But the last line switches to a new subject: “He is running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction,” pointing to the countless people in need of prayer and companionship. Though I had heard the song dozens of times, God suddenly allowed me to understand the lyrics as a missionary call to reach those on the margins.
After I entered the convent, the lyrics of Breaking Benjamin’s “Ashes of Eden” resonated with me in a special way. Though the vocalist expresses being unable to hear or feel the presence of the one he is singing to, he still repeats, “Stay with me, don’t let me go,” ultimately asking for heaven to reach down and take him by the hand. This became my prayer of trust during a time of desolation when I was struggling to connect with God.
I was inspired to write a young adult novel about mercy and conversion after hearing the heartbreaking misunderstandings about God’s mercy in the song “Mercy (Unplugged)” by Bad Omens (warning: contains explicit language). The vocalist bemoans the way we “beg God for a mercy that He knows we'd never show,” concluding that God would refuse to take us back even if we returned to him. And yet we know God’s mercy is infinite. His willingness to take us back after we fall may seem too good to be true, but it is true. That is why I felt drawn to explore God’s limitless mercy more in depth through a novel that features characters struggling with similar doubts.
More recently, ONE OK ROCK’s “+Matter” and “Dystopia” has formed my spiritual soundtrack. “+Matter” poses questions about whether we are driven by faith or hate, and “Dystopia” presents an ultimately hopeful view of holding onto faith in dark days and the power of love and understanding to overcome any difficulty. These messages of perseverance and being grounded in our deeper values have helped me to stay anchored during a chaotic season of the year.
In some of the moments when music has touched me, I was intentionally praying. In others, Jesus took me by surprise when I was just listening to the radio or playing music in the background. But talking to Jesus regularly about the music I hear has helped me to grow as a person and as a religious sister. It’s enabled me to cultivate a habit of looking for God’s invitations in unlikely places and remaining attuned to the cries of humanity beyond my personal life. And it’s helped me to pray and draw closer to God through something I love.
So I would encourage you: the next time you turn on the radio in your car or pull up music on your phone, pay attention to those songs that evoke a reaction in you and bring that reaction to Jesus. How might he be inviting you to turn a song into a prayer?
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