The theory’s simple: if music helps with prayer, it’s good. If it situates one appropriately before God, it’s good. “That,” said The Rev. Roc O’Connor, S.J., “is what matters to me.”

O’Connor is part one of Creighton’s three-man liturgy team. Working alongside Tony Ward, director of music ministry and Sister Donna Marie, O’Connor organized music for the annual Mass of the Holy Spirit, held this past Wednesday. The music ensemble consisted entirely of individuals from Creighton’s community.

“This is one of our all-university liturgies,” Ward said.

“We wanted to invite and include the entire community,” he said. “Music reflects that commitment, so I put out that invitation for the whole community to come together.”

As of Monday afternoon, the music ensemble was still unformed. “People come together the night of the rehearsal,” Ward said. “It just depends on who feels the spirit moving in them to sing at that time.”

The last-minute coming together can be quite hectic, Ward said. “It’s usually a real mix of strangers and friends — everyone from parishioners who have been singing at St. John’s for 30 years to a student who has never sung with us before.”

This year’s theme for Mass of the Holy Spirit was based on the idea of compassion in a violent world.

“We’re a nation at war,” Ward said. “Gatherings like this are a chance for a community to express that through faith, through hope, through love, we’re called to something better.”

O’Connor expressed similar sentiment.

“We invoke the Holy Spirit — to make us women and men for others in a very divided and painful world. What better can we ask for than compassion?”

Through music, the liturgy team hopes to help strangers find common ground.

“It is the universally understood language,” Ward said. “For us, music is prayer in song.”

The ability to draw strangers together, uniting them around the central prayer of singing to God, reveals the true power of music. And as O’Connor would say, that is good.