When Father Carlos Rojas arrived at St. Joseph Parrish in 2014, it was evident that he was quite different from the pastors that we’ve had in the past. For one thing, he was very young. And with that youth came a great deal of exuberance for his work, and an outgoing, animated personality, that shone through in the way that he addressed his parishioners, as well as, in the manner in which he delivered his homilies. He was also innovative and open to new ideas…modern methods of teaching and preaching. One of those methods involved recording his homilies and posting them on a website called Soundcloud. There, he was able to share his spirited words with a wider audience, and to archive them, for those who either missed a mass or simply wanted to listen to a replay. One of the first homilies he gave was about the role of imagination as it pertains to spiritual growth. He spoke of water as a metaphor for God’s love and asked us to imagine what it would be like to swim in that love. I was able to sift out a few of the main ideas from that homily to create a song I called “Swimmin’ In Your Love”. It took a few months for the writing, recording, and production of the song to be complete, but I finally came up with something that I felt had captured the essence of his thoughts. I was ready to share it with him.
One Sunday morning, while my family and I were greeting Fr. Rojas after mass, the subject of fishing slipped into our conversations . We actually ended up making an impromptu fishing date with him for that afternoon. He, my grandson, Julian, and I would later drive out to Redington Beach where we were able to spend a few hours together, in a much different setting than church. On the way back that evening, I had the opportunity to introduce Fr. Rojas to the song I had written. I slipped the CD into my car stereo, and he attentively listened to it. When the song finished playing, he expressed a genuine enthusiasm and appreciation for what I had created. He seemed flattered by the fact that I took the time to turn his thoughts and words into a song. Upon subsequent meetings, he would sometimes remind me of his fondness for the song by randomly blurting out the chorus. Then, a few Sundays ago, my family and I stopped to greet him after mass again, and a comment that my wife made about patience, prompted him to mention “Swimmin’ In Your Love”. This time, though, he came up a with a rather creative suggestion, one that I should have thought of on my own. The idea he had was to infuse segments of his homily into the song, a process that I was very familiar with in past works involving the spoken word. I went home, downloaded the homily from Soundcloud, and proceeded to dissect it into parts that might fit within the format of the song. I found that there were two distinct moods in the homily, each with its own discernible pitch: one of energetic emphasis; and one of quiet reflection. I aligned the parts I selected with the refrains of the song, with the bridge, and with the ending. I tried to make them as clearly audible as possible, so that the lyrics of the song and the parts of the homily would compliment each other as much as possible. Finally, when I arrived at the mix that I wanted, I added that version of the song to some photos and created the video posted at the beginning of this story.
The following link is where you can find and listen to the homily that inspired my song:
https://soundcloud.com/frcarlosjoserojas/sounds-from-sunday-morning
You will find many of Fr. Rojas’s homilies at this site, in both, Spanish and English. I encourage you to stop by there frequently, and listen to Father’s uplifting words. His interpretations of scripture are vibrantly imaginative, yet well grounded in the conventional wisdom of the Bible, and his passionate presentations are inspiring. We are blessed to have him at St. Joseph Catholic Church.
Open Mike 