Ricardo-4-i-like-this-oneRicardo Torres, co-editor of myfaithI remember the first time I saw her in the store, looking beautiful. I took her home and held her in my arms.

I was only 14 years old and inexperienced; I just flat out didn’t know what I was doing. All I wanted to do was play her the rest of my life.

I’m talking about my first guitar – what did you think I was talking about? – and like the great B.B. King, who calls his guitar “Lucille,” my guitar is also female because I treat her with special delicacy.

Music makes me feel different in ways I can’t explain.

The importance of music within Mass and ministry cannot be stressed enough. Music touches a part of the soul that nothing else can.

When I was a child at Sunday Mass, I never understood the homilies or prayers. But what I got right away was the music, and I would hum the hymns the rest of the afternoon.

Luke Spehar, musician and former seminarian, Page 8, has got Soul, in the lyrical sense of the word. As a guitarist, I assure you it’s no easy feat to play well and sing just as well. His deep, rough voice mixes with the minor acoustic chords he plays and if you weren’t a fan of Christian music before, you might be now.

I’ll make the argument that music with a spiritual message, heard outside the church, is just as inspirational as the preaching inside the church.

Music has a way of bringing people with different pasts to a common place.

For musicians, their songs are the homilies of life put to a rhythm that makes an inner connection with the audience. An unspoken language that calls out to anyone willing to listen. Not unlike God, himself.

I remember those early days struggling to learn how to play guitar, even wanting to sell my guitar. But my mother wouldn’t let me. Now I’m so grateful to have some musical talent.

Even if I don’t record an album or play in big shows, I can appreciate the skills endowed to others and still today when I leave church, I hum the tunes.