A while back I mentioned to an atheist acquaintance that I'd cried at Mass that morning. I explained that it was one of those times when I felt overwhelmed with the presence of God; I was so perfectly at peace, so surrounded by love, that I couldn't help but be moved to tears.

"Maybe it was the music," he responded. He went on to offer an erudite analysis of how music is known to produce certain positive sensations in the brain, noting that religious leaders from time immemorial have used the evolved human response to the stimulus of music to delude the faithful into believing that they've experience the divine.

I had to smile at his suggestion, because I actually agreed with part of his argument.

I never had a "religious experience" before my conversion from atheism to Christianity, and couldn't even imagine what that might be like. Would harp-playing angels appear in front of you? Would you hear a booming voice fill the room? I had no idea.

There had been a handful of moments in my life, however, when I experienced something that was unlike anything else I'd ever felt. On a few rare occasions I felt overcome with an odd sensation, an ecstatic elation on top of inner stillness that was so powerful that it made me feel as if I'd slipped into some other dimension. It was a moment of feeling compelled to relax, to let go, to just trust (trust in what or whom I didn't know, but that was definitely an overriding feeling when I had those experiences). Those moments were...well, if I hadn't been so certain that nothing existed beyond the material world, I might have said "spiritual." And they always occurred when I was listening to music.

It seemed illogical, really, that a mere arrangement of certain sounds in a certain order could transport me, for however brief a moment, into such a sublime state. I was aware of all the natural explanations for music's impact on the human brain; yet when I'd read about how the cochlea transmits information along the auditory nerve as neural discharges into the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe, I'd think, "Uhh, yeah, that's true…but I feel like there's something more going on as well."

One of the many things that rang true when I began studying Catholic theology was the emphasis on art—music, in particular—as a reflection of God. I came to see art as a sort of "secret handshake" of beings with souls: We share 96% of our DNA with chimps, but chimps don't write symphonies. Dogs don't rap. Dolphins can be trained to reproduce musical rhythms, but they don't sing songs. Only the creature made in the image and likeness of God can speak the secret language of music.

In other words, I realized that all those experiences I'd had while listening to music were so tremendous because they were experiences of my soul having a brush with its Creator. Or, in Pope Benedict's words:

"The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgment and can correctly evaluate the arguments. For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said:
 
"Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true."
 
The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer's inspiration."

Christianity doesn't deny that beautiful music can move us to feel something; in fact, it acknowledges it, and then takes it a step farther by articulating exactly what it is we're feeling. And that's why I smiled when I heard my atheist friend's comment. It is actually because I am a Christian that I take that moment at Mass when I became filled with so much love and hope that I felt like I could explode with joy, and I say: Yes, maybe it was the music.
 
 
Originally posted at the National Catholic Register. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: VK.com)

As demonstrated in his encyclical God Is Love, and more recently at the Fifth World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Spain, Pope Benedict XVI, like John Paul II before him, is intent on helping the world see the connection between divine love (agape) and sexual love (eros). To help us reflect on these themes, I’d like to turn to what may seem an unlikely source: Bono, lead singer of U2, which I consider the biggest rock band in the world.

You’ve probably heard Bono sing about that “fever” he gets when he’s “beside her . . . desi-i-i-i-re, desi-i-i-i-re” (drums in the background: boom-badoom-badoom, badoom-doom). But he is no normal rock-n-roller glorifying lust. Bono may still not have found what he’s looking for, but this is a man on a sincere quest to integrate eros with agape.

In a book-long interview with Michka Assayas, Bono reflects at length on his unconventional Christian convictions. And Assayas simply cannot understand how the world’s biggest rock star could believe Jesus is the Son of God. Nor can he understand how Bono has remained faithful to his wife of 25 years.

In the portions of their dialogue that follow, Bono responds to his incredulous interviewer’s suggestion of “incarnating” lustful temptations by turning it on its head. Bono meets Assayas right where he is and, with a stroke of genius, directs the conversation towards a reflection on the relationship between eros, agape and the incarnation of God’s Son.
 

Assayas: “But you’re the singer and frontman in a band, and it’s not just any band. I’m sure you’ve been tempted. Don’t you ever feel that no matter what you have decided [about fidelity to your wife], love needs to be incarnated?...Think of groupies.”
 
Bono: “We never fostered that environment. If you mean groupie in the sense that I know it, which is sexual favors traded for proximity with the band...Taking advantage of a fan, sexual bullying is to be avoided, but the music is sexual...Sometimes...the erotic love [we sing about] can turn into something much higher, and bigger notions of love, and God, and family. It seems to segue very easily for me between those.”
 
Assayas: “I’m surprised at how easily religion comes up in your answers, whatever the question is. How come you’re always quoting from the Bible? Was it because it was taught at school? Or because your father or mother wanted you to read it?”
 
Bono: “Let me try to explain something to you, which I hope will make sense of the whole conversation...I remember coming back from a very long tour...On Christmas Eve I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral...It had dawned on me before, but it really sank in: the Christmas story. The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty...a child, I just thought: ‘Wow!’ Just the poetry. Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was.
 
I was sitting there, and...tears came down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this. Because that’s exactly what we were talking about earlier: love needs to find form, intimacy needs to be whispered. To me, it makes sense. It’s actually logical. It’s pure logic. Essence has to manifest itself. It’s inevitable. Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen. There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh. Wasn’t that your point earlier?”

 
 
Originally printed as part series of "Body Language" series. Used with author's permission.