The Owl and the Eagle

Experience the Event

Presented by Department of Theology

Friday, April 18, 2025 12:00 pm

Draw on centuries-old tradition of singing Psalms and Canticles in the Liturgy of the Hourst, to discover a conceptual framework for bringing your own experiences, ideas, and musical background into creative conversation with liturgy and prayer. Experience Rhythms of Faith—no musical experience required!

Listen in to a conversation between Kimberly Belcher ‘03 MA, ‘09 Ph.D., associate professor of theology, J. J. Wright ‘14 MSM, ‘17 DMA, Grammy® Award winner and Director of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, and Fr. Matt Cortese, Notre Dame Ph.D. student in liturgical studies, about how Kim and J.J. came to study liturgy and music, what led them to Notre Dame, and the origins of the Rhythms of Faith project. Uncover the importance of music in the Church today, their favorite artists, and the creative process they hope to facilitate.

Meet the Faculty: Kimberly Belcher '03 MA, '09 Ph.D.

Kimberly Belcher ’03 MA, ’09 Ph.D., associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and attended the University of Florida, where she earned a B.S. in Mathematics and Chemistry. It was at the university parish of St. Augustine’s that she became interested in liturgy and theology. Coming to Notre Dame for graduate work, she eventually received an M.T.S. and Ph.D. in liturgical studies. She taught at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, before returning to Notre Dame on the faculty in 2013. Professor Belcher has three children.

Meet the Speaker: Rev. Matthew D. Cortese, S.J.

Rev. Matthew D. Cortese, SJ, is a PhD student in Liturgical Studies in the department of Theology. Originally from eastern Long Island, New York, he has previously studied at the College of the Holy Cross (A.B., 2009), Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music (M.A.R., 2012), Saint Louis University (M.A., Philosophy, 2017), and Regis College and the University of Toronto (Th.M./S.T.L., 2021). During his Jesuit formation, he taught philosophy and theology at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, and served as a deacon for the Hispanic Community at St. Ignatius Church, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He is interested in questions of liturgical reform and the ways in which liturgy intersects with, influences, and forms religious and socio-political identities, as well as the relationship between worship and justice. He hopes to focus on the development of the lectionary in the Roman Rite and related liturgical theological questions.

Fr. Matthew is the teaching assistant for the Rhythms of Faith undergraduate course, and the producer of the Rhythms of Faith series.

Meet the Faculty: J.J. Wright ‘14 MSM, ‘17 DMA

J.J. Wright‘s style cannot be easily categorized. Trained as a jazz improviser at the New School for Jazz in NYC, he’s also passionate about sacred music. Palestrina and Bach vie with Monk and Cannonball Adderley as just a few of his harmonic and melodic inspirations. While with the U.S. Naval Academy Band, Wright performed for the President—as well as several other high-profile diplomatic gigs—and with the Caribbean Jazz Project: Afro Bop Alliance, recording and performing with vibraphonist Dave Samuels. The album was nominated for a GRAMMY for ‘Best Latin Jazz Album’ and won the Latin GRAMMY in the same category.  In addition to Mr. Samuels, J.J. has had the privilege of performing with Billy Hart, Ike Sturm, Nate Wood, Chris Cheek, Zach Harmon, Mark Ferber,  Matt Ulery, and Delfeayo Marsalis.

In November 2016, Wright’s Advent cantata with the Notre Dame Children’s Choir, O Emmanuel, debuted at the top of the Billboard Classical Charts where it remained for eight weeks. He did his graduate studies in choral conducting at the University of Notre Dame and had a fellowship in Rome, where he researched and wrote his dissertation on the early Baroque oratorio while studying at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music and interning with the Sistine Chapel Choir.

Wright became the Director of the Notre Dame Folk Choir in 2017, and has released three albums with the choir: Catch the Spirit, which celebrates African and African American sacred music and They Tell Me of a Home: Celebrating 40 Years of the Folk Choir, and The Passion. When he’s not conducting, composing, or recording, he’s a husband and father to three beautiful children.

Rhythms of Faith: The Undergraduate Course

Rhythms of Faith (RoF) is an innovative theology course for undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame. Students in RoF will be trained to grapple with liturgy and music primarily through the creative process, specifically by working with classmates to produce new works of art: texts and songs designed to be sung in community. In the community gathered together to sing praise, the assembly or ecclesia, the self-revelation of God continues to become clear, generation after generation. By drawing on the centuries-old tradition of singing Psalms and Canticles in the Liturgy of the Hours, RoF will equip students with the conceptual framework for bringing their own experiences, ideas, and diverse musical backgrounds into creative conversation with liturgy and prayer. This class is for anyone, regardless of their musical training or proclivity–the requisite singing and song-writing skills will be taught throughout the course. RoF will train students to harness their initial insights into a creative work, and teach a collaborative process for refining these into polished works. Small-group projects will also allow students to experience first-hand the process of integrating their intellectual knowledge of religion with embodied practice. Through this community-based creative process, students will catalyze the formation of a community of trust–one of vulnerability, interdependence, love, and celebration. This exemplifies the church as a community of disciples, who strive to more fully understand God together.

To learn more about the Rhythms of Faith course and to explore the course materials, please visit the Rhythms of Faith course website.

Journal Exercise

Undergraduate students taking the Rhythms of Faith course are given journal prompts to help them reflect on how they can connect the concepts of creativity, liturgy, and music.

We invite you to follow along with your own journaling practice!

1. Choose your favorite psalm, or a psalm you find particularly meaningful. Read the psalm all the way through twice, once silently, and once aloud. 
2. Choose two lines that are parallel* to one another. In your journal, write down these two lines, marking with the same color or formatting (or in some other way) the parallel words in the two lines. Reflect and record in your journal: what makes these words parallel? Are they synonyms? Deliberate contrasts? The completion of a larger image, analogy, or metaphor? 
3. From within the psalm, choose a word, phrase, line, or couplet (pair of lines) that in your view best expresses the feeling of the whole psalm. Write the word, phrase, line, or couplet in your journal. This could serve as an antiphon for the psalm–that is, a thematic refrain to be repeated at the beginning and end when the psalm is prayed aloud.
4. Now write an antiphon of your own in your journal that expresses in your own words something you found meaningful in the psalm.
5. Choose and write down a sound/instrument** that you think would help express each of the two antiphons you developed more fully.
6. How do your two antiphons express similar or different lenses on the text of the psalm you chose?

*The literary technique used in Hebrew poetry is called parallelism (they don’t have rhyme schemes or syllable rhythms like European poetry). In parallelism, the poem generally proceeds in sets of two (sometimes three) lines, where the same idea is expressed in one line and then echoed in the second.

Sometimes the lines are synonymous – the same with substituted synonyms (as in Psalm 88:14: “O Lord, why do you cast me off? / Why do you hide your face from me?”). Sometimes they use a negative contrast to emphasize the idea, as in Psalm 51:10-11 (“put a new and right spirit within me …. do not take your holy spirit from me”). Sometimes the second line completes or deepens (elaborates or explains) the idea of the first, as Psalm 51:5 (“Indeed, I was born guilty / a sinner when my mother conceived me”). This device helps give the Psalms their emotional power.

** If this doesn’t come right away, that’s ok – it might just be a new skill that needs a bit more prompting. If nothing is coming to mind, take about two minutes to read through your antiphon in divergent styles (slow, fast, whispered, yelled, sung, with attitude, without emotion, etc.). The point is to get your heart rate up, breath moving and blood pumping a bit. This bodily activation will often open you up to hearing a sound. This sound can manifest as literally anything and it will likely emerge as a “still small voice” ( (it could be a sound from ordinary life or the type of sound a particular instrument makes). It’s ok (and actually good) if the sound is ridiculous, preposterous, offensive, etc. – most importantly though, if this happens, don’t judge the sound, just note it in your journal and continue.