A lot of my compositions have stories behind them. From time to time,  I will reflect upon a piece, and what inspired it.

Today, I would like to write about Song of Adoration. It is published by OCP Publications, part of the song collection This Place of Perfect Peace.
The text for this song is a verbatim quote from the second english translation of Eucharistic Prayer III. Since we have moved into using the third english translation of the Roman Missal, the older text is eligible as a text sung by the assembly.
There is an interesting story as to how Song of Adoration came to be:
In the summer of 2008, I was about to fly home for a break between the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the One Bread, One Cup Summer Liturgical Youth Leadership Conferences.  Before I left, I was chatting with Fr. Godfrey Mullen, OSB who was the director of the conference program.  We were in the sacristy of the St Thomas Aquinas Chapel after our final liturgy of the conference, and began conversing about the disconnect between the primary action of the Holy Eucharist and the devotional prayer of Eucharistic adoration. We talked about the theological chasm that I noticed between conservative and liberal Catholics. As a student at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, I had seen my share of eye rolls from my academic peers whenever the subject of Eucharistic Adoration would arise. Fr. Godfrey and I both agreed that cynicism and disunity was that last thing the Holy Eucharist was meant to arouse in the faithful. There needed to be a bridge.
He opened the Sacramentary and together we looked for a few lines from the EP that that could be sung at BOTH eucharist and adoration. I saw the words “Look with favor…” and decided that since we use our eyes to gaze upon the monstrance containing the body of Christ during adoration, that would be a possible text.
On the flight home, I wrote the melody for the text, inspired by the beautiful singing voice of James Brockmeier (now a priest) who was one of my interns that summer. When I arrived home, I put the music into Finale and emailed the score off to Fr Godfrey, who promptly called and sang it to me over the phone. I suggested we have James sing it after communion, then reprise it at adoration. Fr Godfrey agreed. By the end of that summer’s conferences, everyone knew it. Song of Adoration continued to be sung after every eucharist and at each adoration service until long after I retired from the conference.

The original reason for composing the song was to build a conscious, emotional, spiritual, and theological bridge between the living action of the eucharist, and the act of adoring the consecrated host, so that the two would be more connected. The result was a song that has been taken up by assemblies around the country, and continues so to be.