LabOratório 2019 was intended to be an intensive week of community and prayerful living in order to provide liturgical and musical formation, linking music and spiritual life; create new music for the liturgy, with diverse musical styles; and provide a community environment, open to people from different movements, parishes and spiritualities, as a plural Church experience. After a first edition in 2017, of smaller dimensions, the idea was to broaden horizons, increasing the number and diversity of its members, coming from all over the country and from the most different origins and sensibilities.

To this end, around 60 people gathered at the Convent of Santo Domingo in Lisbon, from 31 August to 8 September, forming a living and prayerful community: our daily life was savoured at the rhythm of the Liturgy of the Hours, with Lauds, the Intermediate Hour and Vespers marking a true inner compass, which assumed a true perfect rhythm at the end of the day, with the Eucharist. It was precisely this immersion in prayer that brought us most into contact with music, not only because it allowed us to open our minds to the Word of God, but also because prayer itself was almost always helped by music.

It was against this backdrop that the labOratory took place over the course of a week. In the morning, with strong times of formation, both theoretical and practical, guided by teachers from various areas; in the afternoon, with workshops on music and spirituality, with the most diverse guests to present different musical styles; in the evening, with the Evenings Lab, moments of enjoyment through small concerts, which proved to be real windows to the experience of the spirituality of the various artists who passed through there and gave testimony of their creative process.

We were also divided into four programs, which are presented in broad strokes: LabCanta, for the training of singers; LabToca, for instrumentalists, focused on techniques of improvisation and accompaniment; LabMaestro, dedicated to choral direction; and LabCria, for composers, from the most inexperienced to those already established. In between, there was no lack of time for rehearsals together, moments of relaxation and improvisation, or for some more adventurous to dare to create new compositions, or even new texts to be sung in celebrations! And, of course, a final concert where we were able to show a small sample of the much that was lived there throughout the week...

It is also important to note that this LabOratory was not closed in on itself, but was directed to a community: in fact, a large part of the program, including the prayer proposals, was open to those who visited us during those days. There, in a Dominican monastery and under the proposal of the Jesuits, different sensibilities and ways of being in the Church... which also correspond to different musical styles and languages met to celebrate the faith in union! The fundamental motto of the LabOratory - and particularly reinforced for the participants of LabCria - was the conviction that what makes a song liturgical is not a style, but its adaptation to a context (that of the celebration for which it is intended). This great diversity of styles and forms of singing was, in fact, very evident in the grey book. And it has, I believe, a very great correspondence with what we learned from St. Paul: "There is diversity of gifts, but the Spirit is the same; there is diversity of services, but the Lord is the same; there are different ways of acting, but it is the same God who accomplishes everything in everyone. (1 Cor 12:4-6).

This was a small but living sign of what the Church wants to be in the 21st century, a very privileged time when the Church has been invited to revisit its roots and to rediscover the centrality of the Gospel message; and, from there, to be a light and a path for its faithful, with an ever greater desire for depth and encounter with God.

Through silence, music, prayer, liturgy, the promise was fulfilled: the Lord showed us the power of His Love as He had announced it through the mouths of the prophets!