On her knees before the Lord in the Church of Holy Innocents in midtown Manhattan, Leonora Cuello outstretched her arms in submission before the icon of the Virgin Mary. Cuello awaited the arrival of Father William Delaney to recite the Holy Mass. She says she was at the church when something within her stirred.

"I feel terrible about the killings in the Holy Land," she says. Cuello wanted a balm to soothe her disturbed consciousness. She was waiting to hear the voice of Father Delaney.

Ministering and giving sermons in different faiths are not random acts of public speaking. They are reasoned acts by spiritually trained individuals who try to lead devotees closer to the spiritual experience they are seeking.

"One who leads the worship himself has to be prepared to enter the service with a quiet passion, not a theatrical passion, about his own surrender to God. This level of his own being is carried in his manner, his voice, his body language. It’s a conviction, not empty words. This is what I would analyze as what happens during service," says Sister Marie Pappus who works as assistant superintendent for Catechist Formation at the Catholic Center in Manhattan and is an adjunct teacher at the Dunwoodie Seminary.

Choral singing is another way to enrich the worship tradition in churches and synagogues. On Ash Wednesday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on 109^th and Amsterdam Avenue, the choir complements the priest's sermon to captivate the congregation for an hour and a half. Director of the Choir Jonathan Flucker says the human voice is another way of uplifting worshippers.

"From your current thinking about your day-to-day life it gives you a doorway to go to another place, a locus where you can contemplate things which do not occupy day-to-day business to put your spirit mind in order as opposed to your business mind in order," he says.

The western style of liturgy has emerged from a larger tradition of Western Art, according to Flucker. The plain song was sung a cappella, or without instruments, and more ornamentation was added later.

"If it’s an extraordinary event out of a regular prayer cycle I reflect, amplify those emotions that will be explored in that particular service. In a service of mourning or general celebration or specific celebration or contemplation, texts exist besides the Old and New Testament. Many texts have been set by composers to fit the right mood. There is this wonderful buffet to fit the right piece to fit the right mood within the appropriate part of the office," he says.

Flucker, 43, says he can't imagine being anywhere else.

According to Pappus, spiritual training is more essential than the public-speaking part of the sermon, "We must ourselves be radically surrendered in our relationship with God. And that forms our foundation of how we communicate. All of us have training in public speaking and sensitivity to the life experience to which we are ministering," she explains.

"And in the Catholic ritual, the priest is egoless. So even if the decor or the atmosphere of the church is absent your consciousness if different," she adds.

Nevertheless, even if the priest were not a part of the actual service, those participating are often moved by song, music and silence, says Pappus.

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