FROM THE RECTOR: HOLY WEEK BEGINS

Last year, when Saint Mary’s was closed for public worship between March 15, and June 30, 2020, Br. Damien Joseph’s knowledge of live-streaming opened up a new ministry for us: online worship. As I write to you on Friday afternoon, March 26, the Easter 2021 Appeal packet is in the mail. As you will see, the appeal concerns the acquisition of the equipment needed to support and expand this ministry for people who know us and those who may be seeking an online worship community like our own. You can read about it here and make a donation here . (The donation page will give you the opportunity to write that your gift is for the Easter Appeal 2021.)

The big news of this week is that the work on the rose window at the west end of the church—and repairs to areas of water-damaged plaster above the window—will be complete, and the interior scaffolding removed, by the end of the day on Wednesday, March 31. It will be a real gift to reclaim this space—although it will be some while before our organ curator, Larry Trupiano, will be able to reinstall the pipes that were removed so the window could be restored. Both of the main doors to the church are now conserved and in place. Slowly but surely our Open Doors Capital Campaign is reaching its final phase: restoration of the 46th Street façade.

Seating for Holy Week: We have reviewed the measurements and layout of the nave. We have discovered that we have more available seats than we thought we did. We do not think we need to ask for reservations for any of the services of Holy Week and Easter Day except for the Easter Vigil on Saturday, April 3, at 6:00 PM, and Easter Day Mass at 11:00 AM. The parish office is closed on Mondays. You may make reservations by e-mailing Chris Howatt beginning Tuesday, March 30, or by calling the parish office on that day.

Now, on to the Holy Week services themselves. On the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, March 28, there will be one liturgy at 11:00 AM. After the church is closed on Saturday afternoon, palm branches will be placed at every seat that can be occupied. The church will open at 9:30 AM and close at 1:30 PM.

As the liturgy of the palms begins, before the blessing of the branches, everyone will be asked to hold up the palms as the thanksgiving is prayed. This year, two, for us familiar, historic chants adapted to English for congregational singing, will be sung by the choir in the original Latin—translations will be in the service bulletin. There are things we will miss besides the procession through Times Square. For me, the entrance hymn after the procession, “Ride on, ride on in majesty,” is one of the great moments of congregational singing of the church year. I will also miss singing “My song is love unknown” at the preparation and, at the retiring procession, “The royal banners forward go.” God willing, congregational singing will be restored before the end of this year.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in Holy Week, the church will open on its regular schedule, from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM. The Angelus will be rung and prayed at 12:00 PM. The Eucharist will be celebrated at 12:10 PM.

On Maundy Thursday, April 1, the Holy Eucharist will be celebrated at 6:00 PM. As we did last year, there will be a memorial of the washing of feet. A chair, one of the four bowls we use for the washing, and a pitcher of water will be placed in the chancel. The water will be poured, and our quartet from the parish choir will sing a setting of Ubi caritas composed by Dr. David Hurd. The Sacrament for the ministration of Communion on Good Friday will be taken to the altar of repose in the Chapel of Our Lady of Mercy by the celebrant, assisted by the thurifer. I expect the service to conclude at about 7:15 PM. Those who wish may pray before the Blessed Sacrament—while maintaining safe distance—until the church closes at 8:00 PM.

On Good Friday, the church will open at 11:00 AM. The Good Friday liturgy will be celebrated at 12:30 PM. (Please note the slightly later time.) The church will close at 2:00 PM. The parish clergy cannot hear confessions in our confessionals—safe distance is the issue. If you wish to make a confession, I ask that you be in touch with Father Smith, Father Jacobson, or me by e-mail. Confessions will be heard in Saint Benedict’s Study, where there is room for safe distancing.

On Easter Eve, Saturday, April 3, sunset will be at 7:23 PM. The Great Vigil of Easter will be celebrated beginning at 6:00 PM. I know the sun will not have set, but it will be dark in the church by then. Matthew Lobe will be baptized. I think it will be important for many to be able to reach home at an early hour in the evening.

I want to close by recognizing the hard work of the church staff and the volunteers who have helped since March 2020 to keep our ministries alive and moving forward and by acknowledging, and expressing my gratitude for, the continued support of Saint Mary’s members and friends. I hope Holy Week and Eastertide will be a time of blessing for all of us. Let us pray that by Pentecost—this year, Sunday, May 23—we may, finally, begin to see the sun set on this terrible pandemic. —Stephen Gerth

YOUR PRAYERS ARE ASKED FOR Thomas, Jonathan, Ana, Emerson, Christopher, Matthew, Burton, Joe, Michelle, Leslie, Margaret, Ida, Rita, Dale, Ken, Loretta, Caryn, Christine, Marilouise, Quincy, Florette, John, Shalim, and Hardy; for all who suffer from COVID-19; for David, rabbi, Matthew and Louis, priests, and Charles, bishop; for all those who work for the common good; for the repose of the soul of Thomas Haines Schultz, OHC; and for all the members and friends of this parish. Grant that we may serve Christ in them and love one another as he loves us . . . GRANT THEM PEACE . . . March 28: 1928 Helen Ridgeway.

IN THIS TRANSITORY LIFE . . . Brother Thomas Haines Schultz, OHC, died on Tuesday, March 16, 2021, at a nursing home in Santa Barbara, California, where he had been under care for the past year. He had been living at Saint Mary’s Retreat House, Santa Barbara, since 2008. Born in Pittsburgh in 1933, Brother Thomas was a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. He studied at Nashotah House and was ordained priest in 1959. He made his life profession in the Order of the Holy Cross in 1961 and later lived and served at monasteries and retreat centers in New York, Liberia, Dallas, South Carolina, and San Francisco. Known as a counselor, spiritual director, and confessor, he was the author of Rosary for Episcopalians (1992). Brother Robert Sevensky, OHC, wrote of his friend, “He was a well-loved spiritual director and confessor who enjoyed both people and a good cup of tea . . . His love of God was evident in the way he presided at the Eucharist, with deep reverence and care, and in his simple homilies which always had some nugget to ponder. Tom’s past year was spent in a nursing home, where his spirit remained cheerful and engaged until the end.” May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

THE WEEKDAYS OF LENT AND OF HOLY WEEK, except for the feasts of Saint Joseph and the Annunciation, are observed by special acts of discipline and self-denial.

STEWARDSHIP CAMPAIGN 2021 . . . Our stewardship campaign has come to an end. We were not able to achieve our $400,000.00 goal, but we recognize that we are living in a difficult time, and we are all doing the best we can. We live in hope and trust in God. Still, we continue to ask you for your help. We would welcome your financial pledge if you have not yet pledged for 2021. and we are grateful to all those who continue to support Saint Mary’s so generously.

NEIGHBORS IN NEED . . . At our monthly Drop-by Days, we distribute clothing and toiletry and hygiene items to those in need in the Times Square neighborhood. Our next Drop-by Day is tentatively scheduled for Friday, April 16. Volunteers work from 1:30 PM until 3:30 PM. Our guests are invited into the church at 2:00 PM and we close our doors at 3:00 PM. We need eight (8) volunteers for each Drop-by. If you would like to volunteer, please contact Marie Rosseels, MaryJane Boland, or Father Jay Smith.

AIDS WALK NEW YORK 2021 . . . The New York City AIDS Walk will take place on Sunday, May 16. For the second time because of the pandemic, the Walk will be held as a virtual event. The Saint Mary’s AIDS Walk team invites you to join this effort and to provide financial support. To do both—to join and to contribute—you can click here. Despite the previous success of Saint Mary’s AIDS Walk team as fundraisers for the walk, we won’t be able to form a parish team this year. We hope to be back as a team in 2022, and even though we won’t have a full-fledged team this year, we encourage you to contribute to this vitally important cause.

As COVID-19 spread, GMHC adapted most of its services to virtual and created new programs where it saw its clients struggling. The COVID Destroyers Program began this past summer with GMHC staff and volunteers distributing masks and educational materials. Today, GMHC reaches more than 16,000 people in New York City and their services include mental-health support. With its clients among those New Yorkers most grappling with increased anxiety, grief, loss, depression, fear, and social isolation, GMHC uses phone and video-conferencing to continue to provide mental-health and substance-use counseling to hundreds of clients each week.

Saint Mary’s AIDS Walk team has been the most successful church group walking for many years. In 2019, the last year of in-person walking, our team ranked #4 out of all teams walking and raised $62,757 with the support of parishioners and friends and family from all over the country. We hope for an equal degree of success in 2022. Thank you to all those who have supported this outreach effort over the years.

THIS WEEK AT SAINT MARY’S . . . Sunday, March 28, Palm Sunday, Adult Education 9:30–10:30 AM (the doors at 145 West Forty-sixth Street open at 9:00 AM), Blessing of Palms and Holy Eucharist 11:00 AM. The main doors of the church open at 10:00 AM and close at 1:00 PM. The preacher at Mass on Sunday morning will be the Reverend Stephen Gerth. The service is played by Dr. David Hurd. He will be joined by four members of the Choir of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin . . . Tuesday, March 30, Racism Discussion Groups, The 4:00 PM Group will not meet on March 30, Tuesday in Holy Week. However, the 7:00 PM Group will meet that day . . . Thursday, April 1, Maundy Thursday, Holy Eucharist 6:00 PM . . . Friday, April 2, Good Friday, Liturgy 12:10 PM . . . Saturday, April 3, Easter Eve, Great Vigil of Easter 6:00 PM . . . Sunday, April 4, Easter Day, Holy Eucharist 11:00 AM.

AROUND THE PARISH . . . The Board of Trustees has decided to divide the Maundy Thursday Offering between AIDS Walk New York, which supports Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and Neighbors in Need, Saint Mary’s outreach to our neighbors without shelter in our Times Square neighborhood. You may make a donation to the offering at our Giving page . . . Jeremy Jelinek, who worships with us most Sundays, recently received a first-place prize in the George Mathison Competition of the Brooklyn Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, held at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn Heights, on Saturday, March 13, 2021. Jeremy will be playing two of the works performed at the competition during a brief recital at the Church of the Epiphany on Good Friday, April 2, at 12:30 PM. Jeremy is choirmaster and organist at Epiphany, a parish of the Episcopal diocese of New York, which recently moved from York Avenue to 351 East Seventy-fourth Street. Jeremy is also in the Master of Music program at The Juilliard School, studying organ. Congratulations, Jeremy!

MUSIC AT SAINT MARY’S . . . The prelude on Sunday morning is a setting of the chorale Valet will ich dir geben by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). The melody upon which this chorale prelude is based can be recognized as that to which the Palm Sunday processional hymn “All glory laud and honor” is most often sung, found in The Hymnal 1982 at #154. The same melody is also associated with the Advent hymn “Blest be the King whose coming” (#74 in The Hymnal 1982). Bach’s setting of this melody, however, is one of two from his miscellaneous chorales which reflect upon Valet will ich dir geben (“Farwell, I gladly bid thee”), a text which expresses the soul’s delight in departing from this flawed world into the joys of heaven. The second of these two settings, played on Sunday, is an exuberant fantasia in 24/16 meter with the melody in the long notes in the bass register. The character of this piece well suggests the festivity with which the Palm Sunday liturgy begins. By the end of the liturgy, however, we will have recited the Passion and the mood will have changed radically. Reflecting this shift in focus, the postlude is one of Bach’s many four-voice harmonizations of the “Passion Chorale” to which we commonly sing the words “O sacred head, sore wounded.” This particular harmonization is found at #62 in Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion paired with the ninth stanza of Paul Gerhardt’s 1656 text O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (“O Head full of blood and wounds”). The stanza begins: Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden (“When I must once and for all depart”). It is distinctively harmonized with ample chromaticism employed to express suffering and grief.

The Liturgy of Palm Sunday begins with the singing of “Hosanna to the Son of David” recalling our Lord’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, about which we hear today from the eleventh chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Mark. The musical setting of this entrance antiphon is by Tomás Luís de Victoria (c. 1549–1611), the most notable Spanish composer of Renaissance polyphony. Born in Avila, the seventh of eleven children, Victoria began his musical education as a choirboy at Avila Cathedral and his classical education at S. Gil, a Jesuit school for boys founded in 1554. By 1565, Victoria had entered the Jesuit Collegio Germanico in Rome, where he was later engaged to teach music and eventually named maestro di cappella. Victoria knew and may have been instructed by Palestrina (c. 1525–1594) who was maestro di cappella of the nearby Seminario Romano at that time. During his years in Rome, Victoria held several positions as singer, organist, and choral master, and published many of his compositions. His setting of Hosanna filio David is for four voices.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was not only a source and inspiration for many of the composers who were to follow him, he was also an exponent of already established musical practice. Standing on foundations largely laid by the Netherlandish composers Guillaume Dufay (c. 1397–1474) and Josquin des Prez (c. 1450–1521), Palestrina is responsible for setting the canons for Renaissance polyphony and the standards for Catholic liturgical music which pertain even in our time. Palestrina’s works include more than three hundred motets. Pueri Hebraeorum (“The children of the Hebrews”) is the antiphon traditionally sung at the distribution of palms on Palm Sunday. The Biblical text reference is Matthew 21:9. Palestrina’s musical setting is for four voices.

The Anglican chant to which the appointed psalm on Sunday will be sung is by Samuel Wesley (1766–1837). Samuel was the son of noted hymnist Charles Wesley (1707–1788) and nephew of Methodist founder John Wesley (1703–1791). He was also the father of composer and cathedral organist Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810–1876). Samuel Wesley was a highly acclaimed organist of his day and is credited with having popularized organ recitals in England. Likewise, he was a prolific composer and, later in his life, he composed many hymn tunes. The Anglican chant sung on Sunday for Psalm 22 was first printed in the Leeds psalter of 1843. It appeared with Psalm 22 in Edward Bairstow’s York Minster Chant Book in 1916.

Healey Willan (1880–1968) is affectionately considered the dean of Canadian composers. Though born in Britain, he is identified with the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, Toronto, where he served as organist and choirmaster from 1921 until his death. His career and reputation, however, went far beyond composing the congregational Mass setting for which Episcopalians especially remember him. He composed more than eight hundred works, including operas, symphonies, and other music for orchestra and band, chamber music and music for piano and organ, in addition to a great quantity of choral church music. His liturgical music included fourteen choral Masses, motets for many occasions, canticles, and hymn settings. Willan was a champion of historic liturgical chant and the aesthetic of Renaissance church music. He incorporated these influences and mingled them with an appreciation of the rich harmonic palette used by the late nineteenth-century masters. Through his compositions and choral direction, he significantly set the standard for North American Anglo-Catholic church music in his time. Willan’s esteem was such that he was commissioned to compose an anthem for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and was present for the ceremony. The Sanctus and Agnus Dei from Willan’s Missa Brevis No. 2 will be sung at Mass on Palm Sunday.

Thomas Morley (c. 1557–1602) became organist at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, in 1590. In 1592 he was sworn in as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Previously, he had held appointments at Norwich Cathedral and Saint Giles, Cripplegate. He had been a student of William Byrd (1539–1623) and, like Byrd, in addition to making considerable contributions to church music in his day, was also highly invested in composing and publishing madrigals. He artfully blended Italian influences with the Elizabethan models. The motet sung during the Communion on Sunday is attributed to Morley. Its text is two verses from a twenty-three-verse macaronic poem which may have been authored by John Redford, Morley’s predecessor at Saint Paul’s. The Latin refrain derives from the Rule of Saint Benedict’s reference to Ezekiel 33:11: “As I live, says the Lord God, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way, and live.”

MARK YOUR CALENDAR . . . Monday, April 5, Easter Monday, Mass 12:10 PM. The parish offices are closed. The church will be open from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM It is a holiday for the resident priests. The Daily Office will be prayed privately.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION . . . On Sunday, March 28, 9:30–10:30 AM, Father Peter Powell will conclude his series on the Revelation to John, the Christian Bible’s final book . . . Coming Up . . . Father Powell’s final class in the Revelation series is Palm Sunday, March 28. The Adult Education class will then take a two-week Easter Break. There will be no class on Easter Day, April 4, or on the First Sunday of Easter, April 11. Beginning on April 18, and continuing, we hope, until the Sunday before Memorial Day, we will begin a new series, To Read and Mark: How We Interpret Scripture and Why It Matters. The classes will be led, mostly, by a new teacher each Sunday. We will not be focusing just on modern historical-critical methods of interpreting the Bible, but rather on the variety of ways in which Christians have used and interpreted the Bible over the centuries: to create art and music, shape liturgy, found religious orders, discuss morality, prepare baptismal candidates, and care for the newly baptized. Stay tuned for more details.

In the meantime, if you would like to attend Father Powell’s classes via Zoom, please send an e-mail to Grace Mudd or to Father Powell, who will send you a link. The class will meet in Saint Joseph’s Hall, with face coverings and social distancing required.

For all these classes, seating in Saint Joseph’s Hall will be arranged to maximize social-distancing. Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide refreshments. All those attending the class must wear a face covering.

WORSHIPPING SAFELY AT SAINT MARY’S: If you are at all unwell, please do not come to church. If you are experiencing symptoms, contact your primary-care physician and get tested. If you have a fever of 103.5, which is not being handled by an analgesic, and/or you are having difficulty breathing (by difficulty we mean you must stop talking in order to focus on your breathing), go to an emergency room immediately. That said, we are very happy to be able to welcome you to worship with us here at Saint Mary’s (11:00 AM on Sunday, 12:10 PM Monday–Saturday).

When you arrive, please fill out the contact sheet at the ushers’ table. Please take a seat in one of the open pews, and feel free to ask an usher, one of the brothers, or a member of the clergy if you have questions about seating, Communion, or safe-distancing. Face masks are required while in the church building. We know all too well that many of these precautions are tedious, but we accept them as a way to keep ourselves and each other safe and healthy. We continue to pray for those who are sick and for a swift end to the epidemic.

AT THE LIBRARY . . . On January 6, 2021, the Reverend Raphael Warnock became the first African-American to be elected a United States Senator in the State of Georgia’s history. To mark the event, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has curated an online exhibition, Georgia On My Mind: Black Politicians in Congress. Black Americans in Congress. From 1870 to 1898, twenty-two Black men were elected to the U.S. Congress, two in the Senate and twenty in the House of Representatives. The online resource provides capsule biographies of these men and a reading list focused on the Reconstruction period in the former Confederate states. This online resource may be of particular interest this week, since the State of Georgia recently passed legislation, which, it has been reported, places serious limits on the voting process in that state.

This edition of the Angelus was written and edited by Father Stephen Gerth and Father Jay Smith. Father Gerth is responsible for posting the newsletter on the parish website and for distributing it via mail and e-mail, with the assistance of Christopher Howatt and parish volunteer, Clint Best.