FROM THE RECTOR: AN IMPORTANT WEEK

On Sunday, August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we will resume a weekly celebration of Solemn Mass at 11:00 AM, the first Solemn Mass since March 8, 2020. A quartet from the parish choir will sing the Mass ordinary and the minor propers. As is our custom, the gospel is sung at Solemn Mass. Since it is a principal feast day for us, the epistle will also be sung. I plan for the gospel to be proclaimed in the midst of the congregation. One modification that will continue is to have a basket at the front of the central aisle to collect offerings. So, there will be no procession of the gifts for now.

The congregation will sing two hymns. It’s serendipitous that the first hymn to be sung since the church opened for public worship on Wednesday, July 1, 2020, will be “Sing of Mary, pure and lowly” (Tune: Pleading Saviour). The hymn for the retiring procession will be “Ye watchers and ye holy ones.” It will be a spiritually rich regathering of our worship tradition.

The seating in the church has been altered to provide for greater and lesser distancing depending on the needs of individuals. The ushers will be glad to assist you.

As far as I know, persons who are fully vaccinated and, I think it is correct to say, those who have recovered from COVID-19 do not need to wear a mask. (Though of course it is recommended that individuals with natural immunity due to a COVID infection should still receive the vaccine whenever possible.) However, those not vaccinated should wear a mask and sit in the areas set aside for greater self-distancing. And, this is not the Sunday to bring a loud voice to singing! I know it can be hard not to sing out with great hymns. For the present, I ask that all of us try to be very aware of the volume of our voices.

I have decided that we should hold off on resuming fellowship after Mass in Saint Joseph’s Hall. We’re far from being back to pre-pandemic numbers of attendees. As I write, Chris Howatt, Father Jay Smith, and I are interviewing candidates for the position of the weekend sexton. I hope we will have a new sexton on board soon. We do need another person to cover the use of our buildings by outside groups and set up for a coffee hour on Sundays. Having third part-time sexton also allows us to give our faithful full-time sextons some relief and a more flexible schedule.

The Burial of the Dead for Edgar Fisher Wells, Jr., priest, will be celebrated here on Saturday, August 21, at 10:00 AM. The Right Reverend Andrew M.L. Dietsche, the bishop of New York, will be the celebrant for the service. The Right Reverend Allen K. Shin, bishop suffragan, will officiate at the commendation. I will be the preacher for the service. Bishop Dietsche will officiate at the committal at the cathedral. During the service, hymns will be sung. Father Wells will be the third rector of this parish buried from Saint Mary’s.

I hope to visit the cathedral on Monday and to be able to make an announcement on Tuesday about attending the service both here and the interment at the cathedral. Information will be posted on the parish website and sent out to our email list.

The Reverend Grieg Taber died on Wednesday, April 8, 1964. The service register records that a Requiem High Mass was celebrated here for him on Saturday, April 11, 1964. It records the attendance as “1000 c.” He was buried in Milton Cemetery, Milton, Massachusetts, by the graves of his brother, who died in 1922, and his mother, who died in 1934. In 1940, his father died and was buried in Sherborn, Massachusetts. There’s a photograph in the rectory of the blessing of Father Taber’s tombstone by his successor, the Reverend Donald Lothrop Garfield. In the photo are two Sisters of the Holy Nativity, who were in residence at Saint Mary’s, and nine others.

I don’t recall speaking with Father Wells about the present painting of the interior of the church. It happened during his last year as rector, 1997. It reflects a theological conviction that has shaped Anglican worship since the English Reformation. For readers who don’t know the building, the design for the church’s ceiling, walls, and arches is taken from the tabernacle canopy installed in 1921. For me, the design proclaims, in the words of Ulrich Luz, that we are “a community of persons living in fellowship with the exalted Christ (‘where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them’ [Matthew 18:20])” (Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, [2001], 479.). —Stephen Gerth

YOUR PRAYERS ARE ASKED FOR Yanis, Gary, Greta, Jean, Joe, Pat, Evan, Kathleen, Hortense, Eric, Larry, José, Ralph, Mario, Liduvina, Jonathan, Emerson, Rita, Marilouise, Quincy, Florette, John, Shalim, Peter, George, Gypsy, Hardy, Margaret, and Robert; for Randall and Louis, priests; for all who suffer from COVID-19; for all who work for the common good; and for all the friends and members of this parish . . . GRANT THEM PEACE . . . August 15: 1915 Marie Louise Whitney Sanford; 1880 Annie Jones; 1898 Philip Hone; 1899 Helen Moore; 1912 Arthur McLellan; 1913 Helen Marie Skan; 1914 Frederick Loeffler; 1935 Harry Anson Kelly; 1949 Arthur Tschenlin; 1963 Rose Macchia.

WE NEED YOUR HELP . . . If you have made a pledge for 2021, please continue to make payments on your pledge, if possible. If you have not yet made a pledge for 2021, we urge you to do so. If you can make an additional donation to support the parish at this time, we would happily receive it. Donations may be made online via the Giving section of the parish website. You may also make arrangements for other forms of payment by contacting our parish administrator, Christopher Howatt, who would be happy to assist you. We are grateful to all those who continue to support Saint Mary’s so generously. —The Stewardship Committee

AROUND THE PARISH . . . We were without a sexton last Saturday. It’s vacation season and it was Father Smith’s turn to open and close the church that day. He turned off all the lights in the church and was preparing to leave around 1:45 PM or so, when he noticed a bright light in the baptistery. He’d already turned off the one light switch there so the strong light coming from the south, the right-hand side of the baptistery, was odd and unusual. When he went to see what was going on, he discovered that sunlight was pouring through the stained-glass window on that wall, illuminating the image, and the space, in a most unusual manner—on the other side of the window there is a courtyard between the church and the mission house and it is almost always shady, even dark, in there. The window is hardly ever lit so brightly and clearly. The window depicts the Blessed Virgin on one side and Saint Luke the Evangelist on the other. The image is not particularly baptismal, but it does remind us of our patroness and of the words of the Magnificat, which appear only in Luke: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Not a bad message for a baptism —J.R.S.

THIS WEEK AT SAINT MARY’S . . . Sunday, August 15, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The church opens at 10:00 AM and closes at 5:30 PM. Mass is at 11:00 AM, Father Stephen Gerth, celebrant and preacher. The readings at Mass are Isaiah 61:10–11; Galatians 4:4–7; Psalm 34:1–9; and Luke 1:46–55.. Evening Prayer on Sunday is at 5:00 PM . . . Monday–Saturday, August 16–21, Mass 12:10 PM and Evening Prayer 5:00 PM. The church is open from 11:00 AM until 5:30 PM . . . Tuesday, August 17, Racism Discussion Group Meeting, 7:00 PM via Zoom. For more information about this ongoing weekly meeting, please call the parish office . . . Saturday, August 21, The Burial of the Dead for Edgar Fisher Wells, Jr., priest and rector, will be celebrated here on Saturday, August 21, at 10:00 AM . . . Next Sunday, August 22, The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16), Mass 11:00 AM and Evening Prayer at 5:00 PM. The readings at Mass are Joshua 24:1–2a, 14–25; Psalm 34:15–22; Ephesians 5:21–33; John 6:51, 60–71. The celebrant and preacher will be Father Jay Smith . . . Father Smith will be away from the parish for a week of vacation Monday, August 23, through Sunday, August 29.

ABOUT THE MUSIC . . . Jean Adam Guilain’s dates are not certain, his nationality was German, and his real name was Johann Adam Wilhelm Freinsberg. However, he came to Paris sometime before 1702 and probably soon became a student of Louis Marchand (1669–1732). He acquired a fine reputation in Paris as an organist, harpsichordist, and teacher and, in 1706, he published his two-volume Pièces d’orgue pour le Magnificat sur les huit tons différents de l’église.  Since only the first of the two volumes is extant, we can only imagine what pieces Guilain wrote for tones five through eight. However, the first volume contained a suite of seven pieces for each of the first four church modes. The lost volume undoubtedly contained pieces of very similar character to those which we know. These suites were probably intended to be played at Vespers, their movements in alternation with or in place of the singing of chant. Despite his German origin Guilain’s organ suites are idiomatically very French. Typical of organ suites of the time, each movement is designated by a description of the character of the piece and indicating the organ stops intended to be used. Thus, in the course of such a suite, one hears the characteristic timbres of the instrument in stylized segments.

The musical setting of the Mass on Sunday, the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, is taken from Missa della Battaglia of Giovanni Francesco Anerio (1567–1630). Anerio was born in Rome. Of his many distinguished musical relatives, his elder brother Felice succeeded Palestrina as composer to the Papal Chapel. Both brothers began their musical careers as choristers under Palestrina at Saint Peter’s. Giovanni’s career took him successively to musical directorships at Saint John Lateran, Santo Spirito in Saxia, Verona Cathedral, and Santa Maria dei Monti, where he was ordained priest in 1616 after several years in minor orders. His last appointment was in Poland as Maestro di Capella at the Court of Sigismund III. Anerio’s many compositions include Masses, motets and collections of psalms, antiphons, and litanies. His editing of works of Palestrina includes a four-voice reduction of the latter’s Missa Papae Marcelli. Anerio’s Missa della Battaglia, dated 1608, is in a style more characteristic of baroque harmony than renaissance polyphony. It features parlando technique with much of the text recited in expressive rhythmic unison.

The motet sung during the administration of Communion on Sunday is by Luca Marenzio (1556–1599), an Italian late renaissance musician credited with the composition of some five hundred madrigals. His considerable output also included Masses, motets, and much instrumental music. Marenzio’s musical development began as a boy chorister in Brescia and rapidly advanced from there. While his career was centered in Rome, he was also employed in Warsaw, Poland, for a period later in his life. Most notable in his vocal compositions is his use of chromaticism and his expressive tone-painting in setting words. His motet Hodie Maria Virgo, for the feast of the Assumption, is from Motectorum pro festis totius anni, a collection of Marenzio’s four-part motets for various feasts of the church year, first published in Rome in 1585. The master madrigalist’s text-setting art shows itself in such musical gestures as the rising scales on the word ascendit (“ascended”), and the switch to a dance-like triple meter at the word gaudete (“rejoice”). —David Hurd

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 scheduled for Friday, August 20. 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 six (6) volunteers for each Drop-by. If you would like to volunteer, please contact Marie Rosseels, MaryJane Boland, or Father Jay Smith. You may reach them by calling the Parish Office at 212-869-5830.

At the moment, we would welcome donations of single-trip MTA Transit cards. These are useful for our guests who need to travel to soup kitchens, appointments at health clinics, or meetings with social workers. We are so grateful to all those who continue to support this ministry so generously.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION . . . On the five Sundays in October, Father Jay Smith will be leading the Adult-Education class in a series on Virtue and the Virtues as Guides for Christian Living. He will focus in particular on the “cardinal” virtues, prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. If you’d like to do some preparation, take a look at Virtues Abounding: St. Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal and Related Virtues for Today (Cascade Books, 2019) by Mark O’Keefe, OSB, professor of moral theology at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana. The book is available for purchase online at bookshop.org and other online retailers . . . We are also happy to announce that Father Peter Powell will be teaching in our adult-education program this fall on Sundays from November 7 until December 19. Father Powell has proven to be a popular Bible teacher both here at Saint Mary’s and at parishes in Connecticut. We are pleased that he will be able to teach in the autumn and again during Lent 2022. This year, Father Powell will be teaching a class about the Holiness Code, Leviticus 17–27. He writes, “I have long been attracted to the Holiness Code as the source of much of what has become Christian Ethics. The foundation of the call to be ethical is that we are called to be Holy because the Lord Our God, who brought his people up from the land of Egypt, is Holy. To be Holy is to be a people apart. This fall and then again in Lent we will look at these chapters and related chapters in the Torah that ground us in what we undertake when we say we are children of God.”

VOLUNTEERS & DONORS NEEDED . . . A Note to Our Faithful Ushers: If you are at Mass and notice that the ushers’ table is understaffed, we invite you to jump in and lend a hand. It’s vacation season, and on some Sundays, we do not have a full complement of ushers . . . Would you like to donate altar flowers? We are looking those willing to donate altar flowers for all the Sundays in August and September, except for August 15 and September 26. (During the month of September, we celebrate the following feast days: the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Holy Cross Day, and Saint Matthew.) The suggested donation for flowers is $250. Donors often give flowers in memory of, thanksgiving for, or celebration of certain people or life events. Please contact Chris Howatt in the parish office, if you would like to donate or you may also speak to Brendon Hunter for more information . . . Please speak to the rector if you’d like to volunteer to take photographs on Sunday morning, during Mass or the adult-education classes. The photographs are used to illustrate the weekly newsletter.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR . . . Tuesday, August 24, Saint Bartholomew the Apostle . . . Monday, September 6, Labor Day . . . Wednesday, September 8, The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary . . . Saturday, September 11, Requiem Mass for Victims of Attacks on 9/11/2001 . . . Tuesday, September 14, Holy Cross Day . . . Tuesday, September 21, Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist . . . Wednesday, September 29, Saint Michael and All Angels.

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.