FROM THE RECTOR: LEARNNG CONTINUES

I’ve never read Joel Marcus’s two-volume commentary on Mark from start to finish. That said, I’ve used it a lot since I ordered it in August 2012. It is full of pencil marks. But just because I underline, make a check, or give a sentence of a paragraph a few stars, that doesn’t mean I understood what I read. As I prepared for the Feast of Transfiguration, I realized that, though underlined, I did not appreciate the significance of how those who heard or read this gospel in the last decades of the first century of the Christian Era understood the Hebrew word rabbî.

On the mount of transfiguration, Jesus’ appearance was transformed in the presence of Peter, James, and John. Elijah and Moses appear and talk with Jesus. A cloud descends. His Father speaks, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mark 9:7). Peter addresses Jesus as “Rabbi.” The Hebrew root word, rab, means “many” (Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament [1997], III:1194–1201). “Eventually ‘Rabbi’ and ‘Rab’ became technical terms for ordained teachers and/or jurists” (Marcus, Mark 8–16 [2009], 633). Marcus translates the word as “great one.” So, there’s a significant scholarly debate about what they meant in the first century (Ibid.).

Matthew (17:1–9) and Luke (9:28–36) use Mark’s account of Jesus’ transfiguration (9:2–13) to tell the story from their own perspective. But both replace Peter’s word to Mark’s “Rabbi” with the Greek word κύριος (kyrios), in English, “Lord” or “Master.” Peter, James, and John understand that Jesus is a great man. Where they, as it were, cannot go is to see and believe that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Son of God.

In Mark’s account of the crucifixion, we read, “There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem” (15:40–41). In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, none of the eleven male disciples are with them.

The named women will go to buy spices when the sun sets on the sabbath. When the sun rises, they go to the tomb. The stone has been rolled away. Inside, there is a young man in a white robe. He tells them, “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you” (Mark 16:1–7). The next verse is regarded as the original ending of Mark: “And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).

In Luke, Matthew, and John, the women do go to announce the Good News to the others. Commenting on their response in Mark, Raymond Brown wrote, “Even a proclamation of the resurrection does not produce faith without the hearer’s personal encounter with suffering and carrying a cross” (An Introduction to the New Testament [1997], 148) I have encountered more than a few adults who would disagree with Brown. I do not. Conversion to life in Christ brings great joy. But I think the door to Christian faith and joy begins in that part of every person’s life where mind and soul, finally, are ready to be believe in the Son of God. —Stephen Gerth

YOUR PRAYERS ARE ASKED FOR Yanis, Greta, Jean, Joe, Pat, Eloise, Kathleen, Norman, Hortense, Eric, Larry, José, Ralph, Mario, Liduvina, Jonathan, Emerson, Rita, Marilouise, Quincy, Florette, John, Shalim, Peter, George, Abraham, Dennis, Ethelyn, Emil; Randall and Louis, priests; all who suffer from COVID-19; all who work for the common good; and all the friends and members of this parish. . . GRANT THEM PEACE . . . August 8: 1879 Emily Marie Atkins.

IN THIS TRANSITORY LIFE . . . In this week’s newsletter, and in the Prayers of the People on Sunday morning, we are asked to pray for the repose of the soul of Emily Marie Atkins, and only for Emily, who it turns out is the only member of this parish, so far as we know, who died on the date August 8, in any year, in the entire history of the parish. Emily was only six days old when she died in 1879. Her last residence is not named in the register of funerals. Perhaps she had no residence. The cause of her death is not listed. Perhaps it was not known. To read through the pages of the Saint Mary’s register of funerals is to be reminded that many infants and children did not live until adolescence in a time before antibiotics, a host of vaccines, and a clear understanding of the causes of infection and disease. Emily’s mortal remains were interred in the Saint Mary’s plot at Saint Michael’s Cemetery on August 9, 1879. There is an annotation in the register: #14 free ticket. This suggests that Emily’s mother, or her family, required assistance in order to give their infant daughter a proper burial. As we pray for Emily, let us also pray for the children of all the poor and sometimes desperate families who have died since 1879, some of whom died yesterday, many of whom died without their names being known or any acknowledgment of their passing. Let us pray for the children, for their mothers, for their families, and for the grace, wisdom, and courage to improve the lives of all God’s children, wherever they may be. —J.R.S.

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 . . . 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.

THIS WEEK AT SAINT MARY’S . . . Sunday, August 8, The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost. The church opens at 10:00 AM and closes at 5:30 PM. Mass is at 11:00 AM, Father Jay Smith, celebrant and preacher. The readings at the Mass are Deuteronomy 8:1–10; Psalm 34:1–8; Ephesians 4:25–5:2; and John 6:37–51. Evening Prayer on Sunday is at 5:00 PM . . . Monday–Saturday, August 9–14, Mass 12:10 PM and Evening Prayer 5:00 PM. The church is open from 11:00 AM until 5:30 PM . . . Tuesday, August 10, Racism Discussion Group Meeting, 7:00 PM via Zoom. For more information about this ongoing weekly meeting, please call the parish office . . . Next Sunday, August 15, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Mass 11:00 AM, Father Stephen Gerth, celebrant and preacher; Evening Prayer 5:00 PM. The readings at Mass on Sunday, August 15, are Isaiah 61:10–11; Galatians 4:4–7; Psalm 34:1–9; and Luke 1:46–55.

ABOUT THE MUSIC . . . Sunday’s organ voluntaries continue a series, begun last Sunday, of the eight “Little” Preludes and Fugues traditionally attributed to J. S. Bach (1685–1750). These pieces are now widely believed to have been composed by one of Bach’s pupils, very likely Johann Tobias Krebs (1690–1762), or Krebs’s son, Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713–1780). Of these eight relatively short preludes and fugues, four are in the major keys of C, F, G, and B-flat, and the remaining four are in their relative minors of A, D, E, and G. The standard ordering of these eight pieces begins with BWV 553 in C Major and progresses up the scale to BWV 560 in B-flat. The prelude on Sunday morning will be BWV 559 in A minor and the postlude will be BWV 553 in the relative Major key of C. BWV 559, for the prelude, is probably the most dramatic of the eight preludes and fugues, displaying elements of the stylus fantasticus (“fantastic style”) of north-German Baroque keyboard music. BWV 553, numbered first in the collection and played for the postlude, is a bright and innocently straightforward piece. Both preludes and fugues have stylistic similarities to larger works, BWV 543 and BWV 545, in the same respective keys and more certainly authentic J. S. Bach.

The musical setting of the Mass on Sunday is Mass VI as found in the Liber Usualis (“Usual Book”), a comprehensive anthology of medieval Roman plainsong compiled in the nineteenth century by the monks of Solesmes, France. Like the several other numbered Masses of the Gregorian Missal, Mass VI (In Festis Duplicibus. 3) is a collection of chants for the Ordinary of the Mass which likely were originally independent pieces brought together and associated with one another by later custom. This particular combination was traditionally sung on certain feast days in the Roman calendar. The Gloria of Mass VI, is in Mode 8 and dates from the tenth century. The Agnus Dei, also in Mode 8, dates from the eleventh century. The Sanctus also dates from the eleventh century and is in Mode 3.

The cantor on Sunday is soprano, Charlotte Mundy. During the Communion she will sing Schlafendes Jesuskind (“The sleeping Christ-Child”) by Hugo Wolf (1860–1903). The poem is by Eduard Mörike (1804–1875), a German Lutheran pastor who was also a poet and writer of novellas and novels. Wolf’s career as teacher, critic, and composer centered in Vienna. He was devoted to and strongly influenced by the music of Richard Wagner (1813–1883). After Wagner’s death, Franz Liszt (1811–1886) continued to influence Wolf and encouraged him to pursue the large musical forms for which he had high regard. Although Wolf composed three operas in addition to orchestral, chamber and piano music, it is for his hundreds of songs—Lieder in German—where he distinguished himself as a composer and for which he is principally remembered. Wolf’s richly expressive chromaticism animated the poetry of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse, and Emanuel Geibel, as well as Eduard Mörike. Mörike’s Schlafendes Jesuskind is a meditation inspired by a painting by Francesco Albani (1578–1660). Wolf’s musical setting embodies his gift for rendering expressive depth though modest musical forces.

More about Sunday’s cantor: Soprano Charlotte Mundy specializes in music that is new, daring, and sublime. She has been called a “daredevil with an unbreakable spine” (SF Classical Voice). Recent performances include George Benjamin’s one-act opera, Into the Little Hill, at the 92nd Street Y and a set of music for voice and electronics presented by the New York Festival of Song, described as “an oasis of radiant beauty” by the New York Times. She acted and sang in A Star Has Burnt My Eye at the BAM Next Wave Festival and The Apartment at Abrons Arts Center. As a member of Ekmeles vocal ensemble and TAK ensemble, she has been an artist-in-residence at the music departments of Columbia, Stanford, Penn, Cornell, and many other universities.  The multi-sensory ritual of Mass at “Smoky Mary’s” is a constant inspiration to her. Learn more at www.charlottemundy.com. —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.

On July 23, we received a donation of a large number of very nice, lightly used athletic shoes from the New York Athletic Club. Such shoes are in high demand among our Neighbors-in-Need guests and clients. They are expensive to purchase and so this gift is much appreciated and most welcome.

We gratefully receive many donations of clothing from our members and friends. One or two donations come in most every week. We are able to distribute most of the donated items here at the church, but not all of them. Over time, we’ve been given a large amount of childen’s clothing and professional office attire, mostly men’s suits, and we’ve discovered that our guests don’t need many of these items. We haven’t wanted to throw them away or even recycle them, and we’ve felt sure that other organizations could use them. In fact, that has proven to be the case. Our faithful volunteers, who sort donated clothing each week, have recently located two organizations happy to take these items, CareerGear and Nido de Esperanza. CareerGear works with men returning to the workforce after a time away and Nido de Esperanza—which means Nest of Hope—works with women and children in Washington Heights. On Wednesday, MaryJane Boland, Harka Gurung, Mark Risinger, and David Lapham loaded around thirty bags of clothing into a rented van and Mark and MaryJane headed off to the Bronx and Washington Heights to deliver them to some very happy recipients. I am very grateful to all of our volunteers for putting so much work into this effort and we are grateful to all those who continue to make donations of both money, clothing, and toiletry articles to this outreach effort —J.R.S.

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 online at bookshop.org and other online retailers . . . We are 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.”

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.