EASTERTIDE: THE PRACTICE OF JOY

Practice resurrection. 
(Wendell Berry, from “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”)

My mother, of blessed memory, was fond of quoting Bible verses to (or, rather, at) me. I’ll admit it could be infuriating for a 13-year-old to hear “Honor thy father and mother” (Exodus 20.12) whenever I disobeyed, or “All things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8.28) every time I inevitably missed the cut for an all-star team. But I’m grateful Mom ingrained a vocabulary of Sacred Scripture in me such that I readily call to mind passages like this one: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” (Psalm 126.6) I need to remember that this time of year.

Eastertide is the fifty-day period from Easter Day to the Feast of Pentecost and, after a Lent sowing tears, it’s supposed to be one long period of reaping joy. But while we often experience Lent and Holy Week viscerally, experiencing the sorrow of Jesus deep in our bones, sometimes it’s hard to keep the joy of Eastertide going for fifty days. That raises two questions: Why should we be joyous in Easter? And how can we pull it off?

In Putting on the Heart of Christ: How the Spiritual Exercises Invite Us to a Virtuous Life, Gerald M. Fagin, SJ, gives specific reasons for joy in Eastertide. First, Easter means Jesus is alive and present with us right now! All the post-Resurrection appearances testify to the fact that the same Jesus who had walked with the disciples – fed them, taught them, laughed with them, washed their feet – the Jesus they watched die had risen from the dead. Talk about sowing tears and reaping joy. Imagine how elated they must’ve been at the news! That same Jesus is present with us, too – present when Sacred Scripture is read, at the Mass, in the poor, in the faces of others, in the Sacraments – turning our tears to joy. 

Second, Easter means death is defeated. The risen Christ said, “I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.” (Revelation 1.18) Keys symbolize power and authority, so Jesus claims authority over death itself. Thus, the icons of the “Harrowing of Hell” show Jesus pulling Adam and Eve from their graves. The Resurrection means Jesus blew a hole in the back of death, and he is pulling the baptized through to safety on the other side. So Fr. Fagin can say: “Jesus is with us, death has been destroyed — these are reasons to rejoice!”

If that’s the why, what’s the how? Just like we adopt Lenten practices to help us enter fully into Lent, there are practices to help us enter fully into a joyous Eastertide. Here are three to consider: 

• Pray! Go to Mass. Our lectionary takes us through the Acts of the Apostles in Eastertide, continuing one of the Church’s earliest liturgical traditions. Hearing the story of how the first followers of Jesus careened into the world in the power of the Resurrection is a joyous reminder that Jesus is still at work in the world through the power of the Holy Spirit.

• Sing! The wonderful canticle the “Song of Moses” (Cantemus Domino, BCP p. 85) is especially appropriate for Morning Prayer in Eastertide with its joyous introduction: I will sing to the Lord, for he is lofty and uplifted. And our hymns in church at Easter resound with shouts of Alleluia! Easter is a wonderful time to “Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands; serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song.” (Psalm 100.1)

• Adore! A practice that may be new to you is adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Sometimes called a “Holy Hour,” we practice Adoration simply by sitting with Jesus, resurrected and alive, present with us in the Blessed Sacrament. It’s a time to be with the God who welcomes and accepts us; to listen to him and let him listen to us. In the words of St. John Vianney, it’s a time when “I look at him, and he looks at me, and we’re happy together.” Please join us in the Lady Chapel every Wednesday from 11:00-noon starting May 4 as we begin the practice of keeping a Holy Hour of adoration and prayer before the midday mass.

Practices like these help make sometimes difficult things like “experiencing joy” second nature for us. The Church commends these practices to us, and St. Mary’s wants to be a place where we can exercise them together. So Happy Easter! Rejoice! — Father Sammy

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise 
With him mayst rise.
That, as his death calcined thee to dust, His life may make thee gold, and much more just.
(George Herbert, from “Easter”)

THE PARISH PRAYER LIST

Prayers are asked for the sick and for all those who asked us for our prayers, especially Emil, Renate, Ricardo, James-George, Sharon, Mel, Penny, Peter, Marjorie, Pat, Eloise, John, Karen, Shalim, Greta, Liduvina, Quincy, Florette, Peter, George, Abraham, Ethelyn, Gypsy, Hardy, Margaret, and Robert.

We pray for peace in Ukraine and for an end to the violence and suffering there. Your prayers are asked for peace in all the troubled places of this world, remembering especially the people of Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Myanmar, Syria, and Yemen.

AROUND THE PARISH

The Flower Guild urgently needs your help! On Sunday, April 24, starting at about 1:00 PM (after the Solemn Mass and Coffee Hour), we will be dismantling all of the Easter decorations. Can you spare an hour or two to help us? Many hands make for light work. We’ve found this to be a fun time to reflect on and savor the memories from the past two weeks as we move into the rest of Eastertide. No particular experience or special skills required. All are welcome! Please contact Marie Rosseels if you have questions or if you are able to volunteer. You may reach her by following this link.

On Sunday, May 1, the Third Sunday of Easter, a “crown” of flowers will have been placed before Mass on the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Lady Shrine. At the end of Mass, a Marian hymn will be sung and prayers will be offered at the shrine. This annual devotion reminds us that Mary is for us patroness, model, intercessor, and guide.

The Annual Meeting of the Parish will take place in Saint Joseph’s Hall after the Solemn Mass on Sunday, May 1. The Interim Rector will deliver his report. A vote will be taken to choose two lay delegates to attend the diocesan conventions in the fall: November 11, Diocesan Convention; and December 3, The Election of a Bishop Coadjutor. The delegates nominated at the Annual Meeting are to be presented for approval to the Board of Trustees at the Board’s meeting at the end of May. Other reports will be presented to the parish in a printed document at the meeting.

Giving at Saint Mary’s during Holy Week and Eastertide. We recognize that there have been many “asks” during recent weeks. As always, we respect each person’s need to discern what he or she can give and when. Still, should the Spirit move you, it is still possible to make donations to the following: the Maundy Thursday offering in support of both the people of Ukraine via Episcopal Relief and Development and AIDS Walk 2022; the Good Friday offering in support of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East; altar flowers and Easter decorations in the church; and the annual Easter Appeal in support of the renovation of the parish kitchen.

THIS WEEK AT SAINT MARY’S

The Adult Education Class will not meet on Sunday, April 24. Class resumes on Sunday, May 1, at 9:30 AM, when the Reverend Dr. Warren Platt will discuss the place of Saint Mary’s in the history of nineteenth-century Anglican “ritualism” and Anglo-Catholicism.

The Racism Discussion Group Meeting: The Group meets online on most Tuesday evenings, but will not meet on April 26 or May 3. This past Tuesday, Dr. Meredith Linn visited the group and discussed insights that have been revealed about the lives of African Americans and the invention of race in the colonial period from archaeological studies in New York City, particularly of the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. Dr. Linn is an assistant professor of historical archaeology at the Bard Graduate Center. For more information about this ongoing weekly meeting, please call the parish office, or speak to one of the current members of the group, such as Charles Carson, Charles Morgan, Marie Rosseels, or Ingrid Sletten.

ABOUT THE MUSIC

The organ voluntaries at the Solemn Mass on Sunday are both chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) that are based upon classic Easter hymns. The prelude is Bach’s setting of Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, BWV 665. The chorale, dated 1524, is attributed to Martin Luther. A somewhat literal English translation of its first stanza is:

Jesus Christ, our Savior true,
He who Death overthrew,
Is up arisen,
And sin hath put in prison.
Kyrieleison.

Bach composed four organ settings of this chorale, two are found in the Clavierübung, Part III, and the remaining two, including BWV 665, are included among the Great Eighteen Leipzig Chorales. BWV 665 is in motet style, that is, each phrase of the melody is individually developed contrapuntally in its own separate section, each section concluding with the phrase’s melody stated in the bass voice. The third section of this chorale prelude is notable for its intense chromaticism, and the fourth and final section for its gathering crescendo moving towards its conclusion.

Sunday’s postlude is Christ lag in Todesbanden from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein (“Little Organ Book”), a collection of forty-six relatively short settings of chorales for the liturgical year, mostly composed while Bach was in Weimar between 1708 and 1717. An English translation of its first stanza is:

Christ lay in death’s bonds,
handed over [to death] for our sins.
He is risen
and has brought us life.
For this we should be joyful.
Praise God and be thankful to him
and sing alleluia, alleluia.

Christ lag in Todesbanden appears in two melodic forms in The Hymnal 1982 at #185 and #186, the latter being Bach’s own harmonization from his Cantata No. 4 which will be sung as today’s Offertory hymn. Bach’s Orgelbüchlein setting of this chorale presents the melody clearly in the uppermost voice, supported by accompaniment from the three lower voices.

Herbert Howells (1892–1983) was a remarkable twentieth-century English composer. He was mentored in his youth by some of the most prominent English musicians of his time, including C. V. Stanford, C. H. H. Parry, and Charles Wood. Rather than pursuing the more avant-garde impulses which propelled some young composers of his time, he cultivated the more tonally oriented but distinctively original vocabulary of melody, harmony, and lyrical rhythms for which his music is recognized. Howells’ treasured contribution to Anglican church music includes his several services designed for particular cathedrals, parishes, and collegiate chapels. Each of these services responds to the architecture, and the acoustic and musical tradition of the place for which it was composed. Of all these services, those designated “Collegium Regale” are the most exhaustive. This morning’s Mass setting is Howells’ Collegium Regale Office of Holy Communion, composed for King’s College, Cambridge. Howells’s association with Cambridge dated from 1941 when he became acting organist at Saint John’s College, replacing Robin Orr who had been called away to service in World War II. In 1944, at the urging of the then dean of neighboring King’s College, Eric Milner-White, Howells composed the Collegium Regale morning canticles, Te Deum and Jubilate. The following year he expanded the Collegium Regale settings by composing the evening canticles Magnificat and Nunc dimittis. Then finally in 1956, Howells completed his Collegium Regale collection by setting The Office of Holy Communion. Howells’s Collegium Regale settings all feature an expressive partnership between voices and organ. They are clearly a family of compositions, all crafted to function in the same household. For example, although separated by twelve years, the 1944 Te Deum and the 1956 Gloria are very close siblings and share essential thematic elements.

Jacob Handl (1550-1591), also known as Jacobus Gallus, is credited with over five hundred compositions, both sacred and secular, including twenty Masses and hundreds of motets. Slovenian by birth, Handl’s compositions incorporate the influences of the leading Franco-Flemish and Venetian musical schools of his time. His motet Stetit Jesus from Opus musicum III (1587), sung during the administration of Communion at the Solemn Mass on Sunday, sings the post-resurrection appearance of our Lord reported in John 20:19–20. Handl’s motet captures the drama of the narrative.

THE SAINT MARY’S CENTERING PRAYER GROUP meets online on most Friday evenings at 6:30 PM, including Friday, April 22 and 29. If you are interested in participating, please send an e-mail to this address or speak to Ingrid Sletten or Blair Burroughs.

AIDS WALK UPDATE

We have now raised $38,806! Time to blow past our goal of $40,000 and show the co-chairs that they were just too conservative this year. There are now three weeks left until the Walk on May 15 and we’re currently the second-ranked fundraising team overall. Let’s keep the momentum going!

Click here to join our team or to donate. Donations via check should be made payable to “AIDS Walk New York” and not to Saint Mary’s. Since donations go to GMHC, this makes bookkeeping easier for those working in the parish office. Checks can be given to one of the team leaders: MaryJane Boland, Clark Mitchell, or Father Matt Jacobson. Feel free also to contact us with any questions. Additional details and history of our participation can be found on the parish webpage here. Any support, large or small, matters and is very much appreciated! —MaryJane, Clark, and Father Matt

NEIGHBORS IN NEED

As this edition of the newsletter arrives in your Inboxes, this month’s Drop-by Day will be taking place, or just wrapping up, in the church and Lady Chapel. This is how our Drop-by Days unfold: Volunteers work from 1:30 PM until 3:30 PM. Our guests are invited into the church a bit before 2:00 PM, and we close our doors at 3:00 PM. We need at least 6 volunteers for each Drop-by. If you would like to volunteer, please send an email to neighbors@stmvnyc.org or call the Parish Office at 212-869-5830.

The May Drop-by will take place on Friday, May 20.

With the arrival of warmer weather, we are now eager to receive donations of lighter clothes such as shirts, blouses, T-shirts, slacks, shorts; jeans, socks and athletic shoes.

Our goal is to continue to distribute clothing and hygiene items to those in need in the Times Square neighborhood. We are grateful to all those who continue to support this ministry.

LIFE IN TIMES SQUARE

Trash on the sidewalks and in the streets of Midtown has come to seem like an inevitable and unsolvable problem. This week, however, Mayor Eric Adams, came to Times Square and promised to address the problem. He was also visiting the neighborhood to unveil several newly installed, large “containerized waste bins” in Times Square. The plan, says the mayor, is to take steps towards achieving the “long-held goal of putting garbage into sealed receptacles instead of dumping trash bags on the sidewalk.” To achieve this goal the city will partner with our friends at Times Square Alliance. We wish them well, and we live in hope.

The Palace Theatre at Forty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. For three years now, the sound of construction coming from the site of the Palace Theatre has been a persistent issue for us here at the parish. Construction begins early and ends late. We hear it during Mass, and the residents of the complex hear it as they go to sleep. We look forward to the completion of the project. Why this project is taking so long may be a bit of mystery to many Saint Marians. Here’s the story, past and present (this is taken from a very good and very detailed Wikipedia article):

The Palace Theatre is a Broadway theater at 1564 Broadway, facing Times Square, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Milwaukee architects Kirchoff & Rose, the theater was funded by Martin Beck and opened in 1913. From its opening to about 1929, the Palace was considered among vaudeville performers as the flagship of Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Franklin Albee II's organization. The theater had 1,743 seats across three levels as of 2018.

The modern Palace Theatre consists of a three-level auditorium at Forty-seventh Street, which is a New York City designated landmark. The auditorium contains ornately designed plasterwork, boxes on the side walls, and two balcony levels that slope downward toward the stage. When it opened, the theater was accompanied by an eleven- or twelve-story office wing facing Broadway, also designed by Kirchoff & Rose. The Palace was most successful as a vaudeville house in the 1910s and 1920s. Among those who performed there were Other performers appearing at the Palace included: George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Sarah Bernhardt, Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, Bert Lahr, Ethel Merman, Kate Smith, and Sophie Tucker.

In later years, the site was developed and office and retail space, as well as a hotel, were built over and around the Palace. Most recently a Double Tree Hotel was the most visible occupant of the site at Seventh and Forty-seventh.

As of 2019, the DoubleTree/Palace site is being redeveloped as part of TSX Broadway, a $2 billion mixed-use structure with a 669-room hotel, which is being built around, above, and below the Palace's auditorium. To meet city building codes, the new structure retains the lowest sixteen stories of the DoubleTree structure, with new concrete slabs being poured around the old ones. The area occupied by the 1987 lobby is being replaced with retail space, extending three levels below ground. This requires the auditorium to be raised by about thirty feet (9.1 m). The auditorium will be supported by columns that, in turn, rest on caissons extending forty-five feet (14 m) deep.

So, the project is unique: the developers aim to preserve the interior of a historic theater, while contributing to the ongoing development of Times Square. How all this will work post-pandemic remains to be seen. We pray for the safety of all who work on the site; we pray for the safety and well-being of our neighborhood and all those who work, live, and pray here; and we yearn for the gift of silence.

This edition of the Angelus was written and edited by Father Sammy Wood and Father Jay Smith. Father Jacobson also helps with editing and is responsible for posting it on the parish website and distributing it via mail and e-mail, with the assistance of Christopher Howatt, parish administrator, and parish volunteer, Clint Best.