FROM FATHER JACOBSON: ON THE MYSTERY OF BAPTISM

One of the well-known figures in antiquity associated with sacrament of baptism is Saint Ambrose of Milan. In part, it is because he famously baptized Saint Augustine at the Easter Vigil in the year 387, after having played an important role in his conversion, but also because some of his writings help give us a sense of fourth-century baptismal theology and liturgy.

On the Mysteries is a collection of addresses delivered by Ambrose to the newly baptized during Easter Week and is commonly dated to just a few years after he baptized Augustine. In this work, he tends to use the words “mystery” and “sacrament” interchangeably as he searches to elucidate the holy mysteries of baptism and the Eucharist.

Ambrose emphasizes the Holy Spirit’s role in baptism, which he describes as being essential for the sacrament, and at one point he connects it with creation, recalling how the Spirit moved over the waters on the first day (Genesis 1:2; De mysteriis, 3.8, 4.19).

Resurrection imagery is also central to Ambrose’s description of baptism. He’s clearly influenced by Paul’s use of the language of death and resurrection to describe this mystery (Romans 6; De mysteriis, 4.21) and goes on to note that the white garments the candidates were clothed in at their baptism were like the clothes that the Lord wore at the transfiguration as he showed the glory of his resurrection (Matthew 17:2; De mysteriis, 6.29, 7.34).

Ambrose’s writings remind us that baptism at the Easter Vigil is an ancient tradition and how baptism is intimately tied to resurrection. Additionally, he frequently reminds those that were recently baptized to remember what it is exactly that they have agreed to in baptism: “Recall what you were asked; recall what you responded!” (2.5). Presumably, it was not all that different than what we were asked and agreed to less than two weeks ago at the Vigil when we renewed our own baptismal vows.

Ambrose reminds the recently baptized how they “renounced the Devil and his works” and then, as part of the ritual, turned east towards Christ and away from the devil (2.5-2.7). He later tells them, “You have descended [into the water]; remember what you replied, that you believe in the Father, you believe in the Son, you believe in the Holy Spirit” (5.28).

We too reaffirmed our renunciation of evil and then restated our belief in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit through the language of the Apostles’ Creed. We also promised to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves (BCP 292-294).

As you may have noticed last Sunday at Solemn Mass, the celebrant sprinkled the congregation with holy water as the choir sang Vidi aquam, the traditional Eastertide verse that accompanies the Asperges (from the Latin aspergo: a spray or sprinkling).

We are including the Asperges in our opening rite on Sundays throughout Eastertide as it can help us to remember the grace of our own baptism during this season of resurrection and, importantly, to keep in mind the implications of what it is that we have agreed to do: to seek and serve Christ in all persons. — MDJ

THE PARISH PRAYER LIST

Prayers are asked for the sick and for all those who asked us for our prayers, especially Chung-Young, Carlos, Emil, Thomas, James-George, Sharon, Marjorie, Pat, Charles, John, Karen, Shalim, Greta, Liduvina, Quincy, Florette, Brian, Carmen, Peter, George, José, Christine, Matthew, Abraham, Ethelyn, Gypsy, Margaret, and Robert; for Robert James, Luc, Carl, and James, religious; and for Allen, bishop.

In this Eastertide, we pray for the newly baptized. We pray also for the safety and welfare of the Times Square neighborhood and for all those visiting Saint Mary’s this week. 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

We received news this week that Bishop Allen Shin’s mother, Chun-young Shin, has entered hospice care in Seattle. The bishop and his wife, Clara Mun, have traveled to be with her. Please keep her and our good friend, Bishop Shin, in your prayers.

Those who worship at Saint Mary’s regularly will know that we invite guest preachers to be with us from time to time, usually but not exclusively, on holy days. It is good to hear new and different voices interpreting God’s Word for us.

At the Solemn Mass at 6:00 PM on Ascension Day, Thursday, May 26, the Reverend Jeffrey Hanson will be our guest preacher. Father Hanson is Senior Philosopher at Harvard University's Human Flourishing Program, where he researches love, meaningfulness, and other contributors to happiness and well-being. He is an assisting priest at the Church of the Advent in Boston, where his ministry focuses on young adults and educational programming. He is the author of Philosophies of Work in the Platonic Tradition: A History of Labor and Human Flourishing and Kierkegaard and the Life of Faith: The Aesthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious in “Fear and Trembling.” He is the editor or co-editor of four books of philosophical essays, and his writing and podcasting have appeared in The Living Church’s Covenant blog. We look forward to welcoming him to Saint Mary’s.

Our parish administrator, Christopher Howatt, celebrates an important birthday this weekend. He will be out of the office on Friday, April 29, and Monday, May 2, taking some well-deserved time away. Please keep him, and his husband, Carlos, in your prayers.

THIS WEEK AT SAINT MARY’S

The Annual Meeting of the Parish will take place in Saint Joseph’s Hall after the Solemn Mass and a brief Coffee Hour 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.

The Adult Education Class will meet 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 May 3. The group will resume its meetings on Tuesday, May 10. 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 on Sunday are transcriptions of two movements from Cantata 29 of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). Cantata 29 Wir danken dir Gott, wir danken dir (“We thank you, God, we thank you”) was first performed at the installation of the town council in Leipzig in 1731 and is known to have been performed subsequently on similar occasions in 1739 and 1749. It opens with the brilliant instrumental Sinfonia which is itself Bach’s reworking of the Prelude from his own third Partita for solo Violin, BWV 1006. Bach recast the Sinfonia for Cantata 29, transcribed from E to D Major, and the organ is assigned the original violin solo part. The orchestra functions to reflect and punctuate the solo line. An organ solo transcription of this Sinfonia is today’s prelude. In its Cantata 29 context, the Sinfonia is followed by a grand motet-style chorus Wir danken dir, the music of which also appears in Bach’s Mass in B minor at Gratias agimus tibi, and again as the concluding Dona nobis pacem. The four choral parts of the chorus are enhanced by instrumental doubling, and a halo of three independent trumpet parts further adorns the climactic finish of this stately chorus. An organ solo transcription of this chorus is today’s postlude.

The setting of the antiphon Vidi aquam, sung during the sprinkling of the people with holy water at Mass on the Sundays of Easter, is a contemporary chant setting by David Hurd, organist and music director at Saint Mary’s. It was composed for the 1982 Chicago Archdiocesan Music Festival and sung at Holy Name Cathedral. The setting is designed for a variety of performance possibilities including singing in canon, use of handbells, and the use of an optional impressionistic organ accompaniment. On Sunday morning it will be sung simply in unison.

The setting of the Mass at Sunday’s Solemn Mass is the Mass for four voices by Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585). Tallis was one of the most foundational composers of English church music. His long life and musical career included service under four English monarchs— Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I— with all the shifts in the church’s liturgical and institutional life which these different reigns occasioned. Tallis’s early life is not well documented, but references to his musical employment begin to appear as early as 1532 when he was appointed organist at the Benedictine Priory of Dover. Notably he later was employed at Canterbury Cathedral and served as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Along with William Byrd (c. 1505–1585), Tallis enjoyed an exclusive license to print and publish music which was granted by Elizabeth I in 1575. While he was one of the first musicians to compose for the new Anglican rites of the mid-sixteenth century, Tallis retained an affection for the Latin forms and continued to compose extensively for them. Tallis’s unnamed Latin Mass for four voices probably dates from the 1550s. Its musical style reflects the trend of that time away from very florid liturgical settings and toward syllabic and chordal compositions, favoring clearer declamation of the text.

Complementing Tallis’ Mass for four voices on Sunday is a setting by William Byrd, also for four voices, of the antiphon Cibavit eos. This antiphon and its customary companion verse are derived from Psalm 81, verses 16 and 1 respectively. Byrd’s setting, published in his 1605 Gradualia I, is structured to be the Introit for the Feast of The Body and Blood of Christ; the antiphon is followed in turn by the verse in a reduced voicing, Gloria Patri, and finally a repetition of the antiphon. Sung at the Communion this morning, Gloria Patri will be omitted. — David Hurd

THE SAINT MARY’S CENTERING PRAYER GROUP meets online on most Friday evenings at 6:30 PM, including Friday, April 29 and May 6. 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 now have raised $41,846, beating our initial goal of $40,000! It is exciting how well the team is doing this year, though we’re not stopping and have raised our goal to $45,000 with still two weeks left until the Walk on May 15. Our team continues to grow and we currently have eleven members. Come join us!

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

The Neighbors in Need program is Saint Mary’s principal outreach ministry. It was founded by members of the parish, along with resident sisters and friars and members of the parish’s clergy staff. We “own” it and run it. We provide clothing and basic, but essential, hygiene items to our neighbors in Times Square. Your cash donations and gifts of new and lightly used clothing make this ministry possible.

The need in our neighborhood is great and we continue to look for ways to grow and do more.

Our distribution days usually take place on the third Friday of each month.

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

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.

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.

However, as you do your spring cleaning, please know that we would love to receive donations of coats, jackets, and sweatshirts. We did not receive many coats from our usual suppliers this past winter and we would like to prepare for Winter 2022–2023.

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.

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah, that is, “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day”, known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, is observed as Israel’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. In Israel, it is a national memorial day. It took place this past week on April 27/28.

For Christians, the day is a day of remembrance, learning, and repentance. Such work should be, for us, an ongoing work in a time of growing anti-semitism, a time when the events of 1939–1945 have begun to recede into what is increasingly regarded as “a distant past.” For us the work of remembrance and education must continue.

At The Museum of Jewish Heritage in downtown Manhattan, a new core exhibition, The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, will open at the end of June 2022. The exhibition is an expansive and timely presentation of Holocaust history told through personal stories, objects, photos, and film, many on view for the first time. The 12,000-square-foot exhibition features over 750 original objects and survivor testimonies from the Museum’s collection. The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do is a representation of this global story through a local lens, rooted in the objects donated by survivors and their families, many of whom settled in New York and nearby places.

Please visit the museum’s website for more information.

This edition of the Angelus was written and edited by Father Matt Jacobson and Father Jay Smith. Father Jacobson is also responsible for formatting and 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.