FROM THE INTERIM RECTOR: HOLY WEEK CAN CHANGE A LIFE

My first Holy Week as an Episcopalian was two decades ago in a little church on the North Shore of Boston. I don’t know what I expected, but I couldn’t know how profoundly I’d be affected by that experience. 

I’m living proof that Holy Week can change a life.

Holy Week is the Church’s yearly commemoration of the central events of our redemption—the last days of Jesus’ life, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. It’s sometimes called the “Week of Salvation.” If the whole life of the Church flows from the unfolding of the Paschal Mystery, then it’s no wonder the series of liturgies of Holy Week are so important because they make those mysterious events present to us right here, right now—in New York, today. In the heart America’s theater district, this is the greatest show in town. My friend Mother Beth Maynard says Lent is designed “to funnel us right into the center of the universe,” and Holy Week in particular pulls us deep into the events surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection because that’s precisely where life-changing power exists.

The week begins for us on Palm Sunday, the day on which, since the fourth century, the Church has remembered our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem. The entrance rite of the Mass is altered and elaborated to mark Jesus’ “triumphal entry'' and our own entrance into the sacred time of Holy Week. This liturgy sets the tone for the whole week because as the Palm Sunday service progresses our own voices—the ones that say Hosanna! and sing All glory, laud, and honor to thee, Redeemer, King!— will shift in tone and timbre to confess “‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; I crucified thee.” This isn’t just some story; we’re players in the drama ourselves.

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday comprise the Sacred Triduum—the Great Three Days, one long liturgy spread over three successive nights and days. On the night before he died for us, our Lord ate a final supper with his friends, and on Thursday night we mark the institution of the Lord’s Supper with bells that then fall silent until the first Mass of Easter. We mark the “maundy”—from the mandatum or “command” of Jesus to love one other—by washing each other’s feet. Thursday’s liturgy ends with a procession to the Altar of Repose where the Sacrament is reserved and where watch is kept until midnight, as we keep vigil with our Lord in Gethsemane. The sanctuary is stripped, the bare altar washed, the tabernacle left open and empty, and we enter the desolation of Good Friday.

The liturgy of Good Friday is unlike anything else the Church does. The ceremonial is stark, jarring, singularly powerful, and the meaning is unmistakable. Friday is all about the Cross. Saint John’s Passion Gospel is chanted; the Solemn Collects, some of the Church’s oldest prayers, are prayed; and each worshiper is invited to venerate the sacred wood of the cross, “whereon was hung the world’s salvation.” After Communion from the reserved Sacrament (in some places called “the Mass of the Presanctified”), the service is ended. Jesus is in the sepulcher. The church has come undone. 

Saturday dawns quietly with a brief liturgy in the church. Then, when evening falls, the faithful gather again—the Church is expectant; we wait in darkness, seemingly just as when we left on Good Friday. But the Resurrection is the act of God which brings the Church into being, and during the first Mass of Easter the Church ritually comes into being again. New fire, Sacred Scripture, the ancient Exsultet, the blessing of the font—all culminating when Resurrection is announced, the lights blaze on, the organ springs to life, peals of bells return, and voices that cried “Crucify” now shout “Alleluia!”

The Church teaches that everything revolves around Easter. And if Jesus’ resurrection is the center of history, Jesus himself must be the center of our own lives. There’s nothing like Holy Week to recenter us on Jesus. Holy Week is how, Mother Beth says, God “kills death, wrenches our broken bones and lives back into joint, and shoves us trembling out into his world to start acting like Jesus.” 

Won't you join us this year? Why not invite a friend? And if someone asks why they should come, you could say: “Because I heard once . . . Holy Week can change a life.” — Fr. Sammy 

Assist us mercifully with thy help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby thou hast given us life and immortality;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 THE HOLY WEEK SCHEDULE OF SERVICES may be found on the front page of the parish website or by calling 212-869-5830 x 15.

YOUR PRAYERS ARE ASKED FOR THE SICK AND THOSE WITH SPECIAL NEEDS, including Emil, James-George, Sharon, Mel, Penny, Peter, Marjorie, Juderka, Pat, Eloise, John, Karen, Shalim, Greta, Liduvina, Quincy, Florette, Mary, Mark, Peter, George, Abraham, Ethelyn, Gypsy, Hardy, Margaret, and Robert.

Your prayers are asked for all those who suffer in body, mind, or spirit, especially the people of Ukraine; the sick; the dying; the poor and the persecuted; the unemployed and those looking for work; all refugees and migrants; those without food, medical care, insurance, shelter, or work; those who suffer from Covid-19; and those who mourn.

Your prayers are asked for all health workers and all those who work for the common good; for those who live and work in our neighborhood; for all those visiting Saint Mary’s this week; for all actors, artists, and musicians; and for all the benefactors, friends, and members of this parish.

Your prayers are asked for all our parish volunteers: for those who work in the parish office; our acolytes and ushers and the members of the Altar and Candle Guilds; those who decorate the church for Holy Week; those who give their time to the work of Neighbors in Need; and those who are fundraising for AIDS Walk 2022. Your prayers are asked for the parish musicians, for the members of the staff, and the clergy.

GRANT THEM PEACE . . . April 10: 1878 Francis Ebenezer Wetherell; 1965 Emily Grace Long; 1993 Edna Isabelle Matthews.

WE CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR PEACE in Ukraine and for an end to the violence and terrible suffering in that war-torn nation.

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.

During Holy Week we pray in a special way for peace in the Holy Land: 

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:

  May they prosper who love you.

Peace be within your walls,

  and security within your towers (Psalm 126:6–7).

 THE CORE PRINCIPLES THAT GUIDE OUR COMMON LIFE:

Concern for ourselves and others, including concern for the health and safety of all;

Being honest about one’s health and vaccination status;

A willingness to strive with God’s help for justice and peace among all people; and,

A sincere commitment to respect the safety and dignity of all people, including our visitors, members, friends, and the members of our choir, staff, and clergy.

An update from our Interim Rector: I’ve been pleased to see our COVID numbers shift in a generally positive direction of late, leading the governor to lift the statewide mask-or vaccinate mandate and the mayor to lift many COVID restrictions in the city. Our vaccination numbers are strong – some 75% of the city’s residents (88% in New York County) are fully vaccinated – and the CDC website lists our community level as "low." Based upon these and other developments, Saint Mary’s implemented the following changes to public worship on Sunday April 3 (or will, as soon as possible, for some of these changes): 

·  Allowing worshipers to make their communions at the communion rail (kneeling or standing, as you prefer) rather than at the crossing

·  Removal of the tape encouraging social distancing in the pews (our current attendance numbers allow people to spread out, further reducing risk)

·  Replacing the holy water in the stoups

·  The gospel proclamation from the midst of the congregation rather than at the crossing

·  Preaching from the pulpit when we've confirmed everything is in order to livestream the sermon from this location

·  A return to circulating the offering plates when we have a sufficient number of ushers (if you are able to volunteer for this important ministry, contact Marie)

AROUND THE PARISH:

Donations for easter flowers are most welcome. Please go online to Saint Mary’s donation page, click on “Give Now,” and to the right of the amount entered select “Flowers” from the Fund menu.

Prices are rising. We don’t have to tell you that. If you would like to make a donation to help with our sacristy expenses and the work of our Altar and Candle Guilds, please visit the parish website and click on “Donate” or follow this link. On our wish list: candles, altar linens, altar bread (and before too long, wine, we hope), conservation and repair, and the tools with which to undertake those projects.

There will be a Parish Workday starting at 11:00 AM on Saturday, April 9. On our to-do list for the day: stripping palms, cleaning the high altar, and polishing brass. Lunch will be provided early in the afternoon. Decorating the Church for Holy Week. We begin our work on Saturday, April 9, but will continue our work throughout much of Holy Week. If you are interested in helping out on Saturday or at any point during the coming week, please contact Brendon Hunter. If you have experience in floral design and arrangement, that would be lovely, but we have many other tasks that need doing as well. Every bit helps. Please come join us!

Holy Week Offerings: On Maundy Thursday, the offering is for Neighbors in Need and Episcopal Relief and Development in support of the People of Ukraine. On Good Friday, the offering is in support of the ministries carried out by our Anglican sisters and brothers throughout the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East. In the past, such Good Friday gifts have assisted the Ras Morbat Eye Clinic in Yemen; helped children with special needs at The Jerusalem Princess Basma Center; and enabled youth ministry at Saint Matthew’s Church, Zebadeh, in the West Bank, among other projects. We invite you to be generous and we are grateful to all those who have supported these ministries in the past.

On Tuesday, April 12, Father Matthew Jacobson will represent Saint Mary’s at the annual Chrism Mass at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. He will participate in the renewal of ordination vows and will receive the chrism, blessed by the bishop, for use at Holy Baptism.

THIS WEEK AT SAINT MARY’S:

Friday, April 8, Evening Prayer 5:00 PM & Stations of the Cross 5:30 PM

On Sunday, April 10, Palm Sunday, the Adult Education class will meet from 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM in the Arch Room on the second floor of the Mission House. Access is via 133 West Forty-sixth Street. The class will be led by Father Peter Powell. Solemn Mass on Sunday is celebrated at 11:00 AM. Evening Prayer is said in the church at 5:00 PM . . .

The Racism Discussion Group Meeting: The Group will not meet during Holy Week but does normally meet on Tuesday evenings. 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.

The Saint Mary’s Centering Prayer Group will not meet on Friday, April 15 (Good Friday). However, the Group does meet online on most Friday evenings at 6:30 PM, including Friday, April 8. If you are interested in participating, please send an e-mail to this address.

Holy Eucharist and the Daily Office: The Angelus is recited Monday through Saturday at 12:00 PM and 5:00 PM and Mass is celebrated at 12:10 PM. Evening Prayer is normally said in the church Monday through Saturday at 5:00 PM, except on Federal holidays and certain holy days. Solemn Mass is celebrated at 11:00 AM on Sunday morning and Evening Prayer is said at 5:00 PM in the church on Sunday afternoons.

EPISCOPAL SERVICE CORPS BENEFIT… featuring Saint Mary's alumni Sister Monica Clare and Father Matt Mead! On Thursday, May 19, the New York Service and Justice Collaborative (NYSJC), the Episcopal Service Corps ministry of the Diocese of New York, will host a fundraiser event at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan (in-person and livestreamed): A Balm for Our Time: In Search of Healing from Current Crises. The event will include a reception and panel-based discussion with The Rev. Dr. Michael Battle (The General Theological Seminary), Sister Monica Clare (Community of St. John Baptist), The Rev. Anne Marie Witchger (Church of the Heavenly Rest), and The Rev. Matthew Mead (Christ Church, Pelham) as well as two of the current fellows. The event website can be found here and we welcome your support even if you are unable to attend. Father Matt Jacobson is on the NYSJC advisory board and would be happy to answer any questions about this important young adult ministry.

AIDS WALK UPDATE… We've raised an additional $2,080 since last week and are now at $30,605. We’ve also gained two new team members. This is great progress, but we need to keep the momentum going to meet our goal of $40,000. There are five weeks left until the Walk on May 15!

Click here to join our team or to donate. Donations via check, payable to “AIDS Walk New York,” 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 next Drop-by Day will take place on Friday, April 22. 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 onset 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 remain popular items year-round. However, if you are cleaning out your winter closets, we will gladly accept your unwanted coats, clothes and shoes to keep in reserve for next winter.

ABOUT THE MUSIC . . . 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 is that to which the Palm Sunday processional hymn “All glory laud and honor” is most often sung. The hymn is 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 on Valet will ich dir geben (“Farewell, 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 this morning, is an exuberant fantasia in 24/16 meter with the melody in long notes in the bass register.

The Palm Sunday liturgy begins with music expressing the festivity and excitement of the occasion. The antiphon Hosanna to the Son of David traditionally introduces the liturgy. This antiphon has received many splendid choral settings over the centuries. On Sunday morning, as the ministers enter, it will be sung to a setting by Orlando Gibbons. Gibbons (1583–1625) was baptized on Christmas Day 1583 in Oxford, where his father, William Gibbons, was employed as a town musician. He was a chorister at King’s College, Cambridge, between 1596 and 1598, while his elder brother, Edward (1568–1650), was master of the choristers. King James I appointed Orlando Gibbons a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he served as an organist for the last ten years of his life. He was active as a court musician and served as organist at Westminster Abbey. In his relatively short life, Gibbons composed generously for keyboard, for viols, and for voices in both sacred and secular realms. His setting of Hosanna to the Son of David effectively expresses the boisterous festivity of the crowd gathered to hail Jesus’ entrance into the city. As palms are distributed through the church, another traditional antiphon is interspersed with the singing of verses from Psalm 24. Then follows the procession during which the hymns All Glory laud and honor and Ride on! ride on in majesty are sung. The first of these hymns dates from the tenth century and comes to us in a classic translation by John Mason Neale (1818–1866). The musical setting of this translated medieval text is a standard seventeenth-century German chorale. The second processional hymn is of nineteenth-century origin. It is paired with music by the Canadian composer Graham George (1912–1993), first published in The Hymnal 1940, which brilliantly illuminates the words. This second processional hymn’s final stanza properly foreshadows the change in tone as the liturgy shifts away from shouts of exultation and angles toward the singing of the Passion and reflection on the death of Jesus.

The settings of the Mass—Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei—are from Missa in die Tribulationis by McNeil Robinson (1943–2015). Robinson was an internationally celebrated organist, composer, improvisateur, and teacher. He headed the organ department at the Manhattan School of Music for many years and also served several religious institutions. In 1965 while still a student at The Juilliard School he began long and well-remembered associations both with the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin and with Park Avenue Synagogue. While he remained organist at Park Avenue Synagogue until retiring in 2012, he left Saint Mary’s in 1982 and subsequently served at Park Avenue Christian Church and at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church until failing health necessitated his retirement. Robinson’s remarkable reputation as organist, improviser, and composer became established during his years at Saint Mary’s. He composed Missa in die Tribulationis in 1980 for use on Palm Sunday at Saint Mary’s. Robinson skillfully used chromaticism, dissonance, and contrasts in textures, dynamics, and rhythmic elements in crafting a modern setting tailored for the singular complexity of Palm Sunday and its liturgy.

The motet sung during the administration of Communion on Sunday is Tenebrae factae sunt by David Hurd, organist and music director at Saint Mary’s. The text of this motet, originally occurring as the fifth responsory of the Tenebrae of Good Friday, is a somber depiction of Jesus’ last moments on the cross. It is therefore a suitable reflection at the Palm Sunday liturgy after the Passion has been heard. The present musical setting of this Latin responsory, in English translation, was composed and first sung in 1989 at All Saints Church, Manhattan, while Dr. Hurd served there as director of music. Its choral textures range from unison to complex six-voice harmony, and its sound palette expressively highlight the consonant sounds of certain words.

ADULT EDUCATION . . . This coming Sunday, April 10, Father Peter Powell will conclude his series on the Holiness Code, Leviticus 17–27. The class will meet in the Arch Room on the second floor of the Mission House. Access is via 133 West Forty-sixth Street or the sextons’ lodge at the east end of the narthex, or vestibule, of the main entrance to the church . . . Coming Up after the Easter Break . . . On Sundays, May 1 and May 8, Father Warren Platt will give presentations on the early history of Saint Mary’s. Father Platt writes, “My two lectures will focus on the development of the ritualist movement in the Episcopal Church, with particular attention to the Diocese of New York and those parishes within it which were exponents of high churchmanship. There will be a discussion of Bishop John Henry Hobart and Hobartian high churchmanship in the Diocese of New York.” This is a timely and appropriate topic for this interim period, during which the parish will consider Saint Mary’s past, present, and future. All are invited and encouraged to attend.

LOOKING AHEAD . . . Easter Week, Monday–Saturday, April 18–23 . . . April 24, The Second Sunday of Easter . . . Thursday, May 26, Ascension Day . . . Tuesday, May 31, The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary . . . Sunday, June 5, Whitsunday: The Day of Pentecost . . . Sunday, May 12, Trinity Sunday . . . Sunday, June 19, The Body and Blood of Christ: Corpus Christi. 

This edition of the Angelus was written and edited by Father Jay Smith and Father Sammy Wood. 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.