FROM FATHER JAY SMITH: SINGING THE LORD’S SONG IN HARD TIMES

Derek Olsen’s retreat last Saturday got me thinking about prayer, worship, and holiness this past week. It may sound pretentious to talk about holiness that way, I know. But I think Derek’s point is that talking about holiness and worship is not pretentious at all. It’s like talking about breathing or drinking water. It’s something fundamental. It just means trying to pay attention to what’s most important in the world.

Oddly, or providentially, while I was thinking about all that this week, I happened to find in an old folder a copy of an article that appeared in the newsletter of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education back in early 1991. The article is entitled “A Common Grief.” It was written by the Reverend Canon Denise G. Haines of the Diocese of Newark, who, among many other things back then, trained hospital chaplains in Jersey City and in Manhattan. Mother Haines died in 2012 at the age of seventy-three.

Her 1991 article is a reflection on the life and death of Francis Timothy Dlugos. Tim was a gay man, a poet, a postulant for holy orders in the Episcopal Church, and a member of Saint Mary’s. Tim died of AIDS-related illnesses on December 3, 1990. He was forty years old. His funeral took place here at the parish three days after his death, and his ashes were later interred at the Cathedral. The first time I ever walked into Saint Mary’s was to attend Tim’s funeral.

I got to know Tim a bit back then, in 1989 and 1990. I was finishing my STM at Yale’s Divinity School and beginning coursework in the Department of Religious Studies. I was ordained deacon in June 1989. A good friend, George Whitmore, and my younger brother, Stephen, were dealing with increasingly serious symptoms of illnesses like Kaposi’s Sarcoma caused by HIV, just like Tim was. Chasing the holy, looking for hope, and worshiping in tranquility weren’t easy things to do during that time and all of that had a kind of hard, gritty, too-real quality to it. I had to do so many different sorts of things and what I felt most was that I wasn’t doing and could never do enough of the things I needed to do. I found it hard to concentrate and hard to pray. I wasn’t alone in this, of course. It was a strange time: this pretending that things were normal, doing normal things like beginning a career, when the world was decidedly not normal gave life a disjointed, distracted, jagged quality.

I met Tim during that time. I walked into the Divinity School library one evening, feeling tired, and this man came up to me and introduced himself. He was from New York and the Diocese of New York. He knew that I was working at New Haven’s Anglo-Catholic parish, and he was from Saint Mary’s. He thought we should get to know each other. In Mother Haines’s remembrance of Tim she writes, “[He] had insisted that the dying must never relinquish hope.” And that was Tim. That was the Tim I met that night, intense, friendly, interested, hopeful, living, not dying. Tim believed he was called to ordained ministry and so he did what seminarians and postulants do, even though he was ill, and he knew it. He went to divinity school, and he spent the summer doing CPE, training to be a chaplain, walking into strangers’ hospital rooms, talking to sick people, being hopeful for people who were scared and anxious. Mother Haines writes

In his group of six summer CPE students, Tim never let himself become the “group patient.” Though he was on chemotherapy for Kaposi’s Sarcoma all summer and developed his third bout of PCP (pneumocystis pneumonia) in August, he completed the unit through sheer grit. In the process, just by being himself, he changed the attitudes toward homosexuality of two [members] of his group—Manuel, a Hispanic Pentecostal and Peter, an evangelical member of Tim’s own denomination.

Now, one of the interesting things about Denise Haines’s essay is that you think it’s going to be a eulogy and that’s it. But it isn’t. It is that, but it’s more than that, because the climax of the essay is her impression of Tim’s funeral. She writes

The funeral at “Smoky Mary’s” lived up to expectations. The majority of the 250-member congregation had done this so many times before. Their loss of friends, lovers, those who had become surrogate family when they were abandoned by their blood families is numbing. Perhaps it is the controlled emotion of the predictable liturgy that explains why so many of these funerals are held at this particular church where the liturgy is so sensuously and voluptuously beautiful. Chanting, incense, prayers, Communion, the Committal, and then Tim’s body was lifted and carried on the shoulders of his friends (no cart on wheels from the funeral director here) to the ethereal notes of . . . “In Paradisum” . . . Afterward, my companions [including Peter and Manuel] said that they had never been so moved by a worship service as this one . . . On the way home, we talked about sex and death, life and love. To the end, Tim connected us to the things that matter most.

Eulogies are good things (though not always at funerals). We need to remember and honor the dead. Eulogies help us to grieve. They help us to remember that death may be the last enemy, but a life is about more than just dying. Eulogies help us not to take a life—and life—for granted. But eulogies tend to look backwards. What Mother Haines and Tim’s fellow student experienced at Tim’s funeral was something they knew but perhaps were afraid to say: the burial rites included the facts of Tim’s life with its joys and creativity as well as its pain and tragedy, but those rites didn’t stay there. They were celebrated in the presence of the Risen Lord and were designed to open up a door to the way in which Jesus leads us in this present life to a closer life with God, to future, to life eternal.

In her essay, Mother Haines mentions the end of the funeral, when Tim’s friends lifted his coffin, lifted his body, onto their shoulders. This is a moment that amazed me and I’ve never forgotten it. The crossing was filled with incense smoke. Father Wells had just sprinkled the coffin with holy water and walked around the coffin, blessing it with incense. As the coffin was raised, the smoke was pulled up, and it ascended powerfully, becoming a kind of column, a cloud, and I thought, “Resurrection.” And that’s what liturgy, at its best, manages to do. It takes the gritty, hard, jagged, uncertain, funny, joyful, sensual, sacramental, incarnate, human things in life and offers them up for an hour or two, insisting that all of it is holy because God is here, God is present, God is creating, redeeming, healing, forgiving, rejoicing, blessing, holding, and hoping. Worship is not something extra. It’s like breathing or drinking water. It gives life. It reminds us that we are human. It reminds us who we really are and who we are meant to be. — JRS

PRAYING FOR THE CHURCH & FOR THE WORLD

We pray for peace in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Mali, Iran, Pakistan, the Red Sea, and Myanmar. We pray for an end to violence and division in our neighborhood, city, and nation.

We pray for the sick, for those in any need or trouble, and for all those who have asked us for our prayers. We pray for those celebrating birthdays and anniversaries this week; for those who are traveling; for the unemployed and for those seeking work; for the incarcerated and for those recently released from prison; for all victims of violence, assault, and crime; for all refugees and migrants, especially those sheltering in our neighborhood; for those struggling with depression, anxiety, or addiction; for those whom we serve in our outreach programs, for our neighbors in the Times Square neighborhood, for the theater community, and for those living with drought, storm, punishing heat, flood, fire, or earthquake.

We pray for those for whom prayers have been asked Jorge, Elizabeth, Cindy, Gina, Bill, Brian, Justine, Tom, Charles, Avdi, Glen, Freia, Larry, Violet, Barbara, Robert, Frank, Eleanor, Eugene, Quincy, Claudia, June, Joyce, Bruce, Robert, Christopher, Carlos, José, Susan, Carmen, Brian, Antony, Manuel, Abe, Bob, Gypsy, Hardy, Margaret, and John Derek; Lind, deacon; Rob, James, Robby, Allan, Stephen, priests; and Matthew and Michael, bishops.

We pray for the repose of the souls of Silvio Trujillo, Ann Howard DeLoach, and those whose year’s mind is on Sunday, January 28— George Hand (1874); John Siddons (1898); Elizabeth Reamer (1917); Charles Post (1948); Grace Mary Maier (1966); Wan Tang Jou (1987).

IN THIS TRANSITORY LIFE . . . Silvio Trujillo, the father of sexton, Jorge Trujillo, died this week in Medellin, Colombia, after a long illness. Jorge has flown home to be with his family during this difficult time. Please keep him and his family in your prayers and please pray for Jorge’s safe return . . . We received news this week that Ann Howard DeLoach, the mother of parishioner Elizabeth Nisbet, and the grandmother of Joanna Reynolds, has died. Please keep Ann, Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s husband, Dale Reynolds, their daughter, Joanna, their family and friends, and all who mourn in your prayers. May the soul of Silvio Trujillo, Ann Howard DeLoach, and the souls of all the departed rest in peace and rise in glory.

COMING UP AT THE CATHEDRAL

You are invited to the installation of the
XVII Bishop of New York,
The Right Reverend Matthew Heyd
Saturday, February 10, 2024, 11:00 AM
The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine

The service will celebrate the life of the Diocese of New York and the church's mission to heal the world. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend. A reception will follow the service. You can indicate that you plan to attend by clicking here.

Congregations will not be processing at this service. Instead outreach partners, including sites assisted by Episcopal Charities and others will process. The service will not be a Eucharist. The service will include with festive music, scripture, prayer, and a homily by the Reverend Winnie Varghese. All are welcome and are encouraged to attend.

COMING UP AT SAINT MARY’S

The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple
Friday, February 2
Organ Recital 5:30 PM, Solemn Mass 6:00 PM
A reception in Saint Joseph’s Hall follows the Solemn Mass.

Ash Wednesday
February 14, 2024
Mass 8:00 AM, Sung Mass 12:10 PM, Solemn Mass 6:00 PM
Ashes will also be imposed in the Mercy Chapel according to the following schedule:
8:30-9:30 AM, 12:45-1:30 PM, 5:00-5:45 PM, and 7:15-8:00 PM

LIFE AT SAINT MARY’S

Our regular daily liturgical schedule: Monday through Friday, Morning Prayer 8:00 AM, Mass 12:10 PM, and Evening Prayer at 5:30 PM. On Wednesdays, Holy Hour is also offered at 11:00 AM and an additional Mass is said at 6:00 PM. Thursday’s Mass includes anointing and prayers for healing. On Saturdays, Confessions are heard at 11:00 AM, Mass is celebrated at 12:10 PM, and Evening Prayer is prayed at 5:00 PM. On the third Saturday of each month, a Requiem Mass is normally celebrated at 12:10 PM in the Mercy Chapel. On Sundays, a Low Mass (Rite One) is celebrated in the Lady Chapel at 9:00 AM. Solemn Mass is offered at 11:00 AM and Evening Prayer at 5:00 PM. Evensong and Benediction (E&B) is normally offered on the first Sunday of every month and will next be offered on February 4 and March 3.

Saturday Confessions at 11:00 AM . . . The priest-on-duty can be found in one of the confessionals at the back of the church, near the 46th Street entrance, at 11:00 AM on Saturdays to hear confessions. Once nobody is left waiting, if it is after 11:15 AM, the priest will return to his office. If you arrive later, the sexton will be able to call him if it is not too close to the midday Mass.

Sunday, January 28, The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Friar, 1274), Mass (Rite One) in the Lady Chapel at 9:00 AM, Solemn Mass 11:00 AM, Adult Formation 9:45–10:40, Confirmation Class in Saint Benedict’s Study 9:45–10:40 AM, Evening Prayer 5:00 PM.

NEWS & NOTICES

Livestream issues . . . We were unable to stream last Sunday’s Solemn Mass due to technical issues. We have been working with the providers of the different components of our system as well as with our audio-visual consultant to identify the problem. As we go to press on this issue of the newsletter, it is still unclear whether we will be ready to broadcast this Sunday. We apologize to those who are part of our wider community and join us remotely on Sundays.

The Observance of a Holy Lent . . . As you think about the shape of your Lenten practices this year, we hope that you will consider joining us for a Lenten Quiet Day on Saturday, February 24, from 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM. The day will be led by Sister Monica Clare Powell, CSJB, the superior of the Community of Saint John Baptist in Mendham, New Jersey. Sister Monica Clare is well known to many Saint Marians—she lived and worked here for several years not too long ago. She is an experienced spiritual director and retreat leader and is known for her kindness and compassionate pastoral care. Sister Monica is preparing for ordination to the priesthood in the Diocese of Newark and recently completed her coursework at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. If you would like to attend the Quiet Day, please send an e-mail to Father Jay Smith—this is to keep track of numbers for set up in Saint Joseph’s Chapel and for lunch. We hope you will join us!

Board of Trustees Retreat . . . The parish’s Board of Trustees will be on a retreat at Holy Cross Monastery this Friday and Saturday, January 26-27, led by Mother Margery Kennelly. Please keep the Board in your prayers.

House of Good Deeds . . . This coming Saturday, January 27, we will be welcoming a large group of volunteers from the House of Good Deeds, who will be sorting and bagging clothing donations in Saint Joseph’s Hall in preparation for a clothing distribution in our neighborhood the following day. Since their work overlaps with the work of Neighbors in Need, we are eager to meet them and to learn more about their work and ministry and to explore ways in which we might work with each other.

Adult Formation . . . On Sunday, January 28 Father Jay Smith will continue the series, “Conversion, Transformation & Life in Christ” in the Adult Formation Class on Sunday mornings at 9:45 AM. The class will be discussing the Rule of Saint Benedict and Benedictine spirituality as a resource for developing a “rule of life,” and for living that rule with the help of the grace of God, who is ever merciful and compassionate. On Sunday, February 4, Father Jay will welcome Brother Ephrem Arcement, OHC, to Saint Mary’s. Brother Ephrem will lead the class at 9:45 AM that morning, and he will preach at the Solemn Mass at 11:00 AM. Brother Ephrem entered monastic life in 2010. He was for a time a monk of Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Louisiana. He earned his Ph.D. in spirituality from The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, and has taught courses in Scripture and spirituality at Saint Joseph Seminary College in Saint Benedict, Louisiana. He came to the Order of the Holy Cross, and to the Episcopal Church, several years ago and is now the Guest Brother at the monastery in West Park. He was recently received as a priest of the Episcopal Church by the Bishop of New York. His first book, Intimacy in Prayer: Wisdom from Bernard of Clairvaux, appeared in 2013. A second book, In the School of Prophets: The Formation of Thomas Merton's Prophetic Spirituality, was published in 2015. Then, on Sunday, February 11, Father Jay will lead the class in a summary discussion of this ancient way of life that has done so much to shape Western Christian spirituality, Anglican prayer and worship, and Western European culture.

Celebration Cancelled . . . We had planned to honor and thank Father Victor Conrado at Coffee Hour on Sunday, January 28, for his contributions to our common life. However, Father Victor, who is the Canon for Congregational Vitality and Formation of the Diocese of New York, has been called away and will be working at another parish on Sunday. We hope to find another Sunday when he, his wife, Lucia, and his sons, David and Daniel, can be with us. Father Victor and his family have moved from the fifth-floor apartment in the Mission House to an apartment on the West Side in the Lincoln Center neighborhood. We miss them and hope that they will visit us often.

Looking for a few good, able-bodied volunteers . . . We plan to move boxes containing our archived vestments from the Atrium on the second floor of the Parish House up to the fifth floor of the Mission House on Tuesday, February 6, at 10:00 AM. The work should take about an hour. Please speak to Father Sammy if you are able to help.

Classes at Saint Mary’s: Confirmation Preparation for Young People 13-18 . . . Father Sammy is leading a confirmation class for young people on Sunday mornings. The class will meet on Sunday mornings, January 14 to May 5, except on the Last Sunday after Epiphany (February 11), Palm Sunday (March 24), and Easter Day (March 31). If you are interested in the class, please speak to Father Sammy . . . Brown Bag Bible Study will take place on Wednesday, January 31, at 12:45 PM following the noonday Mass. The plan is to read and discuss Mark 2:23–28, verses in which the issue of sabbath observance inspires discussion and debate . . . Catechumenate: Anglicanism 101 . . . The class continues on Wednesday, January 31, at 6:30 PM, following Evening Prayer at 5:30 PM and the evening Mass at 6:00 PM. If you are an adult and are interested in being confirmed this spring, you are most welcome to join the class as we begin the second semester. No prior preparation is required.

Donating Flowers for Altar and Shrines . . . We are looking for donations for flowers for the following dates: February 11, The Last Sunday after the Epiphany; March 24, Palm Sunday; April 8, The Annunciation (transferred); and many Sundays in Eastertide, In order to make a donation and reserve a date, please contact the parish office. In addition, we always welcome donations to support the ministry of the Flower Guild during Holy Week and at Easter.

Neighbors in Need . . . Our next Drop-by will take place on Friday, February 16, 1:30 to 3:00 PM. Please speak to Father Jay Smith or MaryJane Boland, if you are interested in volunteering. In addition, we have been providing food support to a number of folks in our neighborhood in recent months, including many recent immigrants. We do this through a voucher system. We welcome financial donations so that we may continue this work. You may donate online or with a check—when making the donation please be sure to indicate that your gift is for “Neighbors in Need.”

Father Matt Jacobson has returned to the parish and will be on duty, hearing confessions and saying Mass, on Saturday, January 27. He will be the celebrant at Solemn Mass the following day, the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. Father Matt will also be preaching at the Masses on Ash Wednesday, February 14. Father Jay Smith will be away on retreat, Tuesday, February 6, until Friday, February 9. Father Sammy Wood will be away on retreat, Wednesday, February 21, until Friday, February 23.

ABOUT THE MUSIC AT THE SOLEMN MASS ON THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY:
SUNDAY, JANUARY 28, 11:00 AM

The organ prelude on Sunday morning is a chorale prelude on Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (“Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness”) by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). The chorale itself is found in the “Holy Eucharist” section of The Hymnal 1982 at #339 with a harmonization by Johann Cruger (1598–1662) and will be sung as Sunday’s postcommunion hymn. This Eucharistic hymn by Johann Franck (1618–1677) appeared as a single stanza in Cruger’s Geistliche Kirchen-Melodien, published in Berlin in 1649. It has been sung widely in English translation by Catherine Winkworth (1827–1878) and entered the Episcopal hymnal in 1940 having previously appeared in The English Hymnal, 1906. Bach’s organ setting of the Cruger chorale is an expression of serene spiritual confidence. Found within the “Great Eighteen” Leipzig chorales of Bach’s mature period, this setting features the chorale melody, in an elegantly but simply ornamented form, singing above the bass line and two accompanying voices.

The Ordinary of the Mass on Sunday is Saint Paul’s Service by David Hurd, organist and music director at Saint Mary’s. This setting of the Rite I Ordinary, was originally commissioned in 2000 by Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, New York, in honor of the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the parish. At the request of the commissioning parish, the movements of this Mass setting are unified by melodic and harmonic elements inspired by the music of twentieth-century French impressionist composers. Saint Paul’s Service was originally scored for unison voices and organ, and previously has been offered at Saint Mary’s by solo cantors in the absence of the full choir. On Sunday morning, its Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei will be heard in recently fashioned editions for choir of mixed voices. The choral version of the Gloria is being sung for the first time this coming Sunday.

Sunday’s Communion motet is a setting, also by David Hurd, of Love (III) from George Herbert’s 1633 collection The Temple: Sacred Poems. This musical setting is for unaccompanied mixed voices. It was composed in 1991 for the fortieth anniversary of ordination to the priesthood of the Reverend Charles W. Scott, who was then an associate priest at All Saints Church, Manhattan. The music is reflective of the syllabic and chordal style which Thomas Tallis and other early Anglican composers were encouraged to adopt to enhance clarity and maximize intelligibility. At the same time, the six-voice texture and harmonic vocabulary of this setting give Herbert’s seventeenth-century poem a twentieth-century expression.

J. S. Bach composed nearly a dozen organ settings of Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, the popular German chorale which paraphrases Gloria in excelsis (“All glory be to God on High”). This chorale had been adorned with organ arrangements before Bach’s time and, in our own day one finds its melody paired with translated and paraphrased text in the hymnals of many denominations. The postlude on Sunday is found among Bach’s miscellaneous chorales. In this short piece, Bach separates phrases of the chorale melody, stated in unabashedly vivid harmony, with free fantasia passages sounding very much like they might have been improvised. — DH

A SERIES OF FIVE EDUCATIONAL FORUMS ON FACING CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM

Guest Speakers: Dr. Ellen Charry & Prof. Matthew Glandorf

Visit the diocesan website for more information: https://dioceseny.org/24forums

Session 2, Thursday February 15th, 2024: The Lectionary (register)
Session 3, Thursday March 14, 2024: Sacred Music and Hymnody (register)
Session 4, Thursday March 21, 2024: Preaching: John’s Passion Gospel (register)
Session 5, Thursday April 18, 2024: A Peace Proposal for Jews and Christians (register)

Sponsored by the Episcopal-Jewish Dialogue Committee of the Ecumenical & Interreligious Commission of the Diocese of New York

CONCERTS AT SAINT MARY’S

New York Repertory Orchestra (Saint Mary’s Resident Orchestra)
February 10, 2024

Michael Griffith, guest conductor
Radamés Gnattali: Sinfonia Popular
J.S. Bach/Stokowski: “Little” Fugue in G minor
César Franck: Symphony in D minor

Admission is free. A freewill offering of $15.00 is encouraged.

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Saint Mary’s is a vibrant Anglo-Catholic witness in the heart of NYC. With our identity in Christ and a preference for the poor, we are an inclusive, diverse community called to love God and each other for the life of the world.

This edition of The Angelus was written and edited by Father Jay Smith, except as noted. Father Matt Jacobson also edits the newsletter and is 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.