FROM FATHER SAMMY WOOD: OUR IDENTITY IN CHRIST

This is the fifth in an ongoing series of Angelus articles exploring our vision here at Saint Mary’s and tracing out its implications for our life together. 

Saint Mary's is a vibrant Anglo-Catholic witness in the heart of New York City. 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.

Today we come to the phrase “with our identity in Christ,” an element critical to who we are at Saint Mary’s, but apt to get lost among parts of our vision that may sound more exciting—we’re vibrant, we have a preference for the poor, we’re a witness in the heart of New York City. For our identity to be “in Christ” seems like a given, doesn’t it? I mean, isn’t that just what all Christians are about? Let’s think it through. 

Identity is in the air. It’s at the forefront of cultural discourse, and it has been for a while. Almost a decade ago, Wesley Morris wrote a piece for the New York Times calling 2015 “The Year We Obsessed Over Identity.” Thanks to personal technologies like video games and social media, the ubiquitous makeover shows on reality TV, the “great cultural identity migration [in which] gender roles are merging, races are being shed . . . in 2015 we’ve been made to see how trans and bi and poly-ambi-omni- we are.” Morris opines:

Our reinventions feel gleeful and liberating—and tied to an essentially American optimism. After centuries of women living alongside men, and of the races living adjacent to one another, even if only notionally, our rigidly enforced gender and racial lines are finally breaking down. There’s a sense of fluidity and permissiveness and a smashing of binaries. We’re all becoming one another.

But it wasn’t just a curve upward to utopia. In 2016, tension over race and identity approached a boiling point, complicating the discussion. What do we really share in common? Is what unites us more than what divides us? That year, in a piece in the Atlantic, Candice Norwood said “More than three-fourths of Americans feel the country is ‘greatly divided’ on crucial issues.” After a global pandemic and widespread unrest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, our divisions only increased. 

Clearly, there is hardly a more central issue in modern western culture than identity—gender identity, racial identity, national identity, personal identity, political identity. But identity is a complicated thing. On a recent episode of WHYY’s weekly health and science show The Pulse titled “Discovering Your True Identity,” host Maiken Scott said identity is a mixture of nurture and nature, ethnicity, gender, culture, conscious decisions, coincidences, and more: “Who we think we are is often a picture we’ve constructed based on the stories we’ve been told about our origin, our families, how we came to be.”

At Saint Mary’s, stories inform our identity, as well—from the narratives of Sacred Scripture read every day in the Daily Office, to the story of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection enacted at every Eucharist, to the origin story of human dignity grounded in the imago Dei recited at every Baptism. To find “identity in Christ” means our primary identity is not solely based on gender, social status, ethnicity, or anything except our adoption into the family of God in Christ. Other identities are not illusory, we affirm them. Christian community is Trinitarian, beautiful precisely because it is unity amidst stunning diversity. But other identities are “de-centered” because, as Saint Paul said, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3.28) In Christ you are loved, in Christ you are chosen, in Christ you are forgiven, in Christ you are adopted into one family.

The implications of this fact are myriad, but consider just three:

First, if we find our identity in Christ, we can rest. We don’t have to create an identity for ourselves out of whole cloth or constantly dive within to discover the identity hidden inside ourselves. With modernity comes “the command to be an individual, to craft one’s individuality . . . to dare to make oneself,” and we have only ourselves to blame if we fail at the task. Building an identity on anything—money, sex, status, achievement, relationships, reputation, self-sufficiency—building an identity on anything except Christ can be exhausting. Thankfully, as Francesca Murphy wrote in Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal:

The self is sacred because it is given and not made, discovered and not constructed. We do have a secret, interior gifted identity, but the discovery and protection of that secret personal identity is a lifelong quest. So, our lives are in a sense the search for our true name, that is, the name which really corresponds. We need to be named . . . to hear our real name on the lips of another who sees us for what we are. 

In our baptisms we are welcomed into God’s family, named as beloved children of God, sealed as Christ’s own forever, and given an identity it is not up to us to create or sustain.

Second, finding our identity in Christ gives us solidarity with all others whose identities are in Christ. We find our family. “Who am I?” is closely related to “Who are my people?” And if you belong to Jesus, you belong to his people, the Church. We have community with all the people of God, regardless of politics, class, race, or gender, and that should mean anyone who names the name of Christ can call Saint Mary’s home. An identity based on being God’s beloved child frees us to accept that others may be different from us, yet they’re equally important to God.

And if we really are family, reunions are key. Hebrews 10 exhorts: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” We need each other for encouragement, to spur us toward holiness, to rejoice and mourn together, to bear each other’s burdens. As Russian theologian Alexei Khomiakov says: “If anyone falls, he falls alone. But no one is saved alone.”

Finally, third, when we do find our identity in Christ, we are set on a path. We discover a trajectory laid out before us we can live into. Our gracious and gentle God will not force an identity on us, but God will create the conditions that make our habitation of our identity possible if we’ll simply cooperate. In his delightful little book, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, Henri Nouwen writes:

If it is true that we not only are the Beloved, but also have to become the Beloved; if it is true that we not only are children of God, but also have to become children of God; if it is true that we not only are brothers and sisters, but also have to become brothers and sisters . . . [then] becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do. It entails a long and painful process of appropriation or, better, incarnation. As long as “being the Beloved” is little more than a beautiful thought or a lofty idea that hangs above my life to keep me from becoming depressed, nothing really changes. What is required is to become the Beloved in the commonplaces of my daily existence and, bit by bit, to close the gap that exists between what I know myself to be and the countless specific realities of everyday life . . . pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about, and doing from hour to hour.

We cooperate with grace in that process of incarnation by saying our prayers, reading our stories, making our communions, loving our neighbors, and adding our yes to God alongside our Lady’s. 

This week, think about your identity. Reflect on the fact that you are an adopted child of God (John 1.12–13); that God has given you a new name (Rev. 3–12); and that as Jesus heard the Father’s voice at his baptism pronounce “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you,” (Matt. 3.16–17), we hear that same pronouncement at our own baptisms and every day of the rest of our lives. 

Thanks for continuing to read these monthly pieces. Let me know if I can buy you a cup of coffee and hear your own hopes and dreams about the work and witness of Saint Mary’s and this vision for our common life. — SW

PRAYING FOR THE CHURCH & FOR THE WORLD

A Prayer to Mary, Queen of Peace
We ask you, Queen of Peace, to help us respond with the power of truth and love to the new and unsettling challenges of the present moment. Help us also to pass through this difficult period, that disturbs the serenity of so many people, and to work without delay to build every day and everywhere a genuine culture of peace. — Pope John Paul II (2001)

We pray for an end to war and violence, remembering especially the people of Gaza, Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine, Russia, Iran, the Red Sea, Myanmar, and Yemen. We pray for justice and for an end to violence and division in our neighborhood, city, and nation.

We pray for the people and clergy of our sister parish, All Saints Margaret Street, London, and of the parishes of the Midtown Clericus.

We pray for those preparing for baptism on the Day of Pentecost.

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 migrants and those seeking asylum, 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 and around Times Square, for the theater community, for those living with drought, storm, punishing heat, flood, fire, or earthquake; and for those in any need or trouble.

We pray for those who have asked us for our prayers, especially Jennifer, Susanna, Marianne, Tony, Kevin, Christine, Donald, Claudia, Richard, Josh, James, Carl, Nettie, Chrissy, Jan, Mark, Linda, Pat, Marjorie, Carole, Luis, Liduvina, David, Clark, Willard, Virginia, Rolf, Sharon, Quincy, June, José, Manuel, Robert, Randy, Carlos, Christopher, Abe, Hardy, Giovanna, Gypsy, Margaret, Rita, and Bob; James, Jack, Barbara Jean and Eleanor-Francis, religious; Ignacio and Lind, deacons; and Pete, Robby and Stephen, priests.

We pray for the repose of the souls of Sam Harrison, and those whose year’s mind falls on May 19: Percival Courtenay Colley (1881); Henry Sundermeyer (1886); Harry Murrell, Jr. (1910); Joseph John Gordon (1936). 

PLEASE JOIN US ON

THE DAY OF PENTECOST
Sunday, May 19
Said Mass 9:00 AM (Rite One)
Adult Formation 9:45 AM
Procession, Solemn Mass,
& Holy Baptism 11:00 AM
The Reverend Landon Moore, Preacher
Evening Prayer 5:00 PM
The Great Fifty Days, also known as Eastertide
comes to an end as Evening Prayer ends on the Day of Pentecost.

TRINITY SUNDAY
Sunday, May 26
Said Mass 9:00 AM (Rite One)
Solemn Mass & Te Deum 11:00 AM
The Reverend Sammy Wood, Preacher
Evening Prayer 5:00 PM

THE BODY AND BLOOD OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST:
CORPUS CHRISTI
Sunday, June 2
Said Mass 9:00 AM (Rite One)
Solemn Mass, Procession to Times Square,
& Eucharistic Benediction 11:00 AM
Preacher TBA
Evening Prayer 5:00 PM

NEIGHBORS IN NEED

The May distribution of clothing and toiletries took place today, Friday, May 17, 1:00 to 3:00 PM. The June distribution will take place on Friday, June 21. If you would like to volunteer, please speak to Father Jay Smith or to MaryJane Boland. We have an urgent need: sneakers, athletic shoes, track shoes, trainers, lightly used or new, in all sizes for men and women. Please look in your closets or speak to your friends about what they might have in the bottom of their closets. We need your help. We are grateful to all those who continue to support this ministry so faithfully.

AIDS WALK NEW YORK UPDATE

Another strong week of fundraising has brought us very close to our goal of $50,000! We raised an additional $3,570 this week, which brings us to $48,816. We are currently ranked second among all teams. The Walk is this Sunday, but we can continue to raise money into June. Please consider helping us reach our goal. Thank you to all who have supported us so far!

To join the team, to support us with a donation, or to follow our progress, please visit our team page. If you have any questions, please speak with one of the team captains: MaryJane Boland, Clark Mitchell, and Father Matt Jacobson. We are grateful to all those who continue to support this ministry.

CONCERTS AT SAINT MARY’S

On Saturday, May 18, 2024, at 8:00 PM, The New York Repertory Orchestra plays its final concert of the 2023–2024 season. Program: Johannes Brahms: Academic Festival Overture; Hector Berlioz: La mort de Cléopâtre (Sarah Nelson Craft, mezzo-soprano); Howard Hanson: Symphony No. 4 (Requiem). Admission is free. A donation of $15.00 (or more) is gratefully accepted.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AT SAINT MARY’S

The Sunday Morning Adult Formation Class . . . The last set of classes in the Conversion & Transformation concludes this coming Sunday with the  last of our three meetings. Father Jay Smith is leading this final series, which is entitled Living in Hope: Following Jesus in the Second Half of Life. We’ll consider the work and thought of those who have written about regret, forgiveness, managing retirement, the “missed life,” the spirituality of aging, and living, thriving, and being transformed after fifty (or thereabouts). We will consider how one might experience the presence of God when one has become—sometimes unawares, sometimes unhappily, sometimes with expectation—an elder. This is a class for one and all, and we will benefit from the presence of both the young and those who have entered into this “second half of life.”

If you attended any of the Sunday morning formation classes throughout the 2023-2024 program year and haven’t yet filled out an evaluation, please download a copy here and return your evaluation to Father Jay Smith. This feedback is important for us as we plan the 2024-2025 program.

NEWS & NOTICES

Coming Up: A Celebration of Juneteenth . . . This year the Juneteenth celebration will take place on Wednesday, June 19. Please join us on Sunday, June 16, in Saint Joseph’s Hall, after Mass and a bit of Coffee Hour, as we recognize parishioner Angeline Butler for her life’s work as a performer and Civil Rights activist. She will share her motivations and experiences since her college activism in 1960. Angeline helped organize the 1963 March on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and has taken part in many demonstrations and presentations promoting racial justice since that time. Angeline studied at The Juilliard School, and after that time performed widely as an actress and singer and has taught at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for many years. You can read more about Angeline’s life and work on the John Jay website.

We give thanks for Angeline’s faithfulness and hard work, her self-sacrifice, and for her talent and her humor. Come meet and hear this extraordinary woman on June 16 as we mark Juneteenth, this important event in the life of our nation.
— The Anti-Racism Discussion Group

Pride Month at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine . . . Iconic Pride returns for June 2024, with a new theme! The theme of this year’s events is Pathways of Pride inspired by the textile installation Divine Pathways by Anne Patterson on display in the cathedral nave through June 2024. Upcoming events at the Cathedral during the month of June include a discussion with Dr. Charlie Bell and Dean Patrick Malloy of Dr. Bell’s book Queer Redemption; a Pride Eve kick off celebration featuring a special performance and the turning on of the iconic Pride Lights inside the Cathedral; a book talk with Chloe Davis on her new young readers’ edition of The Queens’ English, hosted in partnership with The Cathedral School of Saint John the Divine; Pride Family Picnic, including a Drag Story Hour at The Cathedral School and a performance by The Queer Big Apple Corps Marching Band; and a Pride Evensong featuring a community choir open to all. Visit the cathedral website for updates and more information.

More on Pride Month . . . The New York City Pride March will take place on Sunday, June 30. Stay tuned for updates on how Saint Marians can march with other Episcopalians and show their pride. There will be a Pride Evensong at the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields on Sunday, June 23, at 4:00 PM, 487 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

Father Matt Jacobson will be away from the parish from Thursday, May 23, to Saturday, May 25. He will be attending the Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society in Chicago.

ABOUT THE MUSIC AT THE SOLEMN MASS ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST, MAY 19, 2024

Composers of organ music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced a wealth of pieces based upon the melodies of the well-known hymns of their time. Some of these were plainsong melodies or chorales based upon plainsong. Others were tunes of the time or adaptations of contemporary popular songs, but they all took on a life of their own when sung with sacred texts in worship. Even instrumental settings of these melodies conjured the devotional intent of these sacred songs, and such pieces were used as introductions to actual singing, or as substitutions for sung stanzas. Today, the melodies of some of these chorales are not as widely recognized as they were in times past, but many organ pieces based upon them continue to have great expressive power. Johann Sebastian Bach’s setting of the chorale Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott (“Come, Holy Ghost, Lord God”), Sunday’s prelude, is one of Bach’s Great Eighteen Leipzig settings. It delivers the rushing wind and burning flame of Pentecost in a brilliant and energetic torrent of counterpoint which dances and cavorts above the chorale melody which is stated on the pedals in long notes. Whether or not one recognizes the melody, the excitement of Pentecost can be felt in this music. The postlude on Sunday is Finale, the second movement of Arioso and Finale, composed in 1992 by David Hurd, organist and music director at Saint. Mary’s. Arioso and Finale was commissioned by the Queens Chapter of the American Guild of Organists in celebration of its thirty-fifth anniversary and in honor of Lily Andújar Rogers, F.A.G.O. (1915–2005), one of its two co-founders. The two themes, presented placidly in the Arioso movement, are reprised in a more dramatic form in the Finale movement. Finale begins with full organ sound in the spirit of a fanfare and continues with energetic passages in octaves played by the hands in dialogue with pedal commentary. Eventually, the opening fanfare theme returns, and the movement resolves in a bright E-Major sonority. While not explicitly intended as such, this movement may be heard as a musical representation of the powerful rushing wind and burning flame on the Day of Pentecost. 

The Mass setting on Sunday, the Day of Pentecost, is Mass of Light and Smoke by Daniel Santiago Castellanos (b. 1995) which was composed last year and received its premiere here at Saint Mary’s on the Day of Pentecost 2023. Daniel is a composer, vocalist, and pianist. His piece for mezzo-soprano and piano, Death is nothing at all, won first prize at the 2019 New York City songSLAM competition. Ensembles that have performed his music include the Semiosis Quartet, JACK Quartet, The Orchestra Now (TŌN), Da Capo Ensemble, and The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys. He received two bachelor’s degrees from the Bard College Conservatory of Music and received a master’s degree in music composition from the Mannes School of Music in May 2023. Daniel was a member of the Choir of Saint Mary’s from 2018 until 2023. He writes,

I composed Mass of Light and Smoke (previously titled Missa Brevis) for the Choir of Saint Mary the Virgin in 2023. The title of this Mass alludes to the copious incense used at Saint Mary’s, and the way in which it spins in the dim, refracted light of the church. The piece itself also draws inspiration from various Renaissance and plainsong cadences often sung in the church. The Gloria begins with a decorated plainsong chant sung by the lower voices, followed by lively punctuated syllabic rhythms from the choir. The Sanctus maintains this energetic rhythm, while the Benedictus slows down to a more reverent pace and showcases one of my favorite cadences from the Renaissance era, known as a ‘false relation.’ In this cadence, two leading tones compete with each other to reach the tonic, the home key of the piece. The Agnus Dei features a solo that floats in the liminal space between the tenor and countertenor voices. I wanted to create a personal piece for myself to sing, aiming to imbue the final movement of the Mass with a sense of vulnerability and spiritual intimacy. This choice also acknowledges my experience of singing both tenor and countertenor during my time singing with the choir of Saint Mary the Virgin.

The motet during Communion at the Solemn Mass on Sunday is Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest by Alec Wyton (1921–2007). The text is a translation of the ninth-century Latin hymn Veni Creator Spiritus that existed in English translations from early on and was included in the Ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer in 1550. This hymn, richly translated and paraphrased over the centuries, retains its place in ordination rites to this day and is one of the very few hymns designated for specific liturgical use by the present Book of Common Prayer (1979). The translation used for Sunday’s motet is based on one by Edward Caswall dated 1849. This translation was one of the three Veni Creators in the Hymnal 1940. Wyton’s setting, dated 1959, was composed for the Texas Diocesan Choral Festival and is dedicated to William Barnard. Its theme is a plainsong-like melody which is stated in unison in the first of five stanzas. In the following four stanzas, this melody is harmonized by the three additional voices, occurring successively in the bass, tenor, alto, and soprano parts. Alec Wyton was a major force in late twentieth-century Episcopal Church music. Born in England, he was organist at Saint Matthew’s Church, Northampton, before coming to Dallas, Texas, in 1950 to form a boys’ choir at what is now the Saint Mark’s School. After serving four years at Christ Church Cathedral, Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1954 he began his tenure as organist and choirmaster at New York’s Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. He also served as adjunct professor of sacred music at Union Theological Seminary. In the 1960s, he served for five years as national president of the American Guild of Organists. Notably, he also served as Coordinator of the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Church Music throughout the years-long process which produced The Hymnal 1982. Ever a champion of new music, he was active as a composer and in the commissioning of composers who had not previously written sacred music. — David Hurd

PINKSTER CELEBRATION

Pinkster is a religious holiday associated with the change of season to spring. Today, Pinkster is recognized as the oldest African-American holiday of the United States, celebrated since the colonial period. The African influence on Pinkster dates from the fifteenth century in the Bantu regions of Congo and Angola. The word “Pinkster,” is derived from the word “Pentecost,” and the celebration is intimately related to that Christian solemnity, which concludes the Great Fifty Days of Easter. This year the Day of Pentecost is Sunday, May 19.

There will be a Pinkster Celebration on Saturday, May 18, 12:00–1:00 PM, at the African Burial Ground National Monument, 290 Broadway. The celebration will feature the pouring of libations, lectures, songs, performances, the reading of proclamations, and the laying of flowers on the burial mounds. All are invited. For more information, click here and visit www.nps.gov/afbg.

DIALOGUES ON DIVINITY – A LOVE THAT IS HOLY AND TRUE: INTERRELIGIOUS DISCOVERY

Monday, May 20, 6:30 PM, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

As faithful witnesses to the word of God in the Torah, the Qur'an and the Gospel, members of different religions share a desire to live a life of love and justice, worthy of God’s promises. Join local scholars of Judaism, Islam and Christianity as they engage in dialogue on the pursuit of what is holy and true. The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, Dean of the Cathedral, will lead a discussion with Dr. Burton Visotzky (Jewish Theological Seminary), Dr. Celia Deutsch (Barnard College), and Dr. Hussein Rashid (Harvard Divinity School). Click here for tickets and more information.

Dialogues on Divinity is a series presented by the Community at the Crossing, an ecumenical intentional community for young adults, in residence at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.

  We need your help to keep holding our services. Click below, where you can make one-time or recurring donations to support Saint Mary’s. We are very grateful to all those who make such donations and continue to support Saint Mary’s so generously.

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.