FROM FATHER SAMMY WOOD: PREFERENCE FOR THE POOR

This is the sixth in an ongoing series of articles unpacking the vision for our common life over the next three years here at Saint Mary’s. By now I hope we’re all familiar with this statement: 

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 have an opportunity to look more closely at our “preference for the poor.”

In February, the New York Times said the number of New Yorkers living below the poverty line is nearly twice the national average. Some 23% of residents in our city cannot afford basic necessities like food and housing—that’s nearly 2 million people, including one in four children. The Bible, both old and new testaments, makes this our very own concern. “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” (Deut. 15.11) And “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind [a]nd you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14.12-14). And church tradition has long recognized the obligation for Christians to practice corporal acts of mercy, including feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners, and burying the dead.

As Christians, and specifically as Anglo-Catholics, we are committed to the poor. Our rich Anglo-Catholic history includes beloved “slum priests” who felt how their high church liturgy went hand-in-hand with labor and sacrifice for Christ’s poor. Indeed, it was “the labor and sacrifice of the slum priests that gave real moral heft to the Oxford Movement and saved it from the insularity of which it has stood accused ever since.” No less a guiding light of the movement than Father E. B. Pusey, said “There is no deeper source of blessing, nor more frequent means of enlarged grace to the soul, than love for Christ’s sake, to His little ones and His poor.” Our liturgy actually trains us to love God for himself and our neighbor for God, beseeching our Heavenly Father “so to assist us with thy grace, that we may . . . do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.” (Rite I, Postcommunion Prayer.) And Saint Mary’s has always placed service to the poor chief among our concerns. Father Taber wrote in a 1957 letter to the parish that when God’s “love begets our love . . . then shall we give to our fellow men, and especially to the poor, gift after gift for in so doing we shall actually be returning love to Christ.”

In adopting our current vision statement, the Board of Trustees pored over each phrase, choosing the language for each with care. The idea of a “preferential option” for the poor is not a new one, and it is not the property of Anglicans alone. It was first used in a letter from the Superior General of the Jesuits to his order in 1968, and it has become ubiquitous in catholic social teaching. Bishops in Latin America seized on the phrase, giving rise to the Liberation Theology movement, which soon spilled over the boundaries of that movement and spread to the broader church. During his papacy, Pope John Paul II expanded the option to include spiritual as well as material poverty, and Pope Benedict XVI (a sometime critic of liberation theology) extended it to all the marginalized — children, widows, the oppressed, people with disabilities. Pope Francis even uses the phrase to argue for climate justice, noting that the burden of ecological degradation falls most heavily on the world’s poor, urging the church, in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, to “hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

Saint Mary’s has been concerned with the lives of the poor among us since our formation as a parish church, and that concern continues today. From our longstanding program providing clothing and necessities to our Neighbors in Need to our Open Doors policy; from our recent shift from paper products to ceramic coffee mugs and plates, to the funds the Board budgets for your clergy to use at their discretion to improve the lives of those who come to us in need; our preference for the poor is obvious, and we hope even to deepen it in the years to come.

One last point. We serve the poor for all the aforementioned reasons, to be sure. But we learn something from them in this life, as well. Most of us at Saint Mary’s are in pretty good shape, materially. But as my friend Pastor Scott Souls writes:

The gospels and real life help us see that material wealth cannot save us and will not solve all of life’s problems. This is why the famous actor, Jim Carrey, said he wishes everyone could be rich and famous and have everything they ever wanted so they can know it’s not the answer. Jesus, who left the riches of glory and became poor by choice, helps us see that the poor are not merely recipients of the world’s charity. Rather, the poor have something unique to offer to the world. The poor demonstrate what it looks like for humans to live from a place of need. For it is only from a place of need that we too can experience a kind of freedom that is “the opposite of heavy.”

At our baptisms, we all vow to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” Faithfulness to this vow prevents us ever being indifferent to the plight of the poor, whether right next door in midtown or anywhere across the globe. As Bishop of Zanzibar Frank Weston famously said in his concluding address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923: “You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.” At Saint Mary’s, let us do both with abandon.

Thanks for reading these monthly pieces, and I continue to be interested to hear your thoughts. How are we faring in this aspect of our mission, and what are your ideas for how we can more and more side with the poor? Let me know if I can buy you a coffee and hear your own hopes and dreams about the future of Saint Mary’s and this vision for our common life. — SW

PRAYING FOR THE CHURCH & FOR THE WORLD

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

We pray for the delegates to the 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which meets in Louisville, Kentucky, June 23–28, and we pray for the candidates for Presiding Bishop.

We pray for those who have asked us for our prayers, especially Louis, Eleni, Frank, Susanna, Rolf, George, Richard, Joyce, Leroy, Kunitaka, Sahoko, Christine, Donald, Richard, Josh, Elvira, Carmen, Maddie, Keimah, William, John, Robert, Rick, Thomas, Hattie, Marianne, Tony, James, Dorian, Carl, Nettie, Chrissy, Jan, Mark, Andrew, Pat, Marjorie, Carole, Luis, Sharon, Quincy, June, José, Manuel, Sherman, Lorilee, Chandler, Robert, Randy, Carlos, Chris, Abe, Suzanne, Hardy, Giovanna, Gypsy, John Derek, Liduvina, Margaret, Rita; James Phillips, Jack Crowley, James Koester, and Curtis Almquist, religious; Ignacio and Lind, deacons; and Robby and Stephen, priests.

We pray for the repose of the souls of those whose year’s mind falls on June 23: Walter Doyle (1891); Henry Charles Roscoe Ross (1914); Graham Wallace (1935); Thomas J. Frans (1935).

Of your charity, please pray for the repose of the soul of parishioner, Dick Leitsch, who died on June 22, 2018.

Saint Isaac of Stella (c. 1100–c. 1169): A Blessing

May the Son of God
Who is already formed in you,
Grow in you,
So that for you
He will become immeasurable,
And that in you
He will become laughter,
Exultation,
The fullness of joy
which no one can take from you. 

WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN US
SUNDAY, JULY 14, AFTER THE SOLEMN MASS FOR

A VIRTUAL COFFEE HOUR

For months now we’ve been greeting “those who are with us online.”

We’d love to meet and have a chance to talk with all of you who join us for worship on Sunday mornings, but who can’t join us in person either for Mass or for fellowship in Saint Joseph’s Hall.

More information and a Zoom link will be provided in the livestream of the Solemn Mass on Sunday, July 14.

We hope that you will be able to join us.

FROM BISHOP MARY GLASSPOOL: THE 81ST GENERAL CONVENTION

The Episcopal Church’s 81st General Convention will take place in Louisville, Kentucky from Sunday, June 23 through Friday June 28, 2024. Our lay deputies, along with your bishops will be both representing the Diocese of New York and participating in the councils of the larger church. You will hear reports from these deputies through written word, video clips, and messages from the Diocesan Office (as well as other news outlets) before, during, and after the in-person meeting in Louisville . . . When people ask the question What’s happening at this year’s General Convention?, a general response is, “a lot is happening!” In addition to the many meetings, meals, and sideline events, the House of Bishops will be electing a new Presiding Bishop, to be confirmed by the House of Deputies; the House of Deputies will elect its President and other officers; and a multitude of resolutions will be considered. Of longer-term significance, there is a resolution: A049 Affirming the Goal of Full Communion between The Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church, which, if passed, will bring us closer to the kind of unity among Christians that, I believe, Jesus called for (that they all may be one)! There are also resolutions dealing with international issues, including Gaza and the Middle East; Ukraine; Haiti; and the Anglican Communion. My own committee: Committee #7 – Social Justice and United States Policy, is dealing with issues around gun violence, domestic violence, just war theory, religious nationalism, affordable housing, protection of water, generative Artificial intelligence, child labor protections, traffic fatalities, closing Guantanamo Bay Prison, and condemning censorship, to name but a few. Rather than go into detail on any one of these important resolutions, let me offer some links to the wealth of online resources that are publicly available to all. The General Convention website is here. One can navigate to many different areas from that base. I find particularly useful the Virtual Binder which can be opened here. One can easily toggle between the House of Deputies Virtual Binder and the House of Bishops Virtual Binder – which differ in the Rules of Order (how each of the Houses runs its business) and, in a nuanced way, perspective. But more importantly, if you are someone who wants to track the progress of a particular resolution, the Virtual Binder will guide you through it. [n.b. One needs to click on Resolutions and/or Committee Reports to follow. It may take some experimentation and patience – but it does work!] There is also some great archival material online remembering the fifty years since women were first ordained (beginning here).

I believe that the 81st General Convention will be a notable turning point in the life of the Episcopal Church. Throughout all the celebrations, elections, retirements, resolutions, and business of our Church’s life, I hope that we will be able to be a model for the larger world of how many people of differing thoughts, feelings, ideas, and passions can come together, pray, worship and celebrate together; discern together and decide together, and still respect the dignity of every human being, doing it all for the honor and glory of our loving God. — Bishop Mary Glasspool

WE ARE GRATEFUL . . . To the members of the Tuesday Evening Anti-Racism Discussion Group, who planned and executed a beautiful, informative, and stirring presentation last Sunday in anticipation of Juneteenth (June 19). The Group sponsored the Coffee Hour and were welcoming to all those at Coffee Hour. We are grateful to them for their generosity.

We are especially grateful to Angeline Butler, who talked about her experiences during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and punctuated her talk with musical interludes, during which she sang and, at times, accompanied herself on the piano. Angeline was also accompanied by three very talented musicians, Amy Madden (bass), Tomas Janzon (guitar), and Elka Samuels Smith (percussion).

We are grateful to all those who made the event such a great success. — JRS

NEWS & NOTICES

The preacher at the Masses on Sunday, July 7, will be our seminarian intern, Andrew Loran Raines.

We recently informed the Saint Mary’s community that parishioner David Khouri had died peacefully at his home in Asbury Park, New Jersey. At 9:00 AM on Sunday, June 23, the Said Mass in the Lady Chapel will be offered for the repose of David’s soul and for the intentions of his husband, Robert Shard. All are welcome to attend the Mass.

June is Pride Month . . . The New York City Pride March will take place on Sunday, June 30. Pre-March Reception: 1:00 PM at the Church of the Transfiguration, 1 East 29th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues . . . Pride March—Information TBA as to where and when the diocesan group will be lining up and when the march will begin . . . 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 . . . Parishioner Don Wright is in the process of gathering information about Pride events. He’s available to discuss participation in some of the Pride events with those who are interested.

Away from Saint Mary’s . . . Monday, July 1, 10:00 AM, Celebrating the Life & Ministry of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, the Rt. Rev. Carlye J. Hughes, preacher, Saint Thomas Episcopal Church, 1405 Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11207 . . . Wings of Heaven: Trinity, Morgan Dix, and the Art of Ecclesiastical Embroidery, June 2–July 2, 2024, Trinity Wall Street and Marianna Klaiman, curators . . . Monday, July 1, 7:00 PM, at the American Sephardi Federation, 15 West 16th Street, A Special New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival New York Premiere, Between the Stone and the Flower, which follows the journey of Genie Milgrom, a direct descendant of the Pre-Inquisition Jews of Spain in her quest to uncover her hidden Jewish lineage.

Father Matt Jacobson is away from the parish through Monday, July 8.

Father Sammy Wood will be away from the parish on vacation with his family from Friday, June 28, until Monday, July 8.

Father Jay Smith will be away from the parish on a work assignment from Monday, July 8, until Thursday, July 11. He will be on retreat from Friday, July 12, until Monday, July 15.

FROM THE SAINT THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX FLOWER GUILD

Members of the Flower Guild will be available to arrange flowers for many Sundays this summer. The following Sundays are still available: July 21 and 28; August 11, 18, and 25. August 15, The Feast of the Assumption, is also available. The customary donation requested is $250.00. This allows members of the Guild to create arrangements for the high altar and for the shrines.

It is also possible to ask the Guild to design arrangements only for the high altar. The requested donation would then be $175.00. Please contact the Parish Office to reserve a date. For more information or to discuss volunteering with the Guild, please speak to Brendon Hunter, Grace Mudd, Marie Rosseels, or Brother Thomas Steffensen.

ABOUT THE MUSIC AT THE SOLEMN MASS ON SUNDAY, JUNE 23, THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The Mass setting at the Solemn Mass on Sunday is from Communion Service, Opus 71, composed in 1976 by the Welsh composer, William Mathias (1934–1992). From 1970 to 1988 Mathias was professor and head of the music department at the University College of North Wales, Bangor. Active as a conductor and pianist, he was also the artistic director of the North Wales Music Festival which was held annually at Saint Asaph’s Cathedral. Mathias composed liberally both for instrumental and choral forces, and his church music and organ music are widely performed. Having composed music for many royal occasions, his worldwide esteem surged as a result of his anthem Let the people praise Thee, O God, which he composed for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1985. His Communion Service was composed for unison congregational singing with optional choral features and was one of the early Series 3 settings (parallel to Episcopal Rite II) to gain broad usage among Anglicans. As such, its essential movements, minus their choral elements, were included in The Hymnal 1982. Mathias’s setting may be considered musically to be for Rite II what Healey Willan’s Missa de Sancta Maria Magdelena was for the 1928 rite and continues to be for Rite I; that is: a modern, energetic, organ-accompanied setting for congregations and choirs to sing together.

Henry Purcell (1659–1695) is the composer of the Communion solo at the Solemn Mass on Sunday. Purcell, more than any other composer of his time, defined English Baroque musical style in a variety of vocal and instrumental genres that included works for theater, court, and church. He was born in London, and his family home was virtually in the shadow of Westminster Abbey, where he became organist in 1679. Standing on the foundation of such composers as Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585), William Byrd (c. 1543–1623), and Orlando Gibbons (c. 1583–1625), copies of whose anthems he made at an early age, Purcell forged a musical language of rich harmony and vivid textual expression. The solo during Communion on Sunday is Purcell’s We sing to him from Henry Playford’s Harmonia Sacra of 1688. The text is by Nathaniel Ingelo (c. 1621–1683). The music begins with a stately opening section for solo voice and continuo in duple meter. This is followed by a more animated section in triple meter where a second vocal part which roughly parallels the bass line may be added. The organ prelude and postlude on Sunday will be improvised.

More about Sunday’s cantor: Kirsten Ott, mezzo-soprano, has been a member of the Choir of Saint Mary’s since the fall of 2021.  She sings frequently with Libero Canto, an organization which stages both opera and song programs, and she has also produced several of her own recital programs. She has previously sung with local groups such as Vox Vocal Ensemble and the Manhattan Chamber Choir. Before joining the choir at Saint Mary’s, she had sung for many seasons in the choirs of the Church of the Holy Apostles, Chelsea, and the Church of the Epiphany, Yorkville. Kirsten has extensive acting training and has coached both classical and musical theater performers. She studied oboe at Manhattan School of Music and is also a pianist.

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.