SAINT ANTHONY OF PADUA ON THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

On Thursday, we celebrated the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Though the celebration of this feast dates to antiquity, the Roman Catholic Church did not define it dogmatically until 1950. In that declaration, Pope Pius XII wrote the following about Saint Anthony of Padua’s (1195-1231) contribution to our understanding of the Assumption:

Among the holy writers who at that time employed statements and various images and analogies of Sacred Scripture to illustrate and to confirm the doctrine of the Assumption, which was piously believed, the Evangelical Doctor, Saint Anthony of Padua, holds a special place. On the feast day of the Assumption, while explaining the prophet's words: “I will glorify the place of my feet” (Isaiah 60:13), he stated it as certain that the divine Redeemer had bedecked with supreme glory his most beloved Mother from whom he had received human flesh. He asserts that “you have here a clear statement that the Blessed Virgin has been assumed in her body, where was the place of the Lord's feet. Hence it is that the holy Psalmist writes: ‘Arise, O Lord, into your resting place: you and the ark which you have sanctified.’” And he asserts that, just as Jesus Christ has risen from the death over which he triumphed and has ascended to the right hand of the Father, so likewise the ark of his sanctification “has risen up, since on this day the Virgin Mother has been taken up to her heavenly dwelling.”

The following is a poem by Saint Anthony on the Assumption:

O how wondrous is the dignity of the glorious Virgin!
She merited to become the mother of Him
who is the strength and beauty of the angels
and the grandeur of all the saints.

Mary was the seat of our sanctification,
that is to say,
the dwelling place of the Son
who sacrificed Himself for us.

“And I shall glorify the place where my feet have stood.”
The feet of the Savior signify his human nature.
The place where the feet of the Savior stood
was the Blessed Mary,
who gave him his human nature.

Today the Lord glorifies that place,
since He has exalted Mary
above the choirs of the angels.
That is to say,
the Blessed Virgin,
who was the dwelling of the Savior,
has been assumed bodily into heaven.

(English translation from the University of Dayton.)

PRAYING FOR THE CHURCH & FOR THE WORLD

We pray for an end to war and violence, especially in the Middle East and in Ukraine and Russia. We pray for justice and for an end to violence and division in our neighborhood, city, and nation.

We pray for those who have asked us for our prayers, especially Dorothy, Carmen, Justin, Mary, Sheila, Sahoko, Steve, Leroy, Tom, Eleni, Lynn, Dennis, Susan, Darwin, Martin, Frank, Susanna, Rolf, Joyce, Christine, Donald, Richard, Josh, Robert, Tony, James, Dorian, Maddie, Hattie, Nettie, Chrissy, Jan, Pat, Marjorie, Carole, Luis, Sharon, Quincy, Robert, Carlos, June, José, Brian, Manuel, Joyce, Abe, Suzanne, Hardy, Giovanna, Gypsy, Liduvina, and Margaret; Jack, James, Curtis, Monica Clare, Ben, Barbara-Jean, Laura Katharine, and Eleanor-Francis, religious; Lind, deacon; Julie, Robby, Matthew, and Stephen, priests; and Sean, bishop.

We pray for those whose year’s mind is on August 18: Mary Augusta Ward (1915); Ida Virginia Goodall (1934); Myrna French Cloudman (1940); Louis Herbert Gray (1955); and Maria Luppi (2009). 

WE NEED YOUR HELP
WOULD YOU LIKE TO VOLUNTEER?

Have you been coming to Saint Mary’s for a while, but have been unsure about how to get more involved?
We’d love to talk to you about that.

During 2024–2025 we hope to recruit more volunteers for the following ministries:

Neighbors in Need ● Acolytes ● Readers
Ushers ● Hospitality Teams ● Livestream Broadcasters

To do what we do, we need your help.
We urge you to pray about this, asking God to help you discern how you are being called to serve here at the parish.

For more information, speak to Father Sammy or Father Matt.

COMING UP

Sunday, October 6, Blessing of the Animals
Sunday afternoon. Forty-sixth Street, in front of the church. Time to be announced.

Sunday, October 6, Evensong & Benediction, 4:00 PM
Note the new time!

Sunday, October 13, Virtual Coffee Hour
After Solemn Mass, via Zoom. Link to be provided.

Sunday, October 20, Newcomers Reception
After Solemn Mass and a bit of Coffee Hour, in the Rectory. Refreshments will be served.

NEWS & NOTICES

Monthly Requiem Masses . . . Our monthly Requiem Mass will be held this Saturday, August 17, in the Mercy Chapel at 12:10 PM. These Masses are generally celebrated on the third Saturday of each month unless there is a major feast that day. This September, the Feast of Saint Matthew falls on the third Saturday and Holy Cross Day on the second. Therefore, the September parish requiem will be on Saturday, September 7. Click here to learn more about the Guild of All Souls at Saint Mary’s or speak with Father Sammy. All are welcome!

From Father Sammy: Nine Days of Prayer for Guidance before Holy Cross Day (September 14) . . . In the Western Church, a novena (from the Latin novem, “nine”) is a period of nine days’ private or public devotion, by which it is hoped to obtain some special grace. The general observance of novenas is actually quite modern, dating only from the seventeenth century, but it is modeled on the nine days’ preparation of the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary for the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 1.13ff). Some sources cite the Church Fathers for assigning special meaning to the number nine, seeing it as symbolic of imperfect man turning to God in prayer (due to its proximity with the number ten, symbolic of God’s perfection). Novenas may be performed in church, at home, or anywhere solemn prayers are appropriate. This year, Saint Mary’s is using the days before Holy Cross Day as an occasion to pray together as a community for God’s vision for our parish. Beginning September 6, and culminating on September 14, Holy Cross Day, I am asking our whole parish family to join me in adding to your daily devotions a particular prayer for Saint Mary’s.

A Novena for Saint Mary’s

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus, who because of your burning love for us willed to be crucified and to shed your most precious blood for the redemption and salvation of our souls, look down upon us and grant our petition:

Pour out your Spirit upon our parish family.

Give us your vision for our common life and bless the work we do in New York City in your name and for your glory.

We trust completely in your mercy. Cleanse us from sin by your grace, sanctify our work, give us and all those who are dear to us our daily bread, lighten the burden of our sufferings, bless our parish, and grant to the nations your peace, which is the only true peace, so that by obeying your commandments we may come at last to the glory of heaven. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our Father . . .

Glory to the Father . . .

Neighbors in Need . . . If you would like to volunteer or make a cash donation, please speak to MaryJane Boland. We are also eager to receive donations of new or lightly used sneakers and shoes, in all sizes, for both men and women. A Drop-by was held this Friday and the next one will take place on Friday, September 20, 1:00–3:00 PM. We are looking for a few more good volunteers. Please speak to MaryJane Boland or Father Jay about our work and how you might help.

Helping those in Need: We’re all in this together . . . When you encounter someone in need on the subway or on the street, do you wonder how you might help? One thing you might consider doing is printing out this Street Sheet and carrying a few copies with you (click for the file in English and Spanish). The Sheet lists resources for the hungry, the unsheltered, and those in need. Sometimes this is one thing you can do to help: direct a person in need to available resources. You can’t promise people that negotiating these services will be easy, but it is something concrete that you can do.

Blessing the Backpacks . . . At the end of Mass on Sunday, September 1, we will bless a large number of backpacks and some school supplies. They will be delivered the following day to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School across the street on Forty-Sixth Street. If you are a student or if there is a student in your family, you are invited to participate by bringing up your “stuff”—backpack, school supplies, laptop, textbook, etc.—for a blessing as well . . . Saint Paul provides us with a beautiful prayer for those who study, “[I pray continually] that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power” (Ephesians 1:17–19).

The Members of the Board of Trustees of Saint Mary’s will gather for a retreat on Saturday, September 7. Please keep them, their work, and the life and ministry of Saint Mary’s in your prayers.

Would you like to donate the altar flowers? . . .  The following Sundays are available: September 1, 8, 15, and 22. The customary donation requested is $250. Please call the Parish Office for more information (212-869-5830).

Our good friends at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York, founded and for a time ran, the Holy Cross School in Grahamstown, South Africa. Completed in 2011, the school now continues due to an intercontinental partnership between the brothers of the Order of the Holy Cross (OHC) in North America and their brothers in South Africa. As many Saint Marians will know, OHC is an Anglican Benedictine order for men founded in 1884 by Father James Otis Sargent Huntington, who once wrote, “Love must act as light must shine forth and fire must burn.” The work of the Holy Cross School is now supported by a foundation named, “Love Must Act.” From the foundation’s website: “Holy Cross School, a primary educational institution, emphasizes holistic education according to the highest international standards. It serves an overwhelmingly disadvantaged community: nearly all of its seventy-five students come from households making less than the national living wage, and nearly one-in-five come from households with at least one deceased parent. Through its utilization of a world-class educational model and its rooting in communities of love, however, it consistently performs to standards on par with, or even exceeding, schools in the developed world. For more information, please visit the website of Love Must Act. If you would like to make a donation, you may visit this portion of the foundation’s website.

Father Jay Smith will be on vacation August 8–24.

Listen to Dr. Hurd’s Music on BBC 3 . . . We recently heard from several friends of Saint Mary’s, including the Rev’d Prebendary Alan Moses, former vicar of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, that they’d been listening to Choral Evensong on BBC 3 recently and were surprised and delighted to hear a piece composed by Dr. David Hurd, organist and music director at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City. You too can hear David’s piece, “Love bade me welcome,” by following this link. The composition was sung as the Introit during Choral Evensong at Holy Trinity Church, Prince Consort Road, London. You can listen to the entire service on BBC, but only for a few more days. Thank you, David, for being such a good ambassador for Saint Mary’s, and thank you, Alan, good friend that you are, for giving us the news from across the pond.

ABOUT THE MUSIC AT THE SOLEMN MASS ON SUNDAY, AUGUST 18
THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Sunday’s organ voluntaries constitute the third installment of a series begun earlier this month of the eight “Little” Preludes and Fugues, traditionally attributed to J. S. Bach. While long promulgated as works of the great master, these pieces are now widely believed actually to have been composed by one of his pupils, very likely Johann Tobias Krebs (1690–1762), or his son Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713–1780). Of these eight preludes and fugues, four are in major keys of C, F, G, and B-flat, and the remaining four are in their relative minors of A, D, E, and G. The standard ordering of these eight pieces begins with BWV 553 in C Major and progresses up the scale to BWV 560 in B-flat. This week’s prelude will be BWV 556 in F Major, and the postlude will be BWV 554 in the relative minor key of D. BWV 556, for the prelude, may be the least likely of the eight Preludes and Fugues to have been composed by Sebastian Bach. The prelude especially is stylistically much more suggestive of post-baroque classical composition. Its accompanying fugue has a similar harmonic and textural simplicity as it continues in the bright spirit of F Major. BWV 554, numbered second in the collection and played for the postlude, has an A-B-A-shaped prelude, as did BWV 556. The fugue, with its angular theme, is modest in length and follows logically after the prelude.

The name of Healey Willan (1880–1968) is well known to Episcopalians because of his Missa de Sancta Maria Magdalena, composed in 1928, which appeared in The Hymnal 1940 and was retained in The Hymnal 1982. This setting, which we will sing this morning, has been sung widely throughout the Episcopal Church, as well as in other denominations, for decades. Willan’s career and reputation, however, went far beyond composing this beloved Mass. He composed more than eight hundred works including operas, symphonies and other music for orchestra and band, chamber music, and music for piano and organ, in addition to a great quantity of choral music. His liturgical music includes fourteen choral Masses, occasional motets, canticles, and hymn settings. Willan was born in England and began his career as an organist in London parish churches. He joined the faculty at Toronto University in 1914, later becoming Professor of Music there. In 1921 he was named organist at Toronto’s Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, a position he retained until his death. Said to have described himself as “English by birth; Canadian by adoption; Irish by extraction; Scotch by absorption,” Willan was a champion of historic liturgical chant and the aesthetic of Renaissance church music. He incorporated these influences and mingled them with an appreciation of the rich harmonic palette of the late nineteenth-century masters. Through his compositions and choral direction, he significantly set the standard for North American Anglo-Catholic church music in his time. In 1956 Willan became the first non-English church musician to be awarded the Lambeth Doctorate, Mus.D. Cantuar.

At Solemn Mass on Sunday, the cantor will be soprano, Joy Tamayo. During the Communion she will sing Schlafendes Jesuskind (The sleeping Christ-Child) by Hugo Wolf (1860–1903). The poem is by Eduard Mörike (1804–1875), a German Lutheran pastor who was also a poet and writer of novellas and novels. Wolf’s career as teacher, critic, and composer centered in Vienna. He was devoted to and strongly influenced by the music of Richard Wagner (1813–1883). After Wagner’s death, Franz Liszt (1811–1886) continued to influence Wolf and encouraged him to pursue the large musical forms for which he had high regard. Although Wolf composed three operas in addition to orchestral, chamber and piano music, it is for his hundreds of songs (Lieder) where he distinguished himself as a composer and for which he is principally remembered. Wolf’s richly expressive chromaticism animated the poetry of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse, and Emanuel Geibel as well as Eduard Mörike. Mörike’s Schlafendes Jesuskind is a meditation inspired by a painting by Francesco Albani (1578–1660). Wolf’s musical setting embodies his gift for rendering expressive depth though modest musical forces. — David Hurd

More about Sunday’s cantor: As an artist, Joy Tamayo expresses herself as a performer, a writer, and an educator. She is a graduate of both the University of the Philippines and the Crane School of Music. Fates have determined that most of her life be within orbit of whatever representative of the Stage, whether a barangay singing competition at the foot of an active volcano or a medieval church in Europe. Her New York art life has continued this penchant for the all-venues approach to performance. Highlights include the premiere of Chaitanya Sangco’s Subway Atmos (for soprano, cello, piano, chorus, and electronics) at Opera America; the Calf in Kento Iwasaki's portable opera Beloved Prey at Flushing Town Hall; Barbarina in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro with dell’Arte Opera Ensemble; lead soprano for Pete Wyer’s opera Spring Street which premiered online at jeeni.com. For collaborative works, Joy Tamayo performed for Tino Seghal's This You, a 2016 Public Art Fund's exhibit called The Language of Things at City Hall Park; a recording with C4 Ensemble of Jonathan David's Blue Planet Blues/The Time Is Come, commissioned by Zsuzsanna Ardo for an art installation at Skopje, Northern Macedonia; and chorus for National Sawdust's project with composer Sxip Shirey’s The Gauntlet at Rockefeller Center. As one half of the duo an outskirt, she is pursuing the stage with the most eyes on it. She wrote, danced, and performed the opera Mga Stasyon as part of the 2021 Exponential Festival. She was composer and vocalist for Tanika I. Williams’ film Sanctuary which was featured at the BAMcinemaFest 2021 Shorts Program. Joy was born and raised in the Philippines. She has been a member of the Choir of Saint Mary’s since 2021

AWAY FROM SAINT MARY’S

The New-York Historical Society, 77th Street and Central Park West
Lost New York, First Floor, The Robert H. and Clarice Smith South Gallery
Until September 29, 2024

From the Society’s website, “Behold a bygone New York! This exhibition invites you to explore the landmarks, vistas, pastimes, environments, monuments, communities, and modes of transportation that once defined this city. ‘Losses’ include river swimming, high-wheel bike riding, elevated railways, the original Penn Station, the old Croton Reservoir, the Chinese Theater, Seneca Village, the Central Park Hooverville, the fake window decals of the 1980s, and Bowling Green's monument to King George III. Throughout, community voices bring these lost sites to life. A woman recalls attending the Old Met Opera House in 1939. A Broadway carpenter thinks back to a photograph of his father in front of the Hippodrome Theatre. And a young choir singer imagines the demolished Harlem Renaissance monument Lift Every Voice and Sing. Showcasing treasures from the New-York Historical Society’s trove of historical objects, Lost New York speaks to both the dynamism of an ever-changing city and the importance of preserving pieces of our otherwise vanishing past.”

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 Matt Jacobson and Father Jay Smith, except as noted. Father Matt 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.