Rome and London

On Wednesday afternoon, May 21, the parish musician and I are going on a trip to Rome and to London to go to church together and to meet with liturgists and musicians.  During the planning stages of the trip, Father Alan Moses invited me to preach at All Saints’ Margaret Street in London on Ascension Day.  But the genesis of the trip is for me and Robert McCormick to go to church together in some of the great parishes and cathedrals and to see what we can learn about doing our job here at Saint Mary’s, Times Square.

The Beginning of Easter

At the end of the Easter Vigil, when I went into the congregation to speak a few words of welcome to our visitors and thank those who had made the celebrations of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Eve so extraordinary, the congregation just broke into applause at the mention of the name of our Presiding Bishop.  It was one of many wonderful moments our community shared as we celebrated the presence of the death and resurrection of the Lord in our midst.

Transitions

In September 2003 Father Jay Smith will be leaving his position with us as assistant to return to New Haven so that he can complete his dissertation.  He feels like he needs to dedicate more concentrated time and effort to it, and simply get it done.  And we are going to miss him very, very much as an active member of the parish clergy staff.  I can’t recall now when he and I started talking about this but it was sometime during Lent when there was too much going on for us to focus on anything but Holy Week.  There are many schedule details to work out, but he and I have tentatively set Sunday, September 14, Holy Cross Day, as his final Sunday with us as an assistant. He will celebrate and preach the 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM Masses that day. 

From Father Weiler: Misters Personality

I had what I think was a real New York moment on Monday of this week, Easter Week.  I’m not from New York originally so when such a moment happens I cherish it as something special.  My wife and I were in a cab, right around the corner from Saint Mary’s.  We were headed down Broadway.  We were stopped at a traffic light and while I was looking about, I noticed that Times Square was populated (in addition to the usual mix of people from around the world) by several dozen young men, interspersed equally throughout the square, wearing black suits and masks, not the kind of mask a bank robber would wear—no, they were more colorful and exotic—more like professional wrestler meets masquerade ball attendee.  Suddenly one of these masked men dashed over from his place on the sidewalk.  In a burst of courage and folly he thrust his colorful handbill (cleverly cutout in a shape and color indentical to the mask he was wearing) into the hands of my unsuspecting cabbie (who made known his lack of gratitude for the intrusion in words too indelicate to be published in a weekly parish newsletter).  “Give me that,” I said to the cabbie as the light changed and we sped away down the avenue.  He was happy to oblige.

The Easter Triduum

Fifty-one weeks of the year it usually works very well for our parish newsletter to be dated beginning with Sunday as the first day of the week.  For Christians, Sunday is the first day of the week, the first day of the new creation, the day of the Resurrection.   During Holy Week, time for Christians is different, very different.  I am actually writing to you early on Good Friday.  It is the morning of the first day of the Easter Triduum.  

Holy Week Notes

The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

There are two Masses today, one at 9:00 AM and one at 11:00 AM.  The later service is perhaps the single service of the year where Saint Mary’s character and vocation as an urban liturgical parish is most evident.  The Blessing of the Palms and the Mass of the Passion are celebrated in the church with great solemnity.  Between the palm rite and the Mass there is a procession through Times Square.  Members of the assembly will be sharing palms with hundreds of people in the square.

Holy Week is an Invitation

There are some books that you can read and by reading them you can figure out what we are doing ceremonially at Saint Mary’s these days.  However, there are a very few things that are now done at Saint Mary’s because I believe they should be done.  Almost all of these have to do with the celebration of Holy Week and the Easter Triduum.  I want to try to say something about them, but what I really want to do is to invite you to come to participate, not to observe.

Letting Go, Moving On

Jesus let go and moved on all of the time during his ministry.  He trusted in the ultimate purposes of his Father for him and the world that had been made.  Jesus was never long distracted from his work of proclaiming Good News and being Good News for so many that he met.  But he didn’t fix everything he might have fixed.  There were many hearts who remained unconverted by what he said and did.  Jesus continued to follow the call that he had from the beginning to bring eternal life to those who would believe in life, in him.

The Mission of Saint Mary’s

From time to time I am challenged by the question of what is the mission of Saint Mary’s.  The Parish Profile, written in 1998, has a statement of “Our Mission,”

The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York City, was founded in 1868 with the mission of setting forth Catholic doctrine and ritual within the Episcopal Church.

That We May Continue For Ever in the Risen Life of Christ

On the First Sunday in Lent, when the gospel lesson is always Matthew, Mark or Luke’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, we choose at Saint Mary’s to include in the Eucharistic Prayers these words,

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who was tempted in every way as we are, yet did not sin.  By his grace we are able to triumph over every evil, and to live no longer for ourselves alone, but for him who died for us and rose again.  (BCP page 379)

Plan on Being Here

This coming weekend, March 7 through March 9, there is a constellation of events that give us a wonderful opportunity to worship and to celebrate.

On Friday evening, March 7, at 7:00 PM, the Right Reverend Mark S. Sisk, bishop of New York, will be here to officiate at Stations of the Cross.  It’s a wonderful service.  It takes about forty-five minutes.  It’s the first Friday in Lent.  We hope that there will be a good congregation from our own parish and from other midtown Episcopalians who appreciate this great devotion.  The Stations themselves and the layout of the church make Saint Mary’s a wonderful place for this service.

PRAYER LIST . . . Your prayers are asked for Jim and Adele who are hospitalized and for Bart, Nora, Kiyushi, Nicole, Kenneth, Jack, Thomas, Sarah, Grover, Annie, Patricia, Paul, Robert, Eileen, Gloria, Jerri, Margaret, Marion, Olga, Rick, Charles, priest, and Paul, bishop and Walter, bishop, and for the members of our Armed Forces on active duty, especially Timothy, Patrick, Edward, Keith, Kevin, Christopher, Andrew, Joseph, Mark, Ned, Timothy, David and John . . . GRANT THEM PEACE . . . March 4: 1989 Timothy Francis Meyers.

Looking to the Triduum

I’ve been reading Louis Gerstner’s account of his work at IBM, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround.  It’s a very good read.  When he arrived at IBM, the company did not lack for talent.  It had a culture problem, in a nutshell.  Too much of its corporate life had begun to take on a life of its own, independent of the needs of its customers.  One famous example was the IBM company dress code: suits, white shirts, conservative ties.

Looking to Lent: Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is the usual name given to the First Day of Lent, the season during which the Church prepares to celebrate the Easter Triduum (Triduum: “Three Days” - Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Day).  More people, 2500, perhaps 3000, will be in our church this day to attend Mass or to receive ashes.  It is a day when the local parish has the single greatest opportunity to serve others in numbers.

Looking to Lent: Stations

This year we will be having Stations of the Cross every Friday night of Lent.  The service is from The Book of Occasional Services of the Episcopal Church.  The service itself consists of fourteen meditations related to the traditional events between Jesus’ condemnation before Pilate and the burial of his body in the tomb.  The words of the service are said.  Short verses of Stabat Mater are sung as the congregation moves between stations.  One hymn is sung at the end.  Because of the design of our church it is possible for the congregation and the clergy to process from station to station.

Presentation

The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple is the last of the cycle of  liturgical celebrations based on the infancy narratives of Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels.  Forty days after his birth, in accordance with the tradition of the time, Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem.  There he is recognized as the “Light.”  Yet even those who recognize who he is and understand his future do not have faith until he rises from the dead.

Holy Week 2003

The Calendar of the Church Year and the regular services of the Church, the Holy Eucharist and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, have ordered the common life of Saint Mary’s since the parish’s beginning.  Over time, of course, the schedule and range of services celebrated during the church year has evolved. 

Our Parish Life

I am writing to you on Thursday morning, the day I usually write the weekly newsletter.  Today is an ordinary weekday at Saint Mary’s.  Four weeks of very intensive celebrations are now behind us.  Because of the late date of Easter this year, there is something of a break between now and the first week of March.  (Ash Wednesday is March 5.)  The calendar will give us some time to complete tasks that it was simply not possible to complete as we prepared for the holidays, celebrated Christmas, Epiphany and the anniversary of the organ.

Never an Ordinary Time

When the calendars of the western liturgical churches were revised in the 1960s and 1970s, our Episcopal Church maintained the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas.  For Lutherans and Roman Catholics, the Christmas Season extends through this Sunday, the Feast of the Baptism of Christ.  For us, when the sun sets on Epiphany (again, for us, always January 6), we begin the “Season after the Epiphany.”  This season Roman Catholics call “Ordinary Time.” 

Music at Saint Mary’s

There are many reasons to celebrate music at Saint Mary’s this month.  It is the seventieth anniversary of our parish organ, an astounding and outstanding instrument.  Its design and execution at the beginning of the Great Depression was a central event in the history of our parish and in the history of American music.  It is one of the first of what are known as “great American classic organs.”  It was an experiment and building it required vision and faith, the kind of vision and faith for which this parish has stood since its birth.