From Father Beddingfield: Regina coeli

Sometimes after celebrating the midday Mass, I stop in a nearby deli and I see the same man.  He usually asks me something like, “So, Father, when are you going to get those bells fixed at the church?  They still don’t ring correctly on the hour.”   He laughs and I explain one more time that we ring the tower bell during the Angelus and during the Eucharistic Prayer, but he likes to continue the joke, wondering why the bell never rings twelve times at noon. 

Easter Spirit

Jesus’ resurrection gift to his disciples was the Holy Spirit.  In the presence of the risen Lord the disciples are able to accept this gift and to let it transform their lives.  In Luke’s gospel it is a gift that has always been present, almost always unclaimed, with people all their lives.  In John’s gospel it is a gift given from the cross and on the evening of the first Easter Day.  There is a unity of Easter and the gift of the Spirit that is like the unity of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

Easter at Saint Mary’s

Sometimes I have trouble explaining to people what makes Saint Mary’s so special.  To say that the liturgical rites of the Church are prayed and lived out with enormous integrity would not be the most helpful way of introducing us.  Yet that is who we are.  We are a place where our lives our shaped by the message of the gospel and celebration of liturgy.  In our midst people are reborn to eternal life and Jesus Christ still rises from the dead.

Holy Week II

Easter

One service of the year proclaims the Christian Gospel as no other, the Great Vigil of Easter.  This service is celebrated at Saint Mary’s on Saturday, April 10, beginning at 7:00 PM.  This newsletter is going to be dedicated to some details about the other services of Holy Week and Easter, but I want to begin with some remarks about the principal service of the year. 

Holy Week I

Christianity was a persecuted religion in the world of the Roman Empire until the emperor Constantine promulgated the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313.  Before this edict the Church generally gathered only on Sundays for worship.  After this edict, more was possible.  The original Sunday pattern for Christian worship continues to shape our lives.  Yet Sunday is much more than a morning, especially the greatest Sunday of all, Easter Day.

Living Lent

When the catholic movement within Anglicanism really began to rediscover its heritage in the nineteenth century there was a lot of religious excitement.  Intellectually and emotionally the catholic tradition seemed to have an ability to renew Christian understanding and Christian living.  And like so many new things, there was a certain power and a certain joy that seemed sure signs of the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Truth

More and more people I know have now seen Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ.  A friend and his wife who took their fifteen year-old daughter to see the movie regretted it.  He said, “It isn’t an ‘R’ movie; it’s an ‘NC-17’.”  I asked someone whether the movie shows the crucified Jesus naked or wearing a loincloth.  I was told that in the movie he is shown with a loincloth, as he almost always is in art. 

Language of Lent

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent but it doesn’t feel that way to me.  There is an energy here in the city bound up with the desire of people to receive the imposition of ashes.  It makes the day unique in its spirituality.  For me, the language of Lent really kicks in on the First Sunday in Lent.  Again, it’s not that Lent is unobserved here on Ash Wednesday!  But one is too preoccupied to notice. 

Beginnings

I haven’t seen Mel Gibson’s new movie.  It’s hard to avoid knowing something about it.  I don’t plan to see it anytime soon.  I don’t like to watch gore, especially after seeing the photograph in the New York Times of Jesus on the cross, I think this movie will have to much. 

Ending and Beginning

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany has been observed with special music at the Solemn Mass at Saint Mary’s for a number of years.  Our former music director McNeil Robinson introduced the custom of singing Missa Luba, arranged by Guido Haazen, on this date.  It’s a setting based on themes from African music. 

From Father Beddingfield: Thinking about Membership

When anyone is newly come ... let him not be granted an easy entrance; but, as the Apostle says, “Test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”  If the newcomer, therefore, perseveres in his knocking, and if it is seen after four or five days that he bears patiently the harsh treatment offered him and the difficulty of admission, and that he persists in his petition, then let entrance be granted him....

From the Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 58

Growing

There’s a lot of research out about church life.  It is an industry.  Congregations have ‘life cycles.’  There are congregations who are organized to survive, to grow and, yes, even, to die.  Saint Mary’s was organized to be a place of liturgical worship.  It was organized as part of a movement that was sweeping through Christian communities in the nineteenth century.  In the wake of the academic and artist revolutions of the time, the Church was rediscovering liturgy and itself.

After Five Years: Looking Ahead

On Sunday, February 1, 2004 I will begin my sixth year of service as rector of Saint Mary’s.  I preached and celebrated the first time here at the Solemn Mass on Tuesday, February 2, 1999, the third rector in a row whose service at the altar began on the Feast of the Presentation.  I cannot begin to explain or really understand the mystery of God’s providence that brought me to serve him in this place.

New Sights

Last night I came up from the B train at Rockefeller Center at 49th, on the west side of the street.  There were some folks coming down the steps so I walked up the staircase looking up, instead of down - the way most of us walk around New York most of the time. 

Prayer Book Studies

In 1950 the Standing Liturgical Commission published the first issue of “Prayer Book Studies.”  This booklet, in a series that would continue through the development of the present Prayer Book, contained two studies: I. Baptism and Confirmation and II. The Liturgical Lectionary.  Revision of the 1892 Prayer Book had begun in 1913. 

Epiphany

An e-mail inquiry about Epiphany (“manifestation”) sent me to the books the other day.  I am always forgetting that Christmas is not just about the birth of Jesus, liturgically speaking, and Epiphany is not just about the coming of the Wise Men.  I’m pretty good at remembering that what we call “Palm Sunday” is the original “Good Friday” – hence, the Liturgy of the Palms is attached to the Mass of the Passion.  It’s just as complicated during this time of year, too.

Spontaneous

Something unusual happened on Christmas Eve: the assembly starting applauding as the final hymn, Hark! the herald angels sing, ended.  There was still a dismissal to do, still a postlude to be played.  I had the strong sense that the spontaneous applause that broke out throughout the filled church was not just for the hymn and the descant on the final verse, which was glorious, but for the whole Mass – and, I confess, especially for our parish musicians.  The music and the Mass were extraordinary.

Christ the King

I was making a short retreat at Saint Gregory’s Abbey when I met a priest who had been a member of the Standing Liturgical Commission in 1976.  The adoption of a new Prayer Book requires the action of two successive General Conventions.  The 1979 Prayer Book, the one we have today, had to be complete by a date and time certain during the 1976 General Convention.  The priest told me they stayed up through

An Annual Report of Sorts

The Board of Trustees of Saint Mary’s will be meeting on Monday night, November 17.  For those new to the community, Saint Mary’s is one of a small number of Episcopal parishes in the United States not organized in the ordinary way.  It is a structure that has its strengths and weaknesses,

From Father Beddingfield: Wisdom and the Body

I’ve been thinking a lot about wisdom lately.  Any search for wisdom risks arriving at a point of frustration where we might agree with the writer of Ecclesiastes, “In much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.”  Nevertheless, those of us involved in the current Wednesday night Christian formation series are plodding forward.