From the Rector: Changing God’s Mind

Last week, at a friend’s suggestion, I picked up a novel by Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal.  It’s a wonderful read, a little serious, a little irreverent, and very funny.  If I were a better storyteller I would make a ton of weekday sermons from it.  Moore uses a lot of material very creatively.  He has a twist on how Jesus came to the idea he was to die.  Jesus, in the novel, is off in another place where child sacrifice is practiced on a large scale.  He can’t believe his Father permits it to continue.  He thinks his own death will so horrify God that God will put an end to child sacrifice everywhere.

From the Rector: Trinity Traditional

There are more than a few folks in the wider Church who have gotten it into their heads that there’s something inadequate, wrong or outdated with the Christian name for the Three Persons of the Trinity, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  Our Church continues to authorize service materials that have a not-so-subtle purpose of replacing ordinary Trinitarian language in worship under the rubric of “enriching” and “expanding” our language about God.  When traveling, one never knows for sure in whose name one may be blessed.

From the Rector: Value of Respect

As we begin a new choir season on October 1, with the special richness of our Solemn Mass on Sunday mornings and the majestic simplicity of Solemn Evensong on Sunday nights, I’ve been thinking about the values that shape our common life.  Today I want to write about three in particular: respect for the assembly, respect for the rite and respect for ministries.  In a few weeks I plan to write about three more: respect for formation, respect for mission, and respect for spiritual life.  All are values that I think help to define and shape our parish community.

From the Rector: Episcopal Christians

Hardly a day goes by when I am not called upon by someone to describe Saint Mary’s.  People who ask me the question are often not Episcopalian.  When I’m in a group and the question is asked, someone who knows the parish will often respond before I can.  Many people, it seems, like to talk about Saint Mary’s.  The building, the music, the location, the services and, of course, the incense will be mentioned in some combination.  Episcopalians, lay and clergy, who use the language of “high church” or “low church” or “Anglo-catholic” will often interject phrases like that.

From the Rector:  Henry VIII Was Wrong

A few years ago, there was a New York Times profile of the Reverend George William Rutler, pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of Our Savior, New York City.  He had been an Episcopal priest.  He was one of the first priests who became a Roman priest after the Church began to ordain women.  In the article Father Rutler said he had become a Roman Catholic because he realized “Henry VIII was wrong.”

From Father Beddingfield: Five Years Later

Last week I ran into a person I had not seen in almost eight years.  Though he still looks very much like I had remembered, I was surprised at the changes that had taken place in his life.  He left a relationship of almost ten years.  He now lives in a different part of town, and he works in advertising.  When I asked about his painting (eight years ago, he was showing his work in several downtown galleries and selling paintings regularly), his facial expression changed.  It grew more serious than I had ever remembered seeing.  “After 9/11 everything changed,” he said. 

From the Rector: September at Saint Mary’s

Church life in New York City has a rhythm different from anywhere I’ve served before.  School starts in the city just after Labor Day, but that doesn’t mean summer is entirely over.  At Saint Mary’s and at many other parishes, the choir season begins on the first Sunday in October.  For us, Christian Education and other activities start up again in October.  Despite this, September is also a busy month.

From the Rector: Momentum at Saint Mary’s

At its meeting on Monday, August 21, 2006, the Board of Trustees approved proposals for two of our Momentum Fund projects.  These are the renovation of the fifth floor of the Mission House to be an apartment for two resident sisters from the Community of St. John Baptist and the fabrication and installation of new hand rails for all of the Forty-sixth Street doorways of the church.  As I write, papers have to be reviewed by our attorneys before yours truly signs on behalf of the parish.  But these are details not problems.

From the Rector: Security

When I was at the security check point in Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, on Monday, July 17, three things packed in my suitcase attracted the attention of the security team.  I had bought one small jar of honey and two small jars of date syrup.  During the first pass through an x-ray machine, a computer image was taken and sent to a second screening station.  There, with a computer image of the contents of my suitcase in front of her, the screener went right for the jars.

From the Rector: Saint Mary’s Legacy Society

As we go to press, the parish community will be receiving our Assumption mailing.  For as long as anyone around the office can remember there has been a special appeal to ask for donations to support the mission of Saint Mary’s at Assumption.  Included in this year’s appeal is an invitation to make a bequest to Saint Mary’s and to let your bequest be known.

From the Rector: Marion Elizabeth Freise, 1911-2006

Marion Freise died on Tuesday, August 1, 2006 at the House of the Good Shepherd in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where she had moved in 2003.  She was ninety-four years old and had been a member of Saint Mary’s for many years.

From the Rector: Summer at Saint Mary’s

I have clear memories of parish life being slower in summertime when I was first ordained.  I wonder if things are slower anywhere now.  Here we busy are preparing for the fall, winter and spring.  We are in the middle of a capital campaign.  Very soon you will be hearing about a new legacy society to encourage people to remember Saint Mary’s in their wills.  Final drawings are being prepared for the renovation of the fifth floor of the Mission House for the sisters.  Construction with all of its attendant challenges is on the horizon.

From the Rector: Bread and Truth

I returned on Monday, July 17, from a ten-day trip with friends to Israel and Jordan.  We were mostly in Jerusalem but we did spend one night in Tiberias just a couple days before it was shelled.  This was my first trip to the Holy Land.  I hope it won’t be the last.  The present escalation of the conflict was beginning when we left for Israel.  It got worse as we approached our departure.  I confess I was very anxious during the last few days, and only relaxed after the plane was in the air and well away from Tel Aviv.

From Father Mead: On The Scriptures

My grandfather spent his life working as a lobsterman; one of his sons was a lobsterman, the other a fisherman.  I know that sound advice, a number of nets, traps, and locations of fertile fishing grounds were passed from father to sons.  They were given the tried and true methods of fishing. 

From Father Mead: On The Scriptures

My grandfather spent his life working as a lobsterman; one of his sons was a lobsterman, the other a fisherman.  I know that sound advice, a number of nets, traps, and locations of fertile fishing grounds were passed from father to sons.  They were given the tried and true methods of fishing. 

From Father Beddingfield: Facing Down Demons

There have been a lot of demons in church over the last few weeks.  The Gospel for Sunday, June 25 included the optional verses of Mark 5:1-20, the story of the Gerasene man possessed of demons.  In that story Jesus drives the demons out of the man and the demons flee into a herd of pigs.  The pigs then run over the side of a mountain and are drowned.  Demons appeared again in Wednesday’s Mass reading, but this time from Matthew.  In this version of the story there are two people possessed by demons,

From the Rector: Perspective

The children’s formation program known as the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is called that because young children respond more deeply to the parable of the Good Shepherd than to any other proclamation of scripture.  In the Catechesis, scripture is read to the children from the Bible and there are materials that children work with to illustrate the lesson.  The Good Shepherd material is shown when John 10 is read.  The children invariably do something with it that the adults don’t do.  And that’s what I want to tell you about.

From the Rector: Momentum at Saint Mary’s

Late last spring Sister Barbara Jean, superior of the Community of St. John Baptist, approached me about the possibility of her order having a home for two or three sisters at Saint Mary’s.  A conversation and period of discernment began.  Her order started in England but its first work in the United States was here in Manhattan.  The sisters’ motherhouse is now in Mendham, New Jersey, and they are well known to many in our parish community.  From the beginning of the conversation the Board of Trustees and I have been very excited.

From the Rector: Corpus Christi

In the high Middle Ages the Mass became a sacrifice and not a meal.  Looking back, it seems almost impossible that any Christian community could learn to experience the Mass primarily as something other than a sacred banquet – an action that necessarily implies eating and drinking.  But the Church in those days acquired what Peter and the others did not have in the Acts of the Apostles: silver, gold and political power.  As a consequence, the Church almost lost the Lord’s Supper.

From the Rector: Trinity Sunday

In New Testament communities and in the first centuries of the Christian era, Christians struggled for the right language to speak about God.  Around the year 200 AD, if I recall correctly, we have our first record of someone using the word “Trinity” to refer to God.  For all of the differences among those who call themselves Christians, confessing God as Trinity defines the Christian community at its broadest and most inclusive.