From the Rector: The Day of Pentecost and Other Things

The Easter Season concludes as the sun sets on Pentecost.  After Solemn Evensong, the Easter candle will be extinguished along with the other candles in the chancel and it will be moved to the baptistery.  The ordinary time of the Church year will begin.  But before it’s all over we will have celebrated the conclusion of Eastertide in the best possible way.  The Right Reverend Richard F. Grein, XIV Bishop of New York, will be with us for the principal liturgy of the day at 11:00 AM to celebrate, preach and preside over the rites of Christian initiation.  In a real sense, the liturgy of the day will re-present us with the central mysteries of our faith.  Jesus Christ still rises and dies in the people he calls to faith.

From the Rector: Experiencing Prayer

When I was in my last year in seminary, I taught a class on the Eucharist at the parish where I served on Sundays.  When I got to the Nicene Creed I made some remark about it not being an early or essential part of the Eucharistic rite.  (It came into the rite first in Spain in the eighth century to combat heresy about the Trinity.)  I remember pointing out that the main creedal proclamation of the Eucharist was the Great Thanksgiving, the Eucharistic Prayer.  An older woman, a gentle, life-long, faithful Episcopalian, objected.  “The Creed is our prayer.  The consecration is the priest’s prayer.  Why do you want to take it away from us?”  It was an exchange that spoke volumes and I have never forgotten it.

From the Rector: Ascension Day Notes

Ascension Day celebrates the Risen Lord going to heaven.  It is one of the seven principal feasts of the Church year in our present calendar.  It has not always been thus.  The earliest and continuing pattern of Christian worship is the celebration of Sunday with the Eucharist in the morning and Evening Prayer at night.

From Father Mead: Open Doors

It can be a challenge competing vocally with the Fire Department of New York or an ambulance going past the church during Mass.  When the weather is warm the 47th Street and 46th Street doors of the church are open.  This allows some fresh Midtown air into the church and it opens our wonderful acoustics to the joyful sound of honking, car alarms, and sirens.  The fresh air really is a plus and the normal sounds of the city act as a reminder that we are in Times Square.  More importantly, the open doors offer an enormous welcoming gesture to those walking by the church. 

From the Rector: Starting Points

One of the many remarkable things about the first disciples, something that is true in all four gospels, was how slow they were to understand what Jesus’ presence in their lives would mean.  Even after his resurrection, their faith was unsure.  When they began to live out of their faith in his resurrection they became convinced of his presence and his gift of life, and then they began to discover the direction their own lives were to take.  Like love, faith is discovered not when we begin a relationship but in its unfolding.  And worship, like love and faith, finds its meaning in our lives as it unfolds.

From Father Beddingfield: Welcome Home, Sisters

There are times at Saint Mary’s when it almost seems as if the building says, “Thank you.”  During Lent, when we walk the Stations of the Cross, the aisles seem happy to be used and the walls seem proud to host images for reflection and prayer.  When the monstrance is raised in Benediction from the High Altar, it’s as though the sanctuary itself wants to say, “This is why I was made, thank you.”  And currently, with two nuns living in the Mission House, I can almost hear the rooms relaxing and the stairways settling into familiar sounds, as Anglican religious life returns to Saint Mary’s.  Sister Deborah Francis and Sister Laura Katharine are here and the building is very happy.

From the Rector: Easter Communion

I heard something on Maundy Thursday I had never heard before.  I heard something Jesus and those present in the Upper Room heard, the sound of feet being washed, the pouring of water, the pottery, the quiet movement of people.  I’ve been participating in the washing of feet every year since 1980 with the exception of the two years I served as a curate in a parish where the rite was not observed.  Sometimes I missed that sound, I’m sure, because a choir was singing an anthem.  But that hasn’t been the case at Saint Mary’s.  There’s plenty of silence.  One of the graces of the Easter rites this year for me was to have this connection made between past and present.  In its own way, the sound of the water on this night, in this place, among the Body of Christ, became for me a sacramental sign of our union with Christ.

From the Rector: Death and Resurrection

Easter Day begins this year on Saturday, April 7, at sunset.  As the Prayer Book says, “In darkness fire is kindled . . .” Very quickly, fire begins to light the faces of all who are near.  Then the celebrant says to the assembly, “Dear friends in Christ: On this most holy night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life, the Church invites her members, dispersed throughout the world, to gather in vigil and prayer.  For this is the Passover of the Lord, in which, by hearing his Word and celebrating his Sacraments, we share in his victory over death.”

From the Rector: Holy Week and Easter

Christians sometimes speak and act as if the Church and the Sacraments were realities existing apart from and independent of the People of God.  They are not.  With special focus and intensity the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter invite us to know Christ and to be the Body of Christ.

From the Rector: More than Ashes and Palms

A casual observer of Christian practice in New York City probably would need to be forgiven for thinking that ashes and palms are important elements of Christian religion.  More people go into churches in our city on Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday than they do on Christmas Day and Easter Day. Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday are both connected in significant ways to the most important Sundays of the year.  But Christianity is not about palms or ashes.  It’s about Jesus’ death and resurrection, which the Church celebrates every Sunday of the year.

From the Rector: Annual Meeting of the Congregation

On Sunday, March 18, the Annual Meeting of the Congregation of Saint Mary’s will be held in Saint Joseph’s Hall after the Solemn Mass.  Reports of the Board of Trustees, parish organizations and clergy and staff will be presented.  The congregation will elect two delegates and two alternates to serve as our representatives in the convention of the Diocese of New York.  In recent years the meeting has lasted just over thirty minutes.  Copies of the annual report will be available after the meeting by mail or e-mail to members of the parish who are not able to attend.

From the Rector: Saint Mary’s Mission House

On Thursday, March 15, Saint Mary’s Mission House will again become a community house for women religious.  We will formally welcome Sr. Deborah Francis, Sr. Laura Katherine and the Community of St. John Baptist to the parish at Solemn Evensong on Sunday, April 22 (mark your calendars).  The leadership of CSJB and of the parish believes we have a unique opportunity at the beginning of the twenty-first century to renew both parish life and the work of the sisters.

From the Rector: Our Legacies

Newer members of the local and wider parish community may not know that last year we formed “Saint Mary’s Legacy Society” to recognize those who have made a bequest or other gift to Saint Mary’s when they die.  Some may not know the extraordinary building in which we worship was built because of a bequest.  Miss Sara Louie Cooke died in 1892 and left Saint Mary’s the bulk of her estate, then about $800,000.  Her faith in the future of Saint Mary’s inspires us all.  The parish has survived through good economic times and bad in no small part because so many have cared so deeply about ensuring the work and witness of this great parish through gifts made when they died.

From the Rector: No Time for Prelates

Earlier this month I visited Father Ryan Lesh, vicar, Christ Church, Red Hook, for a few days.  Many know Ryan is an anesthesiologist and was on the faculty of two distinguished medical schools before going to seminary from this parish.  While I was with him I remembered that he had written a paper in seminary on the medical and theological response to the introduction of anesthesia.  When anesthesia was discovered, many people were not in favor of its use for surgery or dentistry.  Pain was a biblically-sanctioned, spiritual tool for helping people remember their dependence on God.

From the Rector: Transfiguration

Since the current Prayer Book was adopted, the gospel for the final Sunday before Lent is always an account of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain (Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-9, or Luke 9:28-36).  Prayer Book Studies 19 (1970), done in preparation for the present book, notes that this “serves as a significant link between the revelation of the Lord’s glory and in his Passion.  It is thus made both a climax of “epiphany” and a preparation for his “exodus” (page 26). 

From Father Beddingfield: Feasting and Fasting

I love food.  I love cooking it, sharing it and eating it.  One reason why our Super Bowl party was so much fun last week was because of all the various things people brought to eat.  There was chili, salsa and salad, drinks and desserts, and even what someone called “people chow,” an odd, gravel-looking confection of chocolate and sugar.  I continue to enjoy good food and the feasting it provides.  But since returning from Honduras a few weeks ago, I’m also aware of some complicated and conflicted feelings I have around food. 

From Father Beddingfield: Feasting and Fasting

I love food.  I love cooking it and sharing it and eating it.  One reason why our Super Bowl party was so much fun last week was because of all the various things people brought to eat.  There was chili, salsa and salad, drinks and desserts, and even what someone called, “people chow,” an odd, gravel-looking confection of chocolate and sugar.  I continue to enjoy good food and the feasting it provides.  But since returning from Honduras a few weeks ago, I’m also aware of some complicated and conflicted feelings I have around food. 

From the Rector: Eight Years On

On Saturday morning, December 5, 1998, the Board of Trustees met and voted to call me to be the ninth rector of Saint Mary’s.  As the meeting ended, Gerald McKelvey, acting president of the board, called the Bishop of New York, the Right Reverend Richard F. Grein, to ask formally his permission to extend the call.  The bishop gave permission.  The board went to the midday Mass.  After the Mass Gerald called.  I was sitting at my typewriter in the rectory study in Michigan City, a beautiful oak paneled room with a large fireplace.  I thought I might be called as rector, but one is never sure.  I pretty much collapsed after Gerald’s call, knowing that my life had changed.

From the Rector: Anglican Unity

Tuesday’s gospel at weekday Mass was from Mark.  Jesus’ disciples were plucking grain from the field on the Sabbath and it was noticed.  The Pharisees were observing the rules and observing the behavior of others to make sure all were following the rules in the way they believed the rules should be followed.  What are our rules as Anglicans?

From the Rector: Unity

I was a new student at Nashotah House in the fall of 1980 when I first encountered what would become our hymnal’s standard tune for the contemporary version of the Lord’s Prayer.  The tune was written by McNeil Robinson in 1973 while he was serving at Saint Mary’s as organist.  I have always liked the tune and, although I haven’t revisited the issue with any scholars lately, I seem to recall that the contemporary version of the prayer is actually a slightly more faithful rendering of the Greek than the one which we use and is now almost universal among English speakers.