From the Rector: Looking Forward

We have in the parish archives the first page of a letter from Edwin S. Gorham, a member of the Board of Trustees, addressed to Howard Dohrman, another member of the board.  The first two paragraphs are about the actions of another member of the board, Elliott Daingerfield.  The letter is dated October 10, 1914.  I quote the first two paragraphs in full, after which the letter continues with a different subject:

From the Rector: Public Sacred Space

Sometime in the next few weeks cold weather will arrive and it will be necessary to keep the inner entrance doors of the church closed.  During the warm weather, there is something remarkable about the distinctive character of Saint Mary’s.  One useful way to think of our church building is as “public sacred space.”

From the Rector: Fresh Paint

The sextons are painting in the Mission House.  They’ve just begun and the difference is already amazing.  It’s one of the many signs of new life that are coming our way this fall at Saint Mary’s.  I want to make a few remarks about our parish’s direction and energy.

From the Rector: Some Clergy History

The first two rectors of Saint Mary’s, the Reverend Thomas McKee Brown and the Reverend George Michael Christian, were both married men.  They and their families lived in the rectory where I now live in the northwest corner of the church complex.  I don’t know anything about the marital status of the first assistants to Father Brown when the parish was on West 45th Street.  But once the parish moved to its present home, they were always single.

From the Rector: Learnings in Luke

One of our parish friends from Perth, Australia, the Reverend David Wood, rector, Grace Church, Joondalup, and Anglican chaplain to Edith Cowan University, Perth, sends me a copy of his sermon every week.  In this past Sunday’s sermon he wrote, “Jerusalem stands for all that matters most, for all that is most real . . . ”  His remark reminded me of something I am still trying to get on top of as a preacher during this year when our Sunday readings come primarily from Luke.

From the Rector: Crosses

When a friend was in town a couple of weeks ago we walked down Ninth Avenue from Forty-seventh Street to the World Trade Center.  I don’t go to that site very often.  And I don’t think I had been down there since the cross made of steel girders that was found in the wreckage of September 11, 2001 had been moved from its original site to the Church Street façade of Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Church.  I know the cross had to be moved for construction – and one can only imagine the tiresome lawsuits that would have been engendered by a “Christian” religious symbol remaining in its earlier place.  I’m glad the cross is still nearby, less than a block away, within sight of where the towers stood.  Words cannot begin to encompass all that that cross speaks.

From Father Smith: Anglican Identity

Anyone who spends any time at all at Saint Mary’s soon discovers that we take baptism pretty seriously.  Led by the Rector, we are enthusiastic advocates of the rediscovery of the foundational importance of baptism to the life of the Church.  For us, baptism is essential, life-giving, joyous, awe-inspiring: “dying and rising with Christ,” new life, new creation, reception into the “household of God,” becoming a “member of the Body of Christ,” gaining a share in Christ’s “eternal priesthood,” seeing holy oil glistening on the new Christian’s forehead as she is “sealed by the Holy Spirit.”  These are the big themes.  They go to the heart of the matter.  It can still send shivers up and down the spine to hear the bishop say, “You are marked as Christ’s own forever.” Forever.  Makes you stop and think.  

From Father Mead: Christian Formation

I am waiting for a sign.  On Monday I ordered a large sign with this fall’s Christian Formation schedule on it.  The sign is supposed to be finished by the end of the week.  It is my hope that this sign will bring attention to the classes that we are offering this fall at Saint Mary’s.  Such a sign is a good way to promote something: it’s big, it’s colorful, and (hopefully) eye-catching . . . but why stop with just a sign?  I don’t want people to see what we are doing this fall; I want people to come to these events.  In that vein, I am going to use this (and probably every other) opportunity to promote our fall Christian Formation curriculum. 

From the Rector: Transition and Continuity

I invite you to be present especially for the Solemn Mass this Sunday, August 19, as Father John Beddingfield is celebrant and preacher for his last Sunday at Saint Mary’s as one of our curates.  A special reception is planned to honor him and his partner Erwin de Leon following the Mass.  I am delighted that John has been called to be rector of All Souls Memorial Church, Washington, D.C.  But I think he knows and I’m sure the parish community knows how much he will be missed.  Father’s last day on duty with us, however, will be Saturday, August 25.  His first Sunday at All Souls will be September 9.

From the Rector: Assumption

One of the most important feasts of our year at Saint Mary’s is August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  If you are new to Saint Mary’s I especially invite you to join us on Wednesday of this week for the Solemn Mass at 6:00 PM.  The church will be full.  The music will be glorious.  The reception following Mass continues our celebration.

From the Rector: Our Story Continues

In 1867, two men, one layman, Henry Kingland, and one priest, Thomas McKee Brown, went to see the bishop of New York.  The city was growing.  What we call the Oxford Movement, a renewal of the catholic heritage of the protestant Church of England, was beginning to take root throughout what would come to be known as the Anglican Communion.  Mr. Kingland and the Rev. Mr. Brown, as our founder was known at that time, asked the bishop where a new parish “on a thoroughly Catholic basis” might be needed (The Story of St. Mary’s, New York, 1931, Newbury Frost Read, page 16).  With the bishop’s encouragement and blessing, Kingland and Brown began to look in the neighborhood of Longacre Square, now called Times Square.  There were three adjacent vacant lots owned by John Jacob Astor, Jr.

From the Rector: Father Beddingfield Accepts Call

All Souls’ Church, Washington, D.C. has called the Reverend John Floyd Beddingfield to be their rector.  Father has accepted the call.  The Bishop of Washington has given his permission.  I want to invite you to join me in thanking John for the great work he has done as a member and then as curate of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin.  His last Sunday with us will be August 19 when he will be celebrant and preacher for the 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM Masses.  A reception to honor him and his partner Erwin de Leon will follow the 11:00 AM Solemn Mass.  His first Sunday at All Souls’ will be September 9.  I could not be more happy for him – or more proud.

From the Rector: Belief and Ministry

A seminarian from Saint Stephen’s House, Oxford, arrived at Saint Mary’s this week for a five-week stay.  His name is Simon Morris.  He’s from the diocese of Rochester, England.  He will begin his final year at Saint Stephen’s in the fall and is to be ordained in spring 2008.  Saint Stephen’s House places their students in a parish during every summer so they can get some insight into what the future may hold for them as parish priests.  The American Church is not the same as the English Church, of course.  But we have much in common.  Simon is a delightful young man with a ready smile and a wonderful sense of humor and commitment.  I’m delighted he is with us and very honored that the vice-principal at Saint Stephen’s House asked if we would accept a student this summer.

From the Rector: The Importance of Christ

“Father, you have a real church,” one of our parish’s English clergy friends of Saint Mary’s said to me not so very long ago when he was visiting New York.  He was admiring more than the architecture and furnishings of Saint Mary’s – which are easy to “read” and to admire.  Saint Mary’s is a living and active witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Lives are being changed here and elsewhere because of the ministry of this parish.  But there are other legitimate ways of being and doing church.  Neither of us would ever say there weren’t lots of real churches around, Protestant, Orthodox or Roman.  We’re Anglicans; we just don’t think that way.

From the Rector: Last Year in Jerusalem

I arrived in Israel with friends on July 7, 2006 at Ben Gurion Airport.  It was a first visit to Israel for all six of us.  Our visit was a pilgrimage.  The focus of our journey was Jerusalem, the place Jesus loved above all others.  It is the city that is at the heart of God’s love for the world.  It is at the center of history in the unfolding of God’s kingdom.

From Father Mead: Peter, Paul and Independence Day

Friday, June 29 is the annual celebration of Saints Peter and Paul – at Saint Mary’s our primary celebration is a Sung Mass at 6:00 PM.  The two saints have shared this date since at least the third century when three different liturgies (one for Peter, one for Paul, and one for both Peter and Paul at the catacombs) were celebrated in different places around the city of Rome.  Both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome under Nero (between 54-68 AD).  Though there are no hard and fast traditions indicating that they were martyred on the same day (or for that matter in the same year), the strange doubling of observances for both Peter and Paul has led some to conclude that they were.  I think it is an intriguing idea, even if it’s somewhat dubious.

From the Rector: Mary, John, Peter, Paul & Michael

June 24 is the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist.  June 29 is the Feast of Saint Peter & Saint Paul, Apostles.  August 15 is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  September 29 is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels.  At Saint Mary’s these four major feast days are celebrated on Sunday when they fall on a Sunday.  There are other feast days which a parish might choose to celebrate on a Sunday.  (The rules for all of this can be found in the Prayer Book on page 16 in the section labeled “Sundays.”)

From the Rector: Forgiveness

On the bulletin board in my office I put up a card sent by the board of directors of the Association of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.  It’s a drawing of the world and a figure of Jesus, arms outstretched, over the world, done by a young child named Katherine.  She wrote this above Jesus, “He would do something nobody would ever think of.”

From the Rector: The Body and Blood of Christ

In September 1867, a young priest, Thomas McKee Brown, was one of the first three associates of the American Congregation of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament.  Founded in England in 1862, the society was part of the catholic renewal movement beginning to take hold of Anglican Christians around the world.  The Eucharist was at the heart of Father Brown’s ministry as he began to plan with the Bishop of New York and a group of laymen the parish that would become the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin.

From the Rector: The Trinity

When I ask the question, “What is the most important belief of Christians?” I give full marks for two answers: either, Jesus died and rose from the dead, or, God is the Holy Trinity, one God in Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.