From the Rector: Holy Week Faith

The first time I attended all the services of Holy Week was 1980, the year I went to seminary.  Before then, I had never been in a parish that offered all those services.  Since then, apart from three years of service, two in a parish that didn’t offer everything and my first year in Indiana, I’ve been in communities where the liturgies of this week were the center of everything.  That said, I know it’s taken me a long time to get a handle on how it all fits together.  The richness and beauty of Christian worship can be very seductive. But I think I’ve finally got it: Sunday Christian worship is the foundation of it all, even in Holy Week.

From the Rector: Inheritance and Vision

Many people in our parish community are busy right now with preparations for Holy Week and the Easter Triduum.  It all seems so easy once we get to the services on these days; but that’s because so many have been giving generously of their time and treasure.  When the great days come, this kind of preparation makes it possible for us to eat and drink with a special richness in remembrance of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Thank you to all who have helped and who will be helping as the days approach.

From Father Smith: “Rejoice, O Jerusalem …”

Longtime readers of this newsletter are probably acquainted with the section of our prayer list entitled “Grant them peace…”  We developed and started to publish that section of the list a couple of years ago after our archivist, Dick Leitsch, and a small group of volunteers, had finished a long-term project working with the parish’s burial registers.  Those registers, which go back to the parish’s founding in the last third of the nineteenth century are, it turns out, a gold mine of historical, sociological, genealogical, and ecclesiastical information.

From the Rector: When Eucharistic Signs Signify

If any of us were to walk into an assembly hall that was completely empty except for a table and what appeared to be a small empty pool, few of us would immediately think we were in a Christian church.  But a table and a pool are the fundamental signs that we are in a place where the Body of Christ gathers.  What’s going on?  What’s happened?  If table and pool, things that are primary and fundamental for the Christian assembly, no longer signify, then something is amiss.

From the Rector: Cleaning Up

One of the funniest movies I know is Cold Comfort Farm, made in 1995.  Based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Stella Gibbons (1902-1999), it’s the story of a young modern woman who helps her country relatives get unstuck.  She’s sophisticated, well-educated, but with no money.  She did inherit an interest in the family farm. 

From the Rector: New Direction

Chuck Metzger, the gym director where I work out, has been encouraging me to for a long time to exercise in the morning.  While Father Smith was away on vacation, I realized that the only way I could make time to get myself on the treadmill was to be on it by 7:00 AM.  So I got up and went.  The results were unexpected.  Chuck was right.

From the Rector: Humbly and Daily

It was our former organist and music director Robert McCormick who put me on to a word change in one of my favorite hymns, “Only-begotten, Word of God eternal.”  The hymn text is based on a ninth century song for the consecration of a church.  Maxwell Julius Blacker (1822-1888), a priest of the Church of England, was the basic translator and author of the text we now use.  It was sung at the preparation of the gifts at the Solemn Mass on Candlemas.  This hymn came into use in the Episcopal Church in The Hymnal 1940. 

From the Rector: Buttons and Oil

Last Saturday I unlocked the gate to the baptistery so I could get a small table.  As I went in I noticed what I thought was water on the floor all around the font.  As I looked to see if there was a leak I realized it wasn’t water.  It was oil.  It was sacred chrism.  Fortunately, Sister Laura Katharine was in the chancel too.  She cleaned up the chrism (and left the towel she used to be burned by the thurifer when he prepared coals for incense the next morning).  The young man we baptized at the Solemn Mass on the Feast of the Baptism of Christ knew he had been washed and knew he had been anointed.

From Sister Deborah Francis, C.S.J.B.: The Long Retreat and Saint Teresa

Once each year the Sisters of the Community of Saint John Baptist have a silent retreat that lasts five days.  We call it the “long retreat” and it is an important element in our Rule of Life.  This year, we increased the time devoted to prayer and reflection by reducing the number of offices to two per day, Lauds and Comp line, and by eliminating non-essential work from the daily schedule.

From The Rector: Biblical Unity

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, observed between the Feast of the Confession of Saint Peter, January 18, and the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, January 25, sprang from the vocations of two Episcopal Franciscans of the Diocese of New York, a priest, Paul Watson, and a nun, Lurana White.  They were cofounders of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement at Graymoor in 1899.  The observance is dated from 1908.  In 1909, the Graymoor Franciscans became Roman Catholics and have continued a particular witness and prayer for Christian unity.

From The Rector: Tragedy

It is hard to comprehend the scope of the tragedy that has hit the nation of Haiti.  Most of the towns and cities of that nation have been leveled.  The Roman Catholic archbishop has died.  His cathedral and our own cathedral, Holy Trinity, are in ruins.  The suffering is unspeakable.  One senses from news reports the enormity of the disaster.

From The Rector: Learnings

In my office I have a collection of bulletins from the Sundays I was away last winter on sabbatical.  Since then, I’ve been mulling over what I learned as I visited different parishes week by week.  Only once did I attend the same parish twice, that was to check out the early and the late services at the same place.  Much varied from parish to parish, but much was the same.  Mostly I was in California, but there were three Sundays in Europe and two Sundays in New York.

From The Rector: Christmas & Epiphany

As the fourth century of the Christian era began, Christianity was an illegal religion in the Roman world.  Some may have foreseen the inevitability of this new faith.  Few could have foreseen that when the century ended it would be the only legal religion in the Roman Empire.

From The Rector: Merry Christmas

As I write on Wednesday morning, the first signs of Christmas are appearing at Saint Mary’s.  The smell of freshly cut greens is far stronger than the customary smells of candle wax and incense.  Our Sunday Advent vestment set is put away for another year; vestments for Christmas are now hanging in the sacristy.  Many members and friends of the parish are giving time and energy so that our celebrations can be the best that they can be.

From The Rector: Christmas at Saint Mary’s

At Saint Mary’s we guard the days of Advent so we might enjoy the whole season fully.  We do the same thing during the Christmas Season.  If you come by the church before Christmas Eve, you may catch musicians practicing Christmas music.  You may see the Flower Guild at work or dozens of candlesticks being polished.  But it won’t be until Christmas Eve that our celebrations begin.

From The Rector: A Way of Life

Sometimes it’s hard to explain that Saint Mary’s traditions of worship aren’t a matter of style; they reflect a commitment to a way of life.  This is not immediately apparent to all who join us for worship.  Although there is a special glory to our church building, we are just ordinary people.  We come together week by week to be fed with Christ’s Body so we can live out our lives as members of his Body. 

From The Rector: Vision of our Founders

On December 8, 1870, the doors of the first church opened, and on that day, the first service in the new church of the new midtown parish, then located on the other side of what was called Longacre Square, was held. A Guide to the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin New York City (1999) notes that this first church, built “in a simple gothic style,” was unfinished as the parish’s work began. 

From The Rector: The New Church Year

The Christian year, in recent centuries, has begun four Sundays before Christmas Day.  To be honest, the more I learn about the Church calendar the less I seem to know.  It is an enormously complex subject.  For practical purposes, but admittedly not for scholarly ones, this is what we need to know.  This year Advent begins on Sunday, November 29.

From The Rector: Commitment to Christ

The Episcopal Church does not call the last Sunday of the Church year “Christ the King.”  In our Prayer Book it is simply “The Last Sunday after Pentecost.”  Yes, our prayers and lessons are about the kingship of Christ.  At Solemn Mass and at Evensong we will sing some of the greatest hymns on this theme.  I think our Episcopal Church’s particular decision merits wider and greater appreciation.

From The Rector: A Community of Prayer

Last month I attended the academic convocation at the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.  The preacher for the evening service was one of the honorary degree recipients, the Very Reverend Robert Willis, dean of Canterbury Cathedral.  He remarked that at Canterbury he was part of a “community of prayer” that had existed for over 1400 years.  Almost immediately I began to subtract 1870, the year in which the doors of our first church were opened, from 2009.