FROM THE RECTOR: THREE GREAT SUNDAYS

When I was in Canada last year I noticed that the signs held up to direct traffic when a road was under construction had two words on them, “SLOW” (English) at the top, “LENT” (French) at the bottom.  “SLOW LENT” seemed like a good phrase, but Lent is not really slow in the Church. 

FROM FATHER SMITH: SURPRISED BY GOD’S HOLY WORD

William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536) is arguably the most gifted English-speaking translator of the Bible who ever lived.  His clear, simple, but elegant prose influenced all of his successors, including the translators of the King James Version.  Some of Tyndale’s work is famous and often-quoted, none of it more so than his rendering of Genesis 3:1-4, “But the serpent was subtler than all the beasts of the field…And the woman said unto the serpent, of the fruit of the trees in the garden we may eat,

From the Rector: Recent Research on Lent

Notre Dame professors Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson make some significant recent liturgical research available to the non-academic reader in their new book, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2011).  The book has me thinking about what people have been learning about this subject and what the new work means for worship today.

FROM THE RECTOR: CLUB RELIGION

Last Sunday there were fifteen of us at Sung Morning Prayer at 8:30 AM.  It was the kind of simple, lovely service that seems so right at Saint Mary’s.  Fourteen of the fifteen were sitting in the chancel; one person was in the nave, along with one of our ushers.  At the end of the service people turned to speak to those around them. 

FROM THE RECTOR: RITUAL AND REVELATION

I was still in seminary when the late Aidan Kavanagh’s Elements of Rite: A Handbook of Liturgical Style (New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1982) was published.  It’s part rant, but mostly it’s a theological essay on worship.

FROM THE RECTOR: LOOKING FOR A NEW BISHOP

Recently I ended up in conversation with several members of the clergy of our diocese at a lunch.  The talk turned to the search that has begun in our diocese for a “bishop coadjutor” – that is, a bishop who will take office as bishop of New York when the present bishop retires.  At the last annual diocesan convention on November 13, 2010, a plan was proposed to elect this bishop coadjutor at a special convention on October 29, 2011.  The convention adopted the necessary funding.  Our “Committee to Elect a Bishop” has begun its work.

FROM THE RECTOR: NEW FROM THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

This coming Sunday there’s a long gospel lesson.  It’s another part of the Sermon on the Mount.  This week we will hear two passages that have been omitted in our old lectionary.  The new passage is Matthew 5:21-37.  Previously, we did not hear the following:

FROM THE RECTOR: NOT SO SIMPLE

In the winter of 1978, when I was studying in Pakistan, I used to go to the 7:30 AM Eucharist at the Cathedral Church of the Resurrection in Lahore on Sunday mornings.  Sunday was the beginning of the work week.  After Mass, I went to eat breakfast at a new American hotel, my one “American” meal each week.

FROM THE RECTOR:  THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE

The most successful volume of the Church’s Teaching Series, published in 1979, is Liturgy for Living.  It’s still in print and still very useful.  It was co-authored by the late Charles Price, a systematic theologian who taught at the Virginia Theological Seminary, and by Louis Weil, then professor of liturgics at Nashotah House. 

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRISTIAN UNITY

What we know as the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity” originated with a small group of Episcopal clergy and nuns here in the Diocese of New York in 1908.  This group left the Church and became Roman Catholics in 1909. 

FROM THE RECTOR: CITY SNOW, CITY CHURCH

Tuesday night, January 11, as I walked home from dinner with friends on Tenth Avenue, snow had been falling and was still falling.  Down the avenue, I saw three or four snow sanitation trucks fitted with snow plows start to barrel up the street – Mayor Bloomberg clearly had decided there would be no failure this time to get the streets clear.  As I walked home, I saw something beautiful that I had never noticed before and I want to tell you about it.

FROM THE RECTOR: NOT DRILLS, NOT MAGIC

This Sunday is “The First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”  This is one of the commemorations of the calendar adopted by the Church with the new Prayer Book in 1979.  In a sense, the Episcopal Church already had this feast.  The 1928 Prayer Book introduced to our old lectionary the beginning of Mark’s gospel, with its account of Jesus’ baptism, on the Second Sunday after Epiphany.

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRISTMAS AND EPIPHANY

“Smells and bells – in liturgy, as in life – guarantee meaning by revealing Mystery,” writes Nathan Mitchell in his column for Worship in the January 2011 issue.  I’m not sure I would put it quite that way, but as rector of Saint Mary’s, I’ve got to love it.  His column this month is called “The Mute Sense” (Volume 85, Number 1, 75-85).  It begins with his memory of the smell of his church and the life he knew as a child in the farm country of the Midwest.  But his concerns are much deeper.

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRISTMAS AT SAINT MARY’S

A newly published book arrived from England this week.  It’s The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity by Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson.  Paul and Max are both professors of liturgy at Notre Dame.  This is the first book they have co-authored.  Bradshaw and Johnson share a commitment to reading historical evidence as straightforwardly and carefully as possible.  I’ve only had time to skim the chapter “Christmas and Epiphany.”  The chapter concludes with an observation that the liturgical celebrations of Christmas in Rome, in the latter part of the fourth century, include celebrations of Christ’s birth (Luke’s gospel) and celebrations of his incarnation (John’s gospel).

FROM THE RECTOR: STILL ADVENT, STILL LISTENING

Advent could be one day longer than it is this year, but these days, that’s not a problem at all.  I can remember as a child how hard it was to wait for Christmas Day.  The calendar didn’t have much to do with that.  Time has always been the same.  It is my experience of time that has changed over the years.  I expect it to continue to change.  Now, more than before, the length and breadth of Advent seems to me to be a real gift, one that seems to invite me to think about being committed to Christ.

FROM THE RECTOR: ANNIVERSARY OF CONSECRATION

This Sunday, December 12, 2010, marks the one hundred fifteenth anniversary of the consecration of the present church by the Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter, bishop of New York.  The first services in this new building had been held already on Sunday, December 8, 1895.  The bishop came four days later to consecrate it, that is, to set it apart “from all unhallowed, worldly, and common uses.”  The bishop and the rector, the Reverend Thomas McKee Brown, were clearly not rigid about the tradition that the service of consecration be the first service in a new church.

FROM THE RECTOR: 140 YEARS FOR CHRIST

On Wednesday, December 8, 2010, the Right Reverend Mark S. Sisk, bishop of New York, will be present as celebrant and preacher for the celebration of our parish’s patronal feast, the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  It will be the one hundred fortieth anniversary of worship at Saint Mary’s.

FROM THE RECTOR: WELCOME REAL ADVENT

The liturgical season with the most convoluted history is arguably Advent.  Like many celebrations of the Church year, it originated in the churches of eastern Mediterranean in the fourth century.  This isn’t surprising when one remembers Constantine founded Constantinople in 324 A.D and it supplanted Rome as the largest city in the empire.  When Advent moves to Italy in the fifth and sixth centuries, Advent (“coming”) was set aside to be a time to prepare for Christmas.

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRIST REIGNS

Twelve years ago, just before Christ the King Sunday 1998, I visited Saint Mary’s for the first time.  I was here to be interviewed for the position of rector.  As I opened the doors of the church and walked in, someone was at the organ thundering away.  He was playing Lo! he comes, with clouds descending.  The hymn’s customary tune, Helmsley – not St. Thomas, is powerful music to accompany the experience of walking into this church building church for the first time.  Some years later, and more than once, summer seminarian Peter Anthony would say to me as we walked through Saint Mary’s, “Father, you have a real church.”  Indeed, you and I do.

FROM THE RECTOR: WITHOUT WORDS

Clearing out some things the other day, I came across a letter from a member of the parish I served in Michigan City, Indiana.  Virginia McDavid is an English scholar.  Among her special interests is American linguistic geography.  Professor McDavid is also a dictionary usage editor.