FROM THE MUSIC DIRECTOR: WHAT IS NEW AND WHAT IS OLD

In many and various ways here at Saint Mary’s, we are constantly bearing witness to both the ancient and the modern.  Every day, our liturgy places at its heart the body and blood of our Lord, which we celebrate in a special way this Sunday on Corpus Christi, a feast that rises first in France in the early 1200s and is then extended to the whole of the Western church in 1264 (relatively late in liturgical terms, the distant past for most modern people).

FROM FATHER SMITH: THE GOD WHO WORKS WONDERS

Let me begin by quoting a passage from The Lenten Triodion of the Orthodox Church: “O Trinity uncreated and without beginning, O undivided Unity, three and one, Father, Son and Spirit, a single God; Accept this our hymn from tongues of clay; As if from mouths of flame.

FROM THE RECTOR: BAPTISM AND COMMUNION

From coast to coast – and across Manhattan for that matter – one can find parishes where Holy Communion is offered at Mass to everyone whether a person is baptized or not.  The intention in these parishes is to include all who have come for worship in the fellowship of Christ’s Table.  As the Sunday bulletin of the Washington National Cathedral puts it, “All who seek God and a deeper life in Christ are welcome to receive Holy Communion.”  What is also being said without saying so is this: baptism is no longer necessary.

FROM THE RECTOR: EASTER WORSHIP

We bought a bigger Paschal candle this year, a fifty-five inch one instead of the forty-inch one we had purchased for many years.  Last year, the smaller size almost didn’t make it through Eastertide.  This candle burns in its stand by the high altar whenever the church is open during the fifty days of Easter. 

FROM THE RECTOR: ANGLICAN CENTRE IN ROME

My first two years at Nashotah House Seminary were the last two years the late Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury (1961–1974) was permitted by his physicians to travel to the United States.  He and his wife Joan Ramsey were very generous with students in so many ways, especially with their time.  Bishop Ramsey was a very fine confessor.  The only time he ever presided at a Great Vigil of Easter was at Nashotah in the spring of 1982, just before he left the United States for the last time.

FROM THE RECTOR: WE ARE WHAT WE READ

“You are what you eat” is a common expression.  It might be fair to say, especially of different Christian denominations and congregations, “You are what you read in worship.”  Since Advent Sunday of the current church year, we have begun to use the Episcopal Church’s version of the “Revised Common Lectionary” (RCL).  As we’ve begun to use the RCL, I have continued to learn new things about who we have been and who we’ve become.

FROM THE RECTOR: FEEDING HIS FLOCK

The tenth chapter of John’s gospel is the great New Testament proclamation of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  In earlier Prayer Books, a passage from this gospel was always read on what we now call “The Third Sunday of Easter.”  With the new book, it is always read on “The Fourth Sunday of Easter.” 

FROM THE RECTOR: EMOTIONAL FIELDS

I can’t remember when I first attended the service that is called in the Prayer Book “The Celebration of a New Ministry.”  Sadly, these services are never really very good.  The problem is much more than a particular congregation’s unfamiliarity with the service.  I think the problem lies elsewhere. 

FROM THE RECTOR: A HAPPY EASTER

Holy Week and Easter were a very happy time at Saint Mary’s this year.  It was not a week without its challenges and its losses.  As I write on the morning of Thursday, April 28, we are waiting to hear from friends and members of the community in Alabama after the storms that have claimed so many lives.  Death has not been absent from us in our near and wider parish community during the past two weeks.  But, we believe in the midst of death we are in life.

FROM THE RECTOR: EASTER DAY

Sandra Schneiders recounts a conversation with her teacher, New Testament scholar Raymond Brown, a few weeks before his death.  Brown’s last major work was a two volume commentary on the passion narratives of the four gospels.  She wanted to know if Brown was going to write on the resurrection.

FROM THE RECTOR: MAIN EVENTS

There are twenty-nine services offered at Saint Mary’s between Saturday evening, April 16, and Sunday evening, April 24 – and I’m not counting the parish clergy sitting for confessions after the two services on Good Friday.  But, all services and days are not equal.  I think it is fair to say, that if you wanted to rank the two most important services of the week they would be first, the Great Vigil of Easter, on Saturday, April 23, at 7:00 PM and, second, the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, April 17, at 11:00 AM.

FROM FATHER SMITH: LEARNING TO SWIM

One afternoon while I was on vacation, I spent a leisurely couple of hours at the pool where I swim two or three times a week.  I had done my laps and was sitting at the side of the pool reading the newspaper (who needs Florida when you can have Midtown Manhattan?).  Suddenly a large group of young children, both boys and girls, arrived for their swimming lesson. 

FROM THE RECTOR: BEHIND THE ROSES

In the nineteenth century, the Anglo-catholic movement in the Anglican Communion inspired a revival of the Church’s life and mission, and not just among its adherents.  It helped to shape the changes that would come across the denomination in the future.  The movement, of course, did not sweep all before it.

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: