FROM THE RECTOR: MEMORY AND HOPE

I’ve just discovered a book that I’m pretty sure would have influenced a lot of the thinking and writing I have done over the last decade or so if I had read it earlier. The book, Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (2000), was edited by Notre Dame Professor Maxwell Johnson.  It is a collection of essays by fourteen liturgists and theologians from different denominations. Johnson takes his title from an essay in the book by the late Thomas Talley (1924-2005),

FROM THE RECTOR: EASTER FAITH IN LENT

No priest is at all prepared to face the First Day of Lent in New York City, unless perhaps he or she grew up here. It really is “Ash” Wednesday for the huge number of people who present themselves in churches to be marked with the sign of the cross in ashes and to hear the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” More people enter churches in this city on Ash Wednesday than on any other day of the year. It’s a day when our parish is, with respect, “among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27).

FROM THE RECTOR: ABOUT EVENSONG

Solemn Evensong on February 1, the Eve of the Presentation, was really wonderful.  I’ve been thinking about it. I want to share my thoughts about why it was such a special service of worship. First and foremost, it was the fruit of the rich, regular pattern of worship we know at Saint Mary’s. But, stand-alone “Solemn Evensong” without sermon or Eucharistic Benediction is not a service we do very often—just on the eves of our principal feasts when the calendar permits.

FROM THE RECTOR: ORDINATION OF A DEACON

The Right Reverend C. Franklin Brookhart, bishop of Montana, will ordain Mary Julia Jett as a deacon on Monday, February 6, at 6:00 PM at Saint Mary’s. Mary is in her second year at the General Theological Seminary. With the permission of our own bishop, she will be an assisting deacon in the parish until graduation in May, 2013. Many know her from her service at the altar. On Sunday mornings she also assists Deacon Weiner Tompkins in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. New York Polyphony will sing at the ordination. All are invited to attend the service and the reception which follows.

FROM THE RECTOR: CANDLEMAS 2012

The Right Reverend Mark S. Sisk, bishop of New York, will be at Saint Mary’s on Thursday, February 2, the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, commonly called “Candlemas.” He will be celebrant and preacher for the principal service of the day at 6:00 PM: Blessing of Candles, Procession & Solemn Pontifical Mass. February 2 is forty days after Christmas Day. According to the chronology of Luke’s gospel, the baby Jesus was brought to the temple on this fortieth day and recognized as the Savior.

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRISTIAN UNITY BEGINS IN TRUTH

During the run up to Christmas, a remark at the beginning of Raymond Brown’s The Birth of the Messiah [Updated edition, 1993] caught my attention, “I see no reason why a Catholic’s understanding of what Matthew and Luke meant in their infancy narratives should be different than a Protestant’s” (8).  I marked it.  I knew I would be writing in January about The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and we are in it from January 18, The Confession of Saint Peter, through January 25,

FROM THE RECTOR: NO ORDINARY TRADITON

“Ordinary Time” is a phrase that has been used in the liturgical books of the Roman Catholic Church since 1970.  It is a phrase that entered the Prayer Book when our new lectionary was adopted in 2006.  The words “Ordinary Time” are now being used to describe “The Season after Pentecost” and what is now called the “Season of Epiphany.”  There is no particularly good reason for “Ordinary Time” to be included as well.  (For the record, “Season of Epiphany” is new to the Prayer Book.  It has been called simply, “Epiphany Season.”)

FROM THE RECTOR: THEOLOGY IN COOKING

I’ve been finding theology in cookbooks since my seminary days—and finally, I have found it in the writing of Julia Child (1912-2004).  But I get ahead of myself.

FROM THE RECTOR: OUR HAPPY NEW YEAR

It has not been a quiet week in Times Square – and I don’t expect it to be a quiet week in Times Square, or at Saint Mary’s, until the middle of January.  It really won’t be quiet, relatively speaking, in our neighborhood until the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday on Monday, January 16.  If past is prologue, the crowds will start to reappear again as the “Washington’s Birthday” – still the official name for the federal holiday on the third Monday in February – weekend begins.

FROM THE RECTOR: BORN THIS DAY

The date of Jesus’ birth is lost to history, but the fact of his birth is not.  The reasons Jesus’ birth is celebrated on December 25 are also lost to history.  Rereading the critical survey of what we know about Christmas in Paul Bradshaw’s and Maxwell Johnson’s The Origins of Feast, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity (2011) brought to mind Raymond Brown’s (1928-1998) comments on the New Testament’s understanding of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God in his book The Birth of the Messiah (2nd ed., 1993).  It’s not at all as straightforward as one might think.

FROM THE RECTOR: ADVENT & CHRISTMAS

On Christmas Eve, there will be two services in the evening, Sung Mass at 5:00 PM and Procession & Solemn Mass at 11:00 PM.  On Christmas Day, Sunday, December 25, and on New Year’s Day, Sunday, January 1, 2012, the church will be open from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.  Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fall on Sunday this year, but there will be only one service on each of those days.  On December 25, the service at 11:00 AM will be Solemn Mass & Procession to the Crèche.  On New Year’s Day, there will be Solemn Mass at 11:00 AM.

FROM THE RECTOR: LECTIONARY PROJECT CONTINUES

When Father Matthew Mead left Saint Mary’s to take up work in his new parish, I took over two jobs that I had not done before.  I update much of the web page and I have taken over what we call Saint Mary’s Lectionary Project.  The online lectionary is intended to make it easy for people to study the Sunday lessons and for readers at services to prepare to read.

FROM THE RECTOR: PATRONAL FEAST

Saint Mary’s opened the doors of its first church on December 8, 1870.  Since then, December 8 has been one of the most important days of the year in our common life.  Our patronal celebration begins, as is our custom, on the eve, Wednesday, December 7, with Solemn Evensong at 6:00 PM.  A quartet from the choir will sing a setting by Orlando Gibbons at this service.  On Thursday, December 8, the principal Mass of the day will be at 6:00 PM.  James Kennerley will play a recital at 5:30 PM.  A reception follows the evening Mass.  It’s a day when many friends from the wider parish community are able to be with us.  The Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is always a great day here.

FROM THE RECTOR: NEW RESEARCH ON ADVENT

I began reading the late Raymond Brown’s short books on the Sunday readings while I served in Baton Rouge.  In a footnote in the last book of the series, Brown made what he called a personal criticism of the readings appointed for Advent.  He thought the Church should “prepare for Christmas by a different type of Sunday readings” (Christ in the Gospels of the Ordinary Sundays: Essays on the Gospel Readings of the Ordinary Sundays in the Three-Year Liturgical Cycle [Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1998], 38).

FROM THE RECTOR: THE TABERNACLE OF GOD

On Wednesday, November 16, Mr. Viggo Rambusch, Rambusch Decorating Company, assisted our sextons Mario Martinez and Tony Santiago in removing the high altar tabernacle so that the lock could be sent out for repair.  I’m not sure the tabernacle has ever been removed from the altar since it was installed in April 1947 – thank you, Dick Leitsch for locating this information in the records of the board of trustees.  As we go to press, I am hopeful that the tabernacle may be back in service before Sunday.

From THE RECTOR: MONEY IN CHURCH

Growing up Southern Baptist, I was aware of money in church mostly through the collection.  I can’t remember when I first put money or even my own envelope in an offering plate.  Looking back, I can’t remember any sermon or teaching about money.  But for Baptists, the general expectation about Christian giving was the tithe –

From FATHER SMITH: STEWARDSHIP CAMPAIGN 2012

During the past year, a man who works in the neighborhood has joined us off and on for Morning Prayer.  He’s a young man, young to me, at least.  He’s in his late thirties, I suppose.  He’s not yet comfortable enough to sit with us in choir, but he comes right to the front of the church and sits in the first row.  This week, when we sang Morning Prayer on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, there he was, singing softly out there in the nave.  I suspect that plainsong is a bit mysterious to him, but he’s figuring it out, joining in, adding his voice and prayers to ours, praising God at the beginning of the day.

From the rector: LEADERSHIP IN WORSHIP

Saint Mary’s is about worship.  Since the beginning the parish community has organized its common life according to the calendar of the Church year.  This active and particular commitment to the calendar of the Church distinguishes us, and a very few other congregations across the Episcopal Church,

From the rector: AUTHORITY OF RITE

Louis Weil called my attention to a quotation in an article by the Jesuit scholar Robert F. Taft in the current issue of Worship (85, September 2011, 406), the liturgical journal published by the monks of Saint John’s Abbey (Roman Catholic), Collegeville, Minnesota.  Taft was writing about the distinction some liturgical theologians have made between what the church does in worship (theologia prima – primary theology)

From the rector:

From the Rector: Prevent Us, O Lord

There have been four American Prayer Books, 1789, 1892, 1928 and 1979.  The 1928 Prayer Book famously removed a woman’s promise to obey from the marriage service.  But language that was obscure and even archaic largely survived in the 1928 Prayer Book.  Vouchsafe is the only word dictionary editors would call “obscure” that comes to mind which still finds a place in our current book.