FROM THE RECTOR: GEORGE BLACKMORE HANDY, 1918-2012

George Handy died on May 9, 2012 at the age of ninety-three. He was born on June 5, 1918. He had been a member of the parish since his confirmation on May 6, 1927. He always carried with him a picture taken in front of the church that day. George was in knickers. In the picture you can see the stairwells that used to be in front of the parish house for bringing coal into the building—which have long since removed. George will be mourned not only by the local and wider parish community, but by countless visitors who remember his welcome and his smile. George had served as an usher here for more than a generation. He had also served as a member of the board of trustees.

FROM THE RECTOR: ASCENSION 2012

Ascension Day is a feast day I associate with being Episcopalian. When I started to go to the Episcopal Church in the 1970s, lots of parishes still had celebrations on this day—as Saint Mary’s always has had. Ascension Day is always forty days after Easter Day. It’s a “principal feast”—and we keep it that way. This year we are honored that the Right Reverend Richard F. Grein, XIV Bishop of New York will be preacher for the Solemn Mass.

FROM THE RECTOR: A DIFFERENT VISION

Saint Mary’s was organized with a particular purpose and vision. The founding rector, the Reverend Thomas McKee Brown, wrote a short history for the cornerstone of the first church, which was laid on April 6, 1868, just east of what was then Longacre Square, at 228 West 45th Street—two pictures of this church are now on display in Saint Joseph’s Hall. These two paragraphs are worth quoting in full:

FROM THE RECTOR: MEMORY AND KNOWLEDGE

I’m not a diarist, but I often wish I were. I’m pretty sure that sometime in my first years as a rector in Indiana I began to realize that every Holy Week I would be learning something new. This learning would take place not because we were doing something new, but because I was hearing or seeing something familiar in a different way. Sometimes this can make me feel not-so-bright. But knowledge is a grace, and grace has a way of inviting, if not dragging, us forward in life.

FROM THE RECTOR: GOD’S GLORY

In the story of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus said to Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” (John 14:40). Martha, and all the others who were with her, saw her brother Lazarus rise from the dead. But Lazarus’ rising is not God’s glory. God’s glory is God himself; God’s glory is Jesus. The word ‘glory’ captures the rich meaning of the Greek word doxa as well as one word can.

FROM THE RECTOR: EASTER WORDS

Jesuit liturgical scholar Robert Taft recounts a conversation between a Russian Orthodox priest and a French Jesuit about the role of teaching for conversion in Christ in an article published last fall that I found myself thinking about more than once during Holy Week. In the conversation, the French priest stressed the role of teaching. The Russian priest replied,

FROM THE RECTOR: A NEW EASTER DAY

The new lectionary has revised the order in which we will hear the four accounts of the resurrection. So, I took a look at the old lectionary, our new lectionary, the official Revised Common Lectionary on which our new lectionary is based, and the present lectionary of the Roman Church on whose 1969 lectionary all of these lectionaries were based. The most surprising discovery: we were never “required” to hear John’s account of the resurrection on Easter Eve or Easter Day—and we still aren’t. That said, John is now always an option on Easter morning and we will have it at all Easter morning Masses this year.

FROM THE RECTOR: A NEW HOLY WEEK

It turns out that “tradition” is a word I haven’t used very carefully for a long time, if ever. Tradition is not just what was done in the past. Tradition is what we are doing today with what has been handed on to us by those who have gone before. I picked this up after reading and rereading the conclusion of an article on daily Mass by the Jesuit liturgical scholar Robert Taft. He writes that tradition is “a living force whose contingent expressions,

FROM THE RECTOR: BEFORE THERE WAS EASTER

There is a great deal we just don’t know about the origins of Christian worship. The witness of the New Testament and other early Christian writings is not, in fact, as explicit as is often thought. Since the post-apostolic period, influential voices in every generation have tended to read the practices of their own era back into earlier texts. That said, we actually do know many important things about the worship of Christians in the first and second centuries. We know that before there was Easter, Christians assembled every week for community meals and for worship.

FROM THE RECTOR: ESSENTIALLY ONE

The ordination of our new bishop coadjutor, the Right Reverend Andrew M.L. Dietsche, at the cathedral last Saturday was the best service of the kind I have ever attended. Of course, we are privileged as a diocesan community to have such a great cathedral building. The presiding bishop of the Church presided and preached. There were many, many things to admire about the liturgy, the effort and the love that went into the service.

FROM FATHER SMITH: “HE SET MY FEET ON A CRAG, MADE MY STEPS FIRM”

In over my head. I grew up in Western New York, in a small town between Buffalo and Niagara Falls, where the Erie Barge Canal empties into the Niagara River. A few miles downriver from my hometown the Niagara begins to look the way most people imagine it. The current picks up speed. There are rushing cataracts and, before you know it, you’ve arrived at those famous Falls. However, in the town where my family lived, the river is placid, nothing like the wild thing that it is about to become; and so there are a number of small beaches on the riverbank there, as well as on a large island that sits in the middle of the river, where it is quite safe to swim.

FROM FATHER SMITH: EASTER IN LENT

A few weeks ago I was leading the adult-education class on Sunday morning. The class was part of a series, “What Episcopalians Believe,” and we were working our way through Samuel Wells’s very fine book of the same title(Morehouse Publishing, 2011). We’d reached the section of the book entitled “Salvation” and had listed the traditional ways in which the Church has tried to answer the question, “How does Jesus save us?” (pp. 23-25).

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.