FROM THE RECTOR: HOLY WEEK 2014

Holy Week begins at Saint Mary’s on Saturday evening, April 12, with the Sunday Vigil Mass at 5:00 PM. On Sunday morning, there are two Eucharists: Liturgy of the Palms & Sung Mass at 9:00 AM and Liturgy of the Palms, Procession through Times Square & Solemn Mass at 11:00 AM. The Communications Office of the Episcopal Church will be filming the 11:00 AM Liturgy of the Palms & Procession through Times Square—it should be online sometime on Palm Sunday afternoon.

FROM THE RECTOR: APPROACHING HOLY WEEK

While working on the sermon for last Sunday I realized that one of my favorite prayers is not as true to scripture as it probably should be. It’s the prayer we use at Mass at the conclusion of the prayers of the people when there is no confession of sin (during Eastertide and on principal and major feasts). It’s so familiar that I’ve never really given it a second thought—I’ve just enjoyed it. This is the prayer:

FROM FATHER PACE: STATIONS

Last week as a member of the congregation I attended Stations of the Cross, which is offered here during Lent on Friday evenings at 6:30 PM. I have been present at many Stations of the Cross services during Lent over the years both as officiant and as observer; but, for several reasons that I will explain below, the service really moved me on this particular evening.

FROM THE RECTOR: ENCOUNTERING JESUS

When Jesus read from Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21), he was the only person in the room who had the text in front of him. Until the industrialization of printing, “listening” remained a normative experience across many settings of life. It’s not surprising that the act of listening is significant in all of the gospels. Two examples: Jesus concludes the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-9; Matthew 13:1-23; Luke 8:4-15) with the words, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” and in John Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).

FROM FATHER SMITH: “A BROKEN AND CONTRITE SPIRIT”

Sydney Harris (1917-1986) was a journalist and syndicated columnist whose work, at one point, appeared in more than 200 daily newspapers. In his column, “Strictly Personal,” and in a recurring feature entitled, “Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things,” he shared with his readers various discoveries, insights, observations, and bits of wisdom. He was particularly good at constructing the short, terse, well-balanced sentence that said a great deal in very few words (not a bad strategy when your typical reader is reading your column while eating her breakfast cereal). One of Harris’s aphorisms, often quoted, goes like this: “Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.”

FROM THE RECTOR: REASSESSING LENT

Nicholas Russo is a liturgical scholar and an assistant undergraduate dean at Notre Dame. While looking online to see if his dissertation, “The Origins of Lent” (Notre Dame, 2009), had been published—it has not, I discovered a short essay he wrote last year for the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University. It’s called, “The Early History of Lent.” Russo begins with what we thought we knew about Lent just a few decades ago and continues with what we know about the origins of Lent today. I quote from the last paragraph:

FROM THE RECTOR: PREPARATION FOR EASTER

The fundamental purpose of the gospels is to proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus. Everything else is secondary to this Good News. For all of their commonality, each of the evangelists writes about Jesus very much in his own way. If the purpose of Lent is to prepare to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection at Easter, one way to prepare could be to try to hear again what Mark, Matthew, Luke and John wanted us to know about Jesus so we could have faith in his death and resurrection. If I may make a suggestion for you for Lent: read a gospel, and then read another. Keep reading—they aren’t long—until you bring Mark, Matthew, Luke and John (read in this order) to Holy Week.

FROM THE RECTOR: “MOST HOLY OF SEASONS”

This morning when I read an advertisement which describes Lent as “the most holy of seasons,” I read it again to make sure I was reading it correctly. I was—and it made me wonder if someone had unintentionally said something about his or her experience of the church year. Lent “more holy” than Easter, Christmas or Advent? Then I thought about what Saint Mary’s will be like on March 5, 2014, the First Day of Lent.

FROM THE RECTOR: LOOKING AHEAD TO LENT

For some years now I have been thinking about how we might once again make use of what the present Prayer Book calls “The Great Litany.” Its principal governing rubric states it is, “To be said or sung, kneeling, or standing, or in procession; before the Eucharist or after the Collects of Morning or Evening Prayer; or separately, especially in Lent and on Rogation Days” (The Book of Common Prayer [1979] 148).

FROM THE RECTOR: SERMON ON THE MOUNT

We missed the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount on Sunday, February 2, because the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord took precedence. Our Sunday gospels will continue to be from this sermon until the Sunday before Lent when the gospel is the account of Jesus’ transfiguration. The Sermon on the Mount is the longest of five speeches Jesus gives in Matthew. It begins famously, “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 5:1).

FROM THE RECTOR: CANDLEMAS 2014

The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, commonly called Candlemas, is celebrated on Sunday this year. The Most Reverend Frank T. Griswold, XXV Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, will be with us for the 11:00 AM service, Blessing of Candles, Procession & Solemn Pontifical Mass. Blessing of Candles & Said Mass will be celebrated at the Saturday Vigil Mass and at the 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM Sunday services.

FROM THE RECTOR: JUST HUMANITY, NOT AGENDA

Last Sunday I sang the gospel at the Solemn Mass. I don’t get to do that very often. When the choir finished singing the acclamation, I sang the announcement and censed the book in the usual way as the congregation responded, “Glory to you, Lord Christ.” Then, I froze. It took me several moments to recover myself. What I saw printed in the book was clearly wrong. I couldn’t think fast enough to change it—or to recall exactly what I had read when I celebrated the 9:00 AM Mass earlier in the morning. So, I went ahead with it, “The day after John had baptized Jesus . . . ”

FROM THE RECTOR: ECUMENICAL RELATIONSHIPS

Last week while preparing to preach on the baptism of Christ I ended up pulling out a lot of books from my shelves, among them an important study of baptism by an evangelical scholar, Baptism in the New Testament (1962) by George Raymond Beasley-Murray (1916-2000). Beasley-Murray was British and a Baptist minister. He taught at seminaries in England, Switzerland and the United States. The book remains a significant advocate for what is called “believer’s baptism.” What that means can be a rather large subject, but it always means that only those who are old enough to confess their faith (in other words, not infants and young children) can be baptized.

FROM THE RECTOR: RADICAL CHANGE

Until 1928 Episcopalians never heard an account of Jesus’ baptism on Sunday mornings or at celebrations of baptism. For the first time in the Prayer Book tradition, the 1928 American book appointed Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism for the Second Sunday after Epiphany. Massey Shepherd described this as “the original Epiphany gospel” (The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary [1950] 111-12)—and certainly it is one of the gospels anciently associated with the feast.

FROM THE RECTOR: EPIPHANY 2014

Epiphany is Monday, January 6, this year. If you are new to the Episcopal Church or Saint Mary’s, you will want to know it’s one of the great days of the year, a “principal feast.” Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson write that the earliest mention of the feast is from Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 210) [The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity (2011) 137). In the Christian West it comes to be associated with Matthew’s account of the visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus (Matthew 2:1-12). But Jesus’ birth, baptism, and first miracle at Cana also have ancient associations with the celebration. It’s a day when many friends of this parish join us.

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRISTMASTIDE

This is my fifteenth Christmas at Saint Mary’s and it has been a very happy one for me and, I think it’s fair for me to say, the parish community. So much of what makes Saint Mary’s special is on offer at this time of the year, along with unexpected challenges and joys. As rector, I would like again to say thank you to all who made it possible for so many to worship here. From the first sounds of brass and organ before the 5:00 PM Christmas Eve Mass through the Angelus at the crèche at the end of the Solemn Mass on Christmas Day the joy, beauty and glory of God’s people were everywhere. And there’s more to come.

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRISTMAS COMES

Few celebrate Easter Day early. Easter has Lent and Holy Week to shield it. Christmas Day only has Advent which, despite attempts in different ways to subvert it, continues to offer opportunities to prepare joyfully to celebrate the birth of Christ. I invite you to join us on the Fourth Sunday of Advent for the regular services of the church.

FROM THE RECTOR: OUR DOORS ARE OPEN

I often read the weekly pew sheet from Grace Church, Joondalup, Perth, Australia, where Father David Wood, who was with us at Saint Mary’s in September, is the parish priest. I like to read what he writes. This week he quoted a portion of Pope Francis’s recent “exhortation,” Gaudium Evangelii (“The Joy of the Gospel”). I think the pope’s words are worth sharing:

FROM THE RECTOR: WELCOME, BISHOP DIETSCHE

Every three years the church requires one of the bishops of the diocese to make a formal visitation of every parish. This visitation includes presiding and preaching at the Holy Eucharist, reviewing the parish register, and receiving information about the state of the congregation and its clergy. On Monday, December 9, the Right Reverend Andrew M.L. Dietsche will make his first visitation of Saint Mary’s since he succeeded the Right Reverend Mark S. Sisk as bishop of New York on February 2, 2012.

FROM THE RECTOR: PREPARATION

I’ve learned enough about Advent to know that the history of this short season is as complex and rich as that of any season of the church year. Somewhat surprisingly, I think it’s fair to say that the calendar and lectionary reforms of the 1970s have only increased the complexity. Advent now largely repeats the themes of judgment and of the end of time that occur every year on the Sundays just before the new church year begins—this didn’t happen in the old Prayer Book.