FROM THE CLERGY: SOME LITURGICAL PECULIARITIES OF LENT AND HOLY WEEK

In the coming days, the Church will enter upon its annual commemoration of the central events of history. All human history will converge upon a single week—Holy Week, with its Palm Sunday pomp and circumstance and the Sacred Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter. Culminating in the celebration of Easter Day, these rituals funnel us into the heart of salvation history.

FROM FATHER SMITH: ON CONSOLATION

To “tell” sacred time means paying attention to dates, times, seasons—and lots and lots of numbers—and never more so than during Lent. In the West, for instance, our preparation for Easter lasts forty days, but not so very long ago, within living memory for some Saint Marians, forty days wasn’t quite enough. There was a period of preparation for the season of preparation—those three so-called “gesima” Sundays.

FROM BROTHER THOMAS BUSHNELL, BSG: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?” — Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum, 7

In our day, we might look for the target of Tertullian’s famous attack not so much in the school philosophy of the Middle Ages, or the twentieth century, but the vagaries of the “spiritualities” practiced around us in a pluralistic and individualistic age. His rhetorical question follows upon a recitation of the shifting sands of Greek philosophy, saying now this, now that: one says the soul is immortal, the next not. One says the true god is fire; the next, matter.

DID YOU KNOW?
ENDOWMENTS AND LONG-TERM INVESTMENTS

There are many Episcopal churches in America with endowments. Is Saint Mary’s one? The answer is yes. Saint Mary’s has several investment accounts which were funded many years ago, many for very special purposes. These accounts are designed to be self-perpetuating through investment policies and the income from them directed and restricted to the intended purpose.

FROM FATHER WOOD: AN INVITATION TO A HOLY LENT

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and mediating on God’s holy Word. (Book of Common Prayer, p. 265)

Some years ago, I remember talking with a friend who was not a Christian. She was interested in maybe becoming a Christian, she said, but she was worried. Wouldn’t she have to “clean up” her life before Jesus would accept her? At the time, the only thing I could think to say to dissuade her of that misapprehension was: “Do you have to ‘get cleaned up’ to take a bath?” 

FROM FATHER POWELL: THE CHURCH IS IN CRISIS

I know that some people wonder if it’s really worth it, spending so much time reading the Bible. I find it endlessly fascinating doing just that, and I know many of you feel the same. And so I’d like to invite you—as well as those of you who still have your doubts—to join me for a Lenten Bible Study of two New Testament letters, Ephesians and the Second Letter to the Thessalonians. I doubt it’s ever occurred to you that knowing more about these two slender books in the Bible would enrich your life. My challenge will be to convince you that you will benefit from the experience.

FROM FATHER WOOD: PALMS & ASHES

The fullest early description of Holy Week services the church possesses dates to the late fourth century and a woman known to history as Egeria. Egeria kept a diary of her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in which she gives an account of Holy Week in Jerusalem around the year 380.

DID YOU KNOW?
SAINT MARY’S UNIQUE GOVERNANCE

It’s hardly worth noting that Saint Mary’s is unique. It’s obviously unique in many ways, but did you know that from a governance and organizational perspective, Saint Mary’s is set up unlike any other parish in New York (and most of the country)? Saint Mary’s doesn’t have a vestry and wardens like most Episcopal churches. Instead, it has a Board of Trustees with officers.

A SONNET FOR CANDLEMAS
by Malcolm Guite

They came, as called, according to the Law.

Though they were poor and had to keep things simple,

They moved in grace, in quietness, in awe,

For God was coming with them to His temple.

FROM RICHARD MAMMANA: REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST & PRESENT

I have never been a member of Saint Mary’s, but it has been one of my spiritual homes for almost thirty years. The chance to unpack that sentence in a few paragraphs is an invitation to write a thank you note to the pile of living stones that are a congregation and its building.

FROM FATHER WARREN PLATT: A NEW HISTORY OF SAINT MARY’S

My monograph on the history of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin has a perspective and approach similar to my studies on the history of the Church of the Transfiguration on 29th Street, where I assist, and Saint John’s in the Village on 11th Street, where I have preached on occasion. Only one other book has been written on the history of Saint Mary’s, The Story of St. Mary’s by Newbury Frost Read, a member of the parish’s Board of Trustees. But this work, published in 1931, is largely devoted to administrative and financial matters.

FROM FATHER JACOBSON: THE INCARNATION, ICONS & US

While reviewing and updating our Solemn Mass files ahead of Christmas Eve, I was struck by an instruction in the master of ceremonies’ binder which says, “the image is placed in the Crèche,” after arriving at the first station during the procession. The choice of the word “image,” rather than “the statue of the newborn Jesus,” or something else, seemed perfect to me as I also happened to be reading On the Divine Images by Saint John of Damascus (c. 675–749).

FROM FATHER WOOD: THE BLESSING OF CHALK AT EPIPHANY

Everybody knows that Christmas lasts twelve days and is followed by the Feast of the Epiphany, a celebration that puts the Magi front and center in our imagination. At Saint Mary’s, they are making their way around the church and will finally take their place with the Holy Family on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. But St. Matthew's gospel tells us that when the Magi arrived in Bethlehem to visit Jesus, they came to him with his mother in a house, not the stable where the family had first found temporary shelter. This is a clue—a hint that our Epiphany celebration should encompass our own houses, and a centuries-old custom is to bless houses on Epiphany.