FROM FATHER JACOBSON:
THE BODY OF CHRIST, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

In our second reading at Mass last Sunday, as well as this coming Sunday, we hear passages from the fourth chapter of Ephesians. This portion of the epistle includes Saint Paul’s well-known imagery of the “body of Christ,” of which we are all “members.” While not all scholars agree that this epistle is one of the letters truly written by Paul, the imagery is also found in his undisputed writings (e.g., 1 Corinthians 12).

FROM BENJAMIN SAFFORD: YOUNG ADULTS AT SAINT MARY’S

It’s an exciting time to be at Saint Mary’s—and for me, entering into the life of Saint Mary’s and receiving the enthusiastic welcome of my fellow parishioners here has been an immense blessing over the last year. As we embark on a Year of Invitation, I know many of us are thinking of ways we can welcome others to join us here at Saint Mary’s. To that end, Father Sammy has asked me to help him form a group within the parish of Young Saint Marians in their 20s and 30s. 

FROM FATHER WOOD:
AN INCLUSIVE, DIVERSE COMMUNITY

Back in the early 2000s, I was ordained a priest in a parish that still used the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and I remember praying the Daily Office with my mentor and pondering passages in the Psalter that said God “smote divers nations” (Psalm 135.12) and the “heads of divers countries” (Psalm 110.6). Turns out divers didn’t mean God somehow had it in for countries blessed with great scuba spots; it’s just an old spelling for diverse, which really meant “different” and “various.”

FROM ANDREW RAINES:
WHO IS JESUS FOR YOU?

Who is Jesus for you?

How one answers this question makes all the difference.

This last spring, I got to teach Confirmation class at my church in Raleigh. 8th-graders are one of my natural predators, and looking over the podium at 37 faux-dead eyes staring back at me left me feeling bare. I felt tremendous pressure to make sure that these kids would come to know and love Jesus like I had when I was their age.

FROM FATHER JAY SMITH: “THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL”

The National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C., is where the original, signed manuscript of the Declaration of Independence is housed, conserved, and cared for. The Declaration is not buried out of sight in some deep, hidden vault. Along with the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, its home is in the “Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom,” located on the upper level of the Museum.

FROM FATHER MATT JACOBSON:
A GREAT AND HOLY SPECTACLE

During the Season after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit is often in focus for me, I try to reflect on and pray about what God might be calling me to do. At a session on Saint Augustine at the North American Patristics Conference, which I attended last month in Chicago, I was reminded of some ways to ask these sorts of questions.

FROM FATHER SAMMY WOOD: PREFERENCE FOR THE POOR

This is the sixth in an ongoing series of articles unpacking the vision for our common life over the next three years here at Saint Mary’s. Today we have an opportunity to look more closely at our “preference for the poor.” In February, the New York Times said the number of New Yorkers living below the poverty line is nearly twice the national average.

FROM DR. DAVID HURD: SINGING SOLEMN MASS THIS SUMMER

The vitality and impact of liturgical worship is maintained and fortified by the interplay of those aspects which remain constant and those which change from occasion to occasion. Repetitive actions are the backbone of formative ritual and help to project and contextualize the particularities which distinguish one occasion from another.

FROM FATHER SMITH: LEARNING TO READ THE SYMBOLS

“[She] I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. [He] Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the young women” (Song of Songs 2:1–2)

During Eastertide lilies often make their appearance in our homes and in our churches. Saint Mary’s is no exception. The lily is an ancient flower.

FROM FATHER SAMMY WOOD: ELEVATION

“The goal is elevation.”
~ U2, lyrics to Elevation

In a little booklet called “Pray the Mass,” published by our very own Saint Mary’s Press back in 1953, our former rector Father Grieg Taber calls the Mass the “very core and mainspring” of the catholic Christian’s life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the Eucharist the “source and summit” of Christian life (CCC, ¶ 1324), and our Prayer Book calls it “the principal act of Christian worship” (BCP, p. 13).

FROM FATHER JAY SMITH:
ONE IN THREE

Saint Mary’s was imagined and then founded a few years after the end of the Civil War by those who had been moved into action by the ideas, and the accomplishments, of the Tractarians. That small cadre of priests of the Church of England, led by John Keble, John Henry Newman, and Edward Bouverie Pusey, began a revolutionary movement—it felt like a revolution to many at the time—in England’s Established Church.

FROM FATHER SAMMY WOOD: OUR IDENTITY IN CHRIST

This is the fifth in an ongoing series of Angelus articles exploring our vision here at Saint Mary’s and tracing out its implications for our life together. Today we come to the phrase “with our identity in Christ,” an element critical to who we are at Saint Mary’s, but apt to get lost among parts of our vision that may sound more exciting—we’re vibrant, we have a preference for the poor, we’re a witness in the heart of New York City. For our identity to be “in Christ” seems like a given, doesn’t it? I mean, isn’t that just what all Christians are about? Let’s think it through. 

FROM FATHER JAY SMITH: THE FEAST DAY OF GOD

At staff meeting recently, Dr. Hurd told us a story from his time working at All Saints Church, Sixtieth Street. He said that one of the priests on that parish’s staff back then had argued that the choir season should end not on the Day of Pentecost but one week later on Trinity Sunday. “Why?” the rector had asked. David’s colleague responded, “Because Trinity Sunday is the Feast of God!” This amused us for many reasons—budgetary, musical, liturgical, and theological. (It should be noted that, here at Saint Mary’s, the choir season ends on the Feast of Corpus Christi, two weeks after the Day of Pentecost.)

FROM GRACE MUDD: MOTHER OF GOD, QUEEN OF PEACE

In the lockdown spring of 2020, most of us scrambled to find different ways of keeping observances of the church year and so on the first Sunday in May, I set a sprig of flowers by a painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall of my little balcony garden. The sprig wasn’t at all a crown and there was no procession, no incense; I don’t remember if I sang anything or even prayed aloud, but I felt connected to my parish home and family, rooted in almost a century and a half of Marian devotion there.

FROM FATHER SAMMY WOOD: IN THE HEART OF NEW YORK CITY

This is the fourth in an ongoing series unpacking our vision here at Saint Mary’s:

Saint Mary's is a vibrant Anglo-Catholic witness in the heart of New York City. With our identity in Christ and a preference for the poor, we are an inclusive, diverse community called to love God and each other for the life of the world.

Last month, I wrote a little about our catholicity being key not just to our past but our future, and today we come to the element of being a witness “in the heart of New York City.”

FROM MARYJANE BOLAND & CLARK MITCHELL: KEEPING THE DOORS OPEN

With little fanfare, during Holy Week we installed the Open Doors Campaign plaque in the narthex to celebrate and thank again the almost 200 people who donated to the Open Doors Campaign. After some fourteen years living behind a sidewalk bridge, we think it worth reliving a bit of history.

FROM FATHER JACOBSON: THEOSIS AND REFLECTING ON OUR TRANSFORMATION

Now I say to you, “You are gods, *
and all of you children of the Most High”
(Psalm 82:6, Book of Common Prayer)

What could it possibly mean for us to become gods (that is, gods with a lowercase “g”)? This provocative verse from Psalm 82, along with several other passages from the Old and New Testaments, can be used to support a theological concept known as theosis (θέωσις).

SOME EASTERTIDE CUSTOMS

The word “alleluia” and the joyous sense of praise associated with that word was not heard in our liturgies during the forty days of Lent. Alleluias return and are conspicuously present, during Eastertide. You will hear them in the Opening Acclamation and in the Dismissal at Mass, and it also makes an appearance at the conclusion of Morning and Evening Prayer. “Alleluia” is also beautifully interpolated into Psalm 117, which we chant at the conclusion of Eucharistic Benediction at 5:00 PM on the first Sunday of most months—including this coming.

SOME EASTERTIDE CUSTOMS

“Eastertide” is the fifty-day period that begins on Easter Day.

What’s an “octave”? An octave is the eight-day period during which [a solemnity, that is a particularly important holy day, such as Christmas or Easter] is celebrated, and includes the actual feast. The eighth day is also called the octave or “octave day,” and days in between are said to be “within the octave.” The feast itself is considered the first day, and it is followed by six days called “days within the octave.”

FROM FATHER SAMMY WOOD: SECRET PRAYERS

I learned to say the Mass at the Church of the Ascension & Saint Agnes (ASA) in Washington, DC, where I was a curate. My rector, Father Lane Davenport, and I would have “Mass practice” a few times a week in the months leading up to my ordination, and I served as deacon at every Mass I could to spend time at the shoulder of Father Lane or Father Ron Conner, another one of my early mentors at that church. ASA was a “missal parish,” which meant we used the American Missal at all our Masses, rather than the Book of Common Prayer with which we’re so familiar at Saint Mary’s.