FROM THE STEWARDSHIP COMMITTEE: THIS YEAR & EVERY YEAR

The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin will be entering its 150th year on December 8, 2019, and the Board of Trustees, clergy and staff are planning the many ways we intend to mark this milestone. There will be celebrations and distinguished visitors and special music and more. During this special year, the parish will continue to do all of the things we do at Saint Mary’s regardless of the anniversary—worship, witness, fellowship, service.

Our Anglo-Catholic traditions—commitment to the best thinking in liturgy, excellence in music, presence in the midst of the people, and untiring service—continue to be the foundation of our parish every year, and we make manifest in our life in Christ through whom we serve:

• Through our homeless ministry, we serve the hundreds of men and women in our neighborhood who need clothing, shelter, and access to the basic necessities of modern life.

• Through our open doors and full service schedule, we serve midtown office workers whose relationship with God is upheld through something as simple as the daily office.

• Through our very presence in Times Square, we serve the random tourist who encounters at Saint Mary’s an unexpected, and perhaps providential, moment of wonder or rescue.

So, who makes this service possible? You do. Unlike some other New York City Episcopal parishes, Saint Mary’s does not have a perpetually sustaining endowment. And being in Midtown Manhattan, we don’t have a steady residential neighborhood constituency. We need you—our friends near and far—to pledge a portion of your 2020 resources to this effort.

This year, we’re trying to reach a pledge goal of $425,000. So far, we’ve received almost $180,000 in pledges for 2020 from forty-three families or individuals. (Thank you to those who have responded early!) We have some way to go, and keep in mind that reaching the full pledging amount still only represents 30% of the actual costs of operating the parish. Other donations and collections along with a draw from our dwindling investment accounts make up the rest of the budget. Make no mistake: We must reach and surpass our goal if we’re to sustain our level of services and programming!

This coming Sunday, the Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King, is our traditional “commitment Sunday” when we ask that the parish community respond with their most generous pledge for 2020 giving. Many of you have already received a letter regarding this year’s appeal, along with a pledge card and return envelope. Please return that card as soon as you are able. If you have not received a pledge card, rest assured you still have an opportunity to tell us about your giving plans. You can email the parish office manager Chris Howatt or call the finance office directly at (212) 869-5830 x 10.

When we have a solid pledging foundation, we can plan for 2020 programs and, yes, celebrations. Please be a part of this first step in our next 150-year journey. —Steven Heffner, Treasurer of the Board of Trustees, on behalf of the Stewardship Committee: Marie Rosseels (chair), MaryJane Boland

YOUR PRAYERS ARE ASKED FOR Murray, Mark, William, Gloria, Margaret, Samuel, Mel, Richard, Nathan, Carlos, Ken, Linda, Denis, George, Kenneth, Mary Hope, Pat, Ann, May, Willard, Alexandra, Karen, Marilouise, Takeem, Donald, Shalim, Philippe, Nam, John, James, Michael, Rita, Ivy, Carolyn, and Barbara; Horace, Gene, Gaylord, Louis, Edgar, priests, the members of our Armed Forces on active duty, especially Edward; all the benefactors and friends of this parish; and for the repose of the souls of Arthur Levi Innis and Kyle Egan . . . GRANT THEM PEACE: November 24: 1892 Frederick Cuppers; 1924 Munroe Werner; 1940 Raymond Victor Nold; 1950 Frances J. Nash, Harlan S. Perrigo; 1957 Frederick Delius Grise; 1962 Gloria Rankin; Aurora Emerelda Van Heyningen.

IN THIS TRANSITORY LIFE . . . As we go to press, we’ve received word that Arthur Levi Innis, father of former parishioner Michael Innis-Jiménez, died on Monday, November 18, 2019. He was eighty-four years old . . . Kyle Egan, the son of close friends of Trevor Mills, died on Thursday, November 14, 2019, after a long battle with cancer. He was only seventeen. Born in Staten Island, Kyle lived in Brooklyn Heights before moving with his family to Saddle River in 2004. He attended Wandell School in Saddle River and Eric Smith Middle School in Ramsey. At the time of his death, Kyle was a senior at Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell. He is survived by his parents, Timothy and Paige, his sister Kristen and brother Ryan. The Saint Mary’s community prayed for Kyle for many weeks. Trevor is grateful for the parish’s prayers . . . Pauline Willis, the sister of the Very Reverend Robert Andrew Willis, DL, dean of Canterbury, died on Sunday, November 17, 2019, in Canterbury, after a long illness . . . On Wednesday, November 20, the ashes of Daisy Sinclair were interred in the Vault in the Lady Chapel. Father Jay Smith was the officiant. Ms. Sinclair was the aunt of parishioner Charles Carson. She was born in 1915 in North Carolina and died in 2011 in Washington, D.C. She was a lifelong and faithful Baptist. Please keep Arthur, Kyle, Pauline, Daisy, their family and friends, and all who mourn in your prayers.

THE ORDINARY FRIDAYS OF THE YEAR are observed by special acts of discipline and self-denial in commemoration of the Lord’s crucifixion.

STEWARDSHIP CAMPAIGN 2019–2020 . . . Our stewardship campaign has begun, and pledge cards are beginning to arrive in the mail. Some statistics may be helpful. We mailed packets to 122 households that pledged last year and to 770 households that have expressed an interest in supporting the parish. Once again this year, our goal for the campaign is $425,000. As of November 19, we have received $173,066 in pledges from 45 households, 40.7% of our goal. We still have a ways to go. We encourage all the friends and members of the parish to return their pledge cards on Sunday, November 24, the Last Sunday after Pentecost and our Commitment Sunday. This will help the Budget Committee in its work. However, if making a commitment by that date is not possible, we will gladly receive pledge cards at any point during the coming year. Our needs are urgent. Our mission is clear. We invite your support.

OUR CLOTHING MINISTRY COULD USE YOUR HELP . . . It’s cold out there this week! Hats, gloves, thermals and the like are flying off the shelves. We’re so glad we can help. A visitor to the church stopped to say how generous we were. So we’d like to say how generous YOU are. Your gifts are keeping God’s people warm! Current biggest need is for blankets, sleeping bags, and thermal underwear.  You can drop them at the church any time, or order them to be shipped here, or make a monetary donation toward our monthly orders. Thank you!” —Brother Damien SSF

THIS WEEK AT SAINT MARY’S . . . Saturday, November 23, 2:00 PM, The Burial of the Dead for Carol Osuchowski Selle . . . Sunday, November 24, Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King, Sung Matins 8:30 AM; Mass 9:00 & 10:00 AM; Adult Forum 10:00 AM; Solemn Mass 11:00 AM, Solemn Evensong and Benediction 5:00 PM . . . Wednesday, November 27, Grab and Go, 2:00–3:00 PM, Mission House, 133 Forty-sixth Street; The Bible Study Class does not meet on November 27 nor on December 4 . . . On Wednesday, November 27, at 6:00 PM, The Eve of Thanksgiving Day, there will be a Sung Mass in the church. Father Jim Pace will be the celebrant and preacher. This will be our main Thanksgiving Day celebration, since the parade on the day itself makes life complicated here in Times Square. However, the noonday services will be offered on November 28, Thanksgiving Day itself . . . Friday, November 29, Centering Prayer Group 6:30 PM, Morning Room, Parish House, 145 West Forty-sixth Street.

AROUND THE PARISH . . . On Wednesday, November 20, parish volunteers welcomed over seventy guests to the monthly Drop-in Day. We are grateful to our volunteers for their service. If you would like to volunteer for or donate to this ministry, please contact Brother Damien or Brother Thomas . . . Parishioner Gloria Fitzgerald recently underwent surgery. She is now at home recuperating and doing physical therapy. Gloria, director of office services for the diocese of New York, hopes to be back at Saint Mary’s before too long. Please keep her in your prayers . . . The Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center will be lit on Wednesday, December 4, 7:00–9:00 PM. Traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, will be particularly heavy that evening . . . Flowers are needed for many Sundays in January and February. Please be in touch with Chris Howatt in the parish office if you would like to make a donation for one of these dates. Donations to support the work of the Flower Guild at Christmas are always welcome . . . Attendance at all Offices and Masses: Last Sunday 203.

ADVENT QUIET DAY . . . On Saturday, December 7, 9:30 AM–3:00 PM, Sister Monica Clare, C.S.J.B., will lead a quiet day here at the church. Sister Monica Clare’s theme for the day is, “How to Maintain a ‘Recollected’ Manner in a Chaotic Time.” She writes, “What is a ‘recollected manner’? The concept, and the term, crops up in reference to prayer and worship, but the meaning is different from the recollection of recalling past events. Herbert Benson, M.D., in his book The Relaxation Response (Harper Collins, 1975), has written, ‘Preparation for contemplation, according to Saint Augustine, involves recollection, a term later used by many Christian mystics, which corresponds with the idea of a passive attitude. Recollection is an exercise of abstraction, of recollecting and gathering together thoughts [“memory”] and concentrating the mind. The object is to shut off the mind from external thoughts and to produce a mental solitude.’ ” During the quiet day, Sister Monica Clare will be asking, “How can we cultivate a recollected manner as we move through a world of noise, distraction and tension?” If you would like to attend the Quiet Day, please contact Father Jay Smith by e-mail.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION . . . Father Peter Powell is teaching the Adult Forum on Sunday mornings during the month of November. Father Powell writes, “On the four Sundays in November, we will be reading from the last twelve books of the Old Testament. All you need to participate is curiosity about the Bible. Why should this interest you? The issues each prophet addressed are relevant today as we work out how to be faithful in a divided society. These books, known as The Twelve or as the Minor Prophets, include Hosea, Amos, Jonah, and Habakkuk. We will examine them in their original setting and then move into how they speak to us today. We will begin with Hosea and Amos and then get as far into the others as we can. Amos and Hosea tell us about how to be faithful in a time in which conservative religion appears to be in control of our culture. The twelve prophets lived in a time when religion dominated, but faith was absent. Our time is much like that. I invite you to join me in November as we begin this important study of how God works in our world.” These classes will meet at 10:00 AM on Sunday mornings in November, in Saint Benedict’s Study, in the Parish House, 145 West Forty-sixth Street . . . The Wednesday Night Bible Study Class, led by Father Jay Smith, is studying the forms of prayer in the Hebrew Bible, while exploring the ways in which we ourselves pray, asking ourselves: what does it mean to complain, lament, seek, inquire, meditate, intercede, praise, or give thanks. After an introduction to the topic, the class will study and read closely one or two biblical texts each week. The class meets next on December 11 at 6:30 PM. The class will not meet on November 27 or December 4. The class takes place in Saint Benedict’s Study in the Parish House . . . On three Sundays in January—January 12, 19, and 26—Father Jim Pace will lead the Adult Forum in a discussion of healing ministry, hospice ministry, and end-of-life care. Father Pace is the senior associate dean for academic programs at the New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing, where he holds the rank of clinical professor.

ABOUT THE MUSIC ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 . . . The musical setting of the Mass on Sunday is the Missa Simile est regnum caelorum of Tomás Luis de Victoria (c. 1548–1611). Victoria is considered the most important Spanish composer of Renaissance polyphony. Born in Avila, the seventh of eleven children, he began his musical education as a choirboy at Avila Cathedral, and began his classical education at San Gil, a Jesuit school for boys founded in 1554. By 1565, Victoria had entered the Jesuit Collegio Germanico in Rome, where he was later engaged to teach music and eventually named maestro di cappella. Victoria knew and may have been instructed by Palestrina (1525–1594) who was maestro di cappella of the nearby Seminario Romano at that time. During his years in Rome, Victoria held several positions as singer, organist, and choral master, and published many of his compositions. He was ordained priest in 1575 after a three-day diaconate. There are twenty authenticated Mass settings of Victoria in addition to two Requiems. The Missa Simile est regnum is one of Victoria’s twelve parody masses in which he quotes musical ideas from pre-existing musical composition. In this case, Victoria’s musical quotes are from a motet by his friend and contemporary, Franciso Guerrero (1528–1599). Guerrero’s motet on Matthew 20:1–4 likens the Kingdom of God to a landowner justly hiring laborers for his vineyard. Victoria’s Mass skillfully reutilizes distinctive melodic features of Guerrero’s motet, such as the rising perfect fifth which begins most of its movements. With the exception of the Benedictus in three voices, Victoria’s Mass, like Guerrero’s motet, is voiced in four parts. However, the final Agnus Dei spectacularly employs two choirs of four voices, each of which sing in strict canon.

Clifford Maxwell (1917–1999), a native of Barbados, grew up in Brooklyn and was very active in the New York community of church musicians for many years. He served as organist and choirmaster at various Episcopal and Lutheran parishes in Brooklyn for several decades and, in retirement, volunteered in the weekday music ministry of Trinity Church, Wall Street. Maxwell composed his setting of two stanzas from George Hugh Bourne’s powerful hymn Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendor (307 in The Hymnal 1982) in 1949 while under the tutelage of Harold Friedell (1903–1958) at Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Manhattan. His setting, sung on Sunday morning during the ministration of Communion, is more reflective than triumphal in responding musically to the image of the risen enthroned Christ.

Sunday’s organ voluntaries are based upon the chorale Nun danket alle Gott (“Now thank we all our God”). Both prelude and postlude are by German composers, but they are two centuries apart in origin. The chorale text itself, now sung internationally and interdenominationally, was authored in 1630 by Martin Rinckart (1586–1649), archdeacon in Eilenburg, Saxony. Johann Crüger (1598–1662) is credited with composing the melody for Rinckart’s words which appeared in the 1647 third edition of his Praxis Pietatis Melica. This text and melody combination, in English translation by Catherine Winkworth (1827–1878), has been in Episcopal hymnals since 1871. The prelude by J. S. Bach is one of his Leipzig Eighteen Great Chorales. Each phrase of the melody is introduced in turn by three accompanying voices before being presented in unornamented form in the soprano register. The postludes from Karg-Elert’s Choral Improvisationen, Opus 65, is one of the composer’s most popular organ pieces. It is subtitled Marche triomphale and marked Pomposo e con brio. The chorale melody is not stated literally and is not immediately conspicuous, but a spirit of exuberance and joy is clearly present in the opening and final sections of this setting. —David Hurd

OUTREACH AT SAINT MARY’S . . . The Clothing Ministry’s next Drop-in Day will take place on Wednesday, December 11, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM, in the Mission House basement. On those Wednesdays when a Drop-in Day does not take place, we continue to offer our Grab-and-Go days—from 2:00 to 3:00 PM—in the former Gift Shop, just off the church Narthex. On those days, basic, even emergency, items can normally be provided—socks, underwear, toiletry articles, and, in the winter months, cold-weather clothing. Please contact Brother Damien if you would like to donate cash, clothing, or toiletry articles, or to volunteer for this important ministry. We have a particular need at the moment for cooler weather clothing: gently used jackets, coats and sweatshirts of varying weights, jeans, slacks and sweatpants. We always need new socks and underwear in various sizes. Our number of guests continues to grow, and we are always grateful for your financial contributions to this project. We can also use a few more volunteers for our once per month drop-in days . . . We continue to receive donations of canned goods and other nonperishable food items for the Saint Clement’s Food Pantry. Donations may be placed in the basket next to the Ushers’ Table at the Forty-sixth Street entrance to the church.

IN THE THEATERS . . . Presented in the Black Box Theater of The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, 18 Bleecker Street, New York, New York, November 30–December 29, 2019, The Gospel of John, conceived and performed by award-winning Broadway veteran Ken Jennings and directed by John Pietrowski. Jennings brings the Gospel powerfully to life in a thrilling ninety-minute solo performance. “I memorized this first as a prayer, not as a play,” said Mr. Jennings. “Memorizing the Gospel of John was a spiritual practice during a difficult time in my life. I’ve always had an affinity for John, which seems to be a truly firsthand narrative by a man who was actually there.” The Gospel of John is breathtakingly poetic, containing soaring theology, yet  it is filled from start to finish with eyewitness details that came from John’s life with Jesus. This written testimony from John’s personal experience has been proclaimed all over the world for millennia. Mr. Jennings will tell it to audiences as if for the first time, as it was originally told by the Beloved Disciple–so that they too may have a personal encounter with Jesus during this Advent-Christmas season. Previews (until December 7): $50. Regular Performances: General Admission: $60 and $75. All Matinees: General admission: $50 and $65. Box Office Hours M–F: 12:00 PM–5:00 PM & one hour before performances. Box Office: (212) 925-2812.

AT THE GALLERIES . . . At the Newark Museum of Art, 49 Washington Street, Newark, New Jersey 07102, in Newark’s Downtown/Arts District, Arts of Global Africa Gallery, on view in the Museum’s fully renovated flagship space on the first floor. The Museum’s African art collection ranks among the nation’s earliest and most comprehensive, representing the breadth, diversity and vitality of artistic creativity throughout the continent.  Its holdings comprise nearly 4,000 objects of ritual, ceremonial and daily use, as well as popular urban and fine arts. The African gallery showcases works from important art-producing cultures, including the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Asante of Ghana.  Among the highlights are a towering Epa masquerade headdress by the renowned Yoruba sculptor Bamboye and a rare Tsogo door from Gabon. A stunning array of jewelry features ivory adornments from the Congo, silver pendants from Niger, beadwork from South Africa and an exceptional suite of gold jewelry from Zanzibar. The gallery also includes select examples from its important collection of African textiles, which has gained national recognition for its fine quality and breadth of representation. The collection encompasses several hundred examples representing most of the significant weaving traditions of sub-Saharan Africa as well as factory printed textiles and historic and contemporary examples of dress from across the continent.

CLICK HERE for this week’s schedule.

CLICK HERE for the full parish calendar.