FROM THE RECTOR: A SPECIAL PLACE

There are two notes in my calendar for May 2. In 2009 Rebecca Weiner Tompkins was ordained deacon. (Happy Anniversary, Rebecca!) In 1965, Father Donald Garfield, seventh rector of Saint Mary's, fundamentally changed the pattern of Sunday worship of the parish. He started offering communion to the congregation at the 11:00 AM Solemn Mass. This was new for Saint Mary's.

FROM THE RECTOR: TRANSLATIONS

Many years ago, in a parish I served before becoming a rector, I complained to a semi-retired senior colleague about a particular, and remarkably disruptive, three-year-old child. Week after week the mother let the child have free run of the church during the Sunday service. (Those who know me know it is the rare child who can disturb me even a little during Mass.) The mother, not the child, was out of control. In the sacristy after Mass I said something to my colleague about looking forward to the child to being a little older. He replied, "There will always be a three-year-old in church."

At the Reformation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) chose the beginning of John's account of Easter morning (John 20:1-10) as the gospel for Easter Day and Mark's account (Mark 16:1-8) as the gospel for a second celebration. John included Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene at the tomb, but Cranmer did not. Cranmer gave the Sunday after Easter Day the beginning of John's account of Jesus' appearance on the evening of Easter Day-Jesus' breathing on the disciples and giving them power to forgive sins-not John's narrative of Jesus's appearance on the Sunday after the Sunday of the Resurrection. (Yes, you are reading this correctly.)

From the Rector:  Easter Thinking

As I write on the morning of Good Friday, the church can be said to be empty. It awaits the gathering of the community later today to hear the Word of God, to pray, to venerate the cross, and to receive Holy Communion. Saint Joseph's Hall, by contrast, is sea of flowers. On Saturday these flowers will fill the church with beauty and the rich smell of spring. I've never stopped to count the number of times the liturgy and our music will have the word "Alleluia" on our lips between sunset on Easter Eve and sunset on Easter Day; but it will be a lot.

For Episcopalians, the Lenten Season ends at sunset on the eve of the Sunday of the Passion, commonly called Palm Sunday, and Holy Week begins (The Book of Common Prayer [1979], 31). The history of our church calendar is complex and rich. Many varied and often competing strands of history, theology, and devotion have shaped what has come down to us. Choices have to be made. In spite of the rubric in the Prayer Book that the congregation should take the role of the crowd on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, you and I did not crucify Jesus. You and I are the people who begin as Jesus' disciples, his students (John 13:13). But like the men and women at the supper before the Passover, God's mercy, love, and grace has brought us to become not just Jesus' friends (John 13:15),

Linda Bridges died on Saturday evening, March 25, 2017, at Calvary Hospital, Bronx, New York. She was sixty-seven years old. She had been a member of Saint Mary's since her baptism here on July 30, 1995. She was confirmed here at the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday, April 6, 1996, by the Right Reverend Walter Dennis, suffragan bishop of the diocese of New York. Her funeral will be at Saint Mary's on Monday in Holy Week, April 10, at 10:00 AM. Her ashes will be reposed in the Vault in the Lady Chapel at the end of the Mass. May her soul rest in peace.

FROM THE RECTOR:  A JOYFUL WEEKEND

We have two celebrations this weekend. Each can lay claim, respectively, to a Greek or Latin verb for the command, "Rejoice!" On Annunciation Eve, Friday, March 24, Gabriel's greeting to Mary in New Testament Greek, chaîre, can be translated as "Hail!" (Revised Standard Version), "Greetings" (New Revised Standard Versions), or by its very common, even ordinary, imperative sense, "Rejoice." Count me as one who can easily imagine the word carrying the sense of greeting and rejoicing as God's messenger speaks to the young woman God has chosen to be the mother of his son (Luke 1:28). You'll hear this gospel at the Solemn Mass on Friday night and at the 12:10 PM Eucharist on Saturday.

FROM FATHER SMITH:

TRAINING FOR THE KINGDOM  

Julie Sandri died on December 20, 2016, after a year-long and very courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. Julie was a parishioner, who almost always attended the 9:00 AM Mass on Sunday mornings, and she was well-known among that small community of friends and parishioners who gather at that early hour to celebrate the Holy Eucharist together. Julie was many things--a Christian, a mother, a teacher, an artist, a potter, a friend, a Saint Marian, and a fiercely loyal, though not native, New Yorker. She was also, and very happily so, a resident of this neighborhood. For many years, Julie lived in a great apartment on Seventh Avenue, just south of Carnegie Hall. The apartment had a number of highly desirable features, including many windows and great light, not so common in Manhattan apartments.

ANNOUNCEMENT: SMOKELESS NO MORE

All of the new fixtures are not in, but on Sunday, March 12, 2017, incense will return. The smoke room has been out of commission since a very small fire on Sunday, January 22, 2017. Great thanks go to architect and parishioner José Vidal and to office manager Chris Howatt for getting the job done.

FROM THE RECTOR: GOVERNANCE

The rite of imposition of ashes on the first day of Lent, when Jesus' words in Matthew about not showing any sign that one is fasting are still hanging in the air, is not the only scriptural contradiction that has come down to us for Lent. In their book Liturgy for Living (1979), Charles P. Price (1920-1999) and Louis Weil wrote, "For as long as we have records, the passage read as the Gospel for the First Sunday in Lent has been the account of Jesus' temptations" (page 230). Yet Jesus' encounter with Satan happens immediately after, not before, his baptism. 

The big news for the coming week is the beginning of Lent on Wednesday, March 1. That said, I want to begin by looking at Sunday, now called, "The Last Sunday after the Epiphany." In earlier Prayer Books it was, "The Sunday called Quinquagesima, or the Sunday next before Lent." Quinquagesima-from the Latin for fiftieth-is exactly fifty days from Easter Day.

FROM THE RECTOR: ISHMAEL

There's more to the story of Ishmael than the famous opening sentence of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. But I don't think Melville's use of Ishmael's name was fair. Ishmael was not the child of the covenant-though Genesis notes Ishmael was thirteen years old when he, along with his father and all of the enslaved males belonging to Abraham were circumcised (Genesis 17:23-27). "Ishmael" means "God hears" (Genesis 16:11). He, like Isaac, was a child of promise.

FROM THE RECTOR: A BIBLICAL FAMILY

Abram, later Abraham, makes his first appearance in Genesis in a list of the descendants of Noah's oldest son, Shem (Genesis 11:26). We've been hearing Abraham's story at Evening Prayer since the second Friday after the Epiphany, this year, January 20. A few years ago I discovered that the Daily Office Lectionary omitted the passage where Abraham's two sons, half-brothers Ishmael and Isaac, come together to bury him (Genesis 25:9). I also discovered that the only other time they are found together is after Isaac is born. Isaac's mother Sarah sees them playing together. She reacts by insisting that Abraham send Ishmael and his enslaved mother Hagar away. Neither Sarah nor Abraham come off very well in this story. Yet sending Hagar and Ishmael away opens the door for God to rescue them when they are near death in the wilderness.

FROM THE RECTOR: THE PSALTER

Over the years, through the grace of knowing some generous priests who were retiring and reducing their libraries, I have acquired all but one in the series of Prayer Book Studies done to prepare for the Draft Proposed Book of Common Prayer (1976). The series started in 1950 with a single volume. It included the first two studies: I Baptism and Confirmation and II The Liturgical Lectionary. There's a lot to be learned from the series about the present Prayer Book and about the shape of liturgical studies of their time.

FROM THE RECTOR:  SMOKELESS MARY'S

On Sunday, January 22, after Evensong, thurifer Ric Miranda was burning off the residue in the removable metal cup that holds the charcoal inside the thurible. The soot or residue on one of the blades of the exhaust fan caught on fire. Because of his background, Ric knew how to deal with the fire directly and quickly. At his suggestion, the Fire Department was called to make sure the fire was entirely out-no residual smoldering particles to set something else on fire. Until we have a new exhaust system and the right kind of fire protection system in the smoke room, our prayers will rise to God without incense.

Joseph, the one with the coat of many colors, and his family were not the first Hebrews to sojourn in Egypt. After God led Abram, later Abraham, to leave his father's land to go to Canaan, there was a famine. So, he headed to Egypt. As they entered that country, he told Sarai, later Sarah, his wife and half-sister, to say to the Egyptians that she was his sister, but not his wife (Genesis 12:10-20). Later, Abraham does this again with other people. The second time, Sarah will be spared sexual relations (Genesis 20:1-18). 

On Saturday, January 21, 2017, the eve of the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, we will hear the first of these two stories. The Daily Office Lectionary omits the second.

FROM THE RECTOR: A CLERICAL UNITY

On December 7, 2016, I was the celebrant for the Wednesday 12:10 Sung Mass. It's the day the church commemorates the life and witness of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who died in 397. Preparing for a brief homily, I was surprised and appalled to discover that the date of his commemoration had shifted with the 1979 Prayer Book from the date of his death to the date of his ordination as bishop. He died on Easter Eve, April 4, 397.

FROM THE RECTOR:  CLOSED DOORS

While making two pastoral visits early last Friday afternoon, I walked by one Orthodox cathedral and four Protestant churches. The doors of all five were closed. Two of the churches were Episcopal parishes, the others were a Presbyterian and a Hungarian Reformed congregation. The cathedral was Greek Orthodox. These days many churches are simply not able to keep their doors open throughout the day; and so I can think of no more important ministry for us than the witness and opportunities our open doors offer. Our doors are open not just for ourselves, but also and always for others.

FROM THE DEACON: BREAK AHEAD

The above title sounds like a highway sign, but those usually tell exactly what's around the bend, while our life journeys rarely imitate that prescience, that certainty.

When we worship at Saint Mary's we profess a willingness to open ourselves to something mysterious, to the opposite of certainty: faith. We may be afraid to surrender to God guiding us when we can't see the next steps clearly, but Paul reminds us that, "we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen" (2 Corinthians 4:18). In November I wrote about, "Time Away & Back Again." It's perhaps an apt description of a new phase-how I'll deal with some realities of my life in New York City and subsequently at Saint Mary's.

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRISTMAS 2017

Christmas Day is a Sunday this year. We will celebrate all of our regular Sunday morning services, but not Sunday Evensong. The church will close at 2:00 PM. On Christmas Eve, Sung Mass of the Nativity will be at 5:00 PM and Procession & Solemn Mass will be at 11:00 PM. Christmas music will be at 4:30 PM and 10:30 PM.