FROM THE RECTOR: MATTHEW’S CHRISTMAS STORY

Prayer Book Studies 19: The Church Year (1970) described its decision to follow the Roman Catholic Church’s then-new lectionary and assign Matthew’s story of Jesus’ annunciation, birth, and naming (Matthew 1:18–25) to the Fourth Sunday of Advent in Year A. Since 1549, Matthew had been the gospel for the First Sunday after Christmas Day. Brother Thomas Bushnell BSG reminded me that though Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth was not read during Holy Communion, Morning Prayer, which included Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth, always preceded Holy Communion on Christmas Day (until the adoption of the 1892 Prayer Book—a subject for another day). The gospel for Christmas Day in the Christian West is anciently the beginning of John’s gospel. The present lectionary means that one of the two stories of Jesus’ birth is only heard at the Eucharist once every three years in Advent—and never at Mass during the Christmas Season.

FROM THE RECTOR: CHRISTMAS 2020

Reservations are coming in for the 4:00 PM Christmas Eve service and the 11:00 AM Christmas Day service. We hope we can seat everyone who makes a reservation on or before Monday, December 21, 2020. Reservations will be made on a first-come/first-served basis. The total seats available to be assigned will be determined by the order in which reservations are made for households (some more than a couple) and individuals. Instructions for making reservations can be found here. The services on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will be live-streamed on Saint Mary’s Facebook page. I will be celebrant and preacher on Christmas Eve, Father Jay Smith on Christmas Day.

FROM THE RECTOR: CONSECRATION ANNIVERSARY

Saturday, December 12, 2020, was the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of the consecration of our present church home. Almost everything about the church complex was new. In The Story of St. Mary’s (1931), we read from that day’s New York Evening Post . The headline was, “The New Protestant Episcopal Church Consecrated by Bishop Potter.” The article began: “At 10:30 A.M. today Bishop Henry C. Potter officiated at the consecration service of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, on West 46th St. The bishop was received at the porch of the rector, the Rev. Thomas McKee Brown, his assistants, the Rev. Al. Mason and the Rev. F. A. Staunton, and the Board of Trustees, Beverly Chew, Haley Fiske, Edward H. Clarke, R. Whiting Pierson and William H. Lane.

FROM THE RECTOR: SESQUICENTENNIAL MASS

Newbury Frost Read (1887–1950) in The Story of St. Mary’s: The Society of the Free Church of St. Mary the Virgin New York City 1868–1931 (1931) quoted a newspaper account of the opening service of our parish: “On the Patronal Festival, Thursday, Eight December 1870, the Church was opened, and was dedicated by the Right Reverend Horatio Southgate, sometime Bishop of Constantinople" (page 26). On July 23, 1892, Sara Louie Cooke died. She had made St. Mary’s “her residuary legatee” (page 59). It was this legacy that enabled the purchase of the land and the building of our second church home. The cornerstone of the new church was laid on December 4, 1894. The new church opened one year later, on Sunday, December 8, 1895.

FROM THE RECTOR: COVID-19 AT ST. MARY’S

We begin the new church year with the church open for public worship only on Sundays. I write on Saturday afternoon, the Eve of Advent Sunday. On Wednesday morning, November 25, Father Jay Smith learned that he was positive for COVID-19. During Evening Prayer on Sunday, November 22, he coughed and sensed that a cold was coming on. His symptoms were, and continue to be, relatively mild. He reports that it feels as if he has the flu. He is at home and in contact with his physician. He is in isolation in a bedroom in the apartment. His husband, José Vidal, is in quarantine. José was tested on Thanksgiving Day for the virus. The rapid test result showed that he was negative. The more accurate test result should be available for him tomorrow or Monday.

FROM THE RECTOR: A KING WHO WEEPS

The shortest sentence in the New Testament is in John’s account of the Raising of Lazarus. When Jesus sees the tomb where his friend was buried, the evangelist writes, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). (It’s a three-word sentence in the Greek New Testament, and I suspect it’s still the shortest sentence in that language, too.) I was celebrant and preacher for the Daily Eucharist on Thursday, November 19, 2020. The appointed gospel was from Luke. It includes the only other occasion of Jesus weeping in the New Testament. Compassion is one of the Lord’s virtues.

FROM THE RECTOR: ADMINISTRATION NOT CONSECRATION

While looking online for a book review, I came across reviews of the Reverend Dr. Louis Weil’s book Liturgical Sense: The Logic of Rite (2013). I found my copy on the shelf. I came across a quotation that had caught my eye years before, but I don’t think I’ve ever written about it. Vernon Staley (1852–1933) was a priest of the Church of England, a liturgical scholar, and the author of The Catholic Religion: A Manual of Instruction for the Members of the Anglican Communion (1893). It was an important book for generations of Anglo-Catholics. It’s still in print, but I don’t recommend it. Scholarship, not to mention church and society, has moved on. Father Weil's quotation was from a book by Staley that I did not know, The Manual Acts (1913), and it’s spot on.

FROM THE RECTOR: DAILY COLLECTS

Since I went to Nashotah House Seminary in the fall of 1980, my ordinary experience of Daily Morning and Evening Prayer has been in church with others, five or six days a week, most weeks of the year. Before the pandemic, I rarely prayed the office on my days off. On Saturday evenings, when I am off and at home, I go to the church for Evening Prayer—it’s Sunday’s eve. When I’m away from home, I’m more likely to pray Morning Prayer than Evening Prayer—and, if I skip the offices, I don’t beat myself up. During the pandemic, there are days when Father Jay Smith or I will pray aloud the Angelus (while ringing the tolling bell) and the evening office in the church alone. Occasionally, the friars will pray Evening Prayer in the friary chapel when Jay and I are not here.

FROM THE RECTOR: ALL SAINTS’ DAY

All Saints’ Day is Sunday, November 1, this year. Monday, November 2, is All Souls’ Day. Parish Requiems will be celebrated daily beginning Tuesday, November 3, through Saturday, November 7. If you are new to the parish community, you may not know that a large number of friends of Saint Mary’s ask for loved ones to be remembered at a Eucharist here during the week of All Saints’ and All Souls’. The earliest Christians, like much of Mediterranean world at that time, gathered at graves to share food and wine on the anniversaries of the departed. The departed were alive in Christ. In the fourth century, Ambrose in Milan and Augustine in North Africa would attempt to take control over these customs (Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints [1981], 26). I think one can say that burying a loved one and gathering afterwards with family and friends for food and drink is defining characteristic of humankind. I continue to believe that the faithful departed, and those whose faith is known only to God, do not feel separation from us. I believe their love for us continues, as does our love for them.

FROM THE RECTOR: NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER

Since March, with the closing of places of worship in New York, I’ve tried to take things one month at a time. COVID-19 has reordered so much of our lives, including worship. For me, safe distancing in a church means fewer people can be together. It’s not ideal, but Sunday Eucharists with our organist, a cantor, a crucifer, and a thurifer, keeps us linked to Saint Mary’s traditions and are a promise for renewing them in the New Year. Our weekday Eucharists also touch as many bases, as it were, as we can at present. November and December are upon us. I think it’s time to announce what we will be doing on the greater feast days fall in November and December.

FROM THE RECTOR: ANOTHER VIEW OF SAINT MARY’S

On Thursday morning, October 15, Parish Treasurer Clark Mitchell and I went with our architect Michael Devonshire and his team from Jan Hird Pokorny Associates and Marko Golubovic and Josip Mars from Milan Restoration to view the work in progress up close. We started by climbing out a window on the second floor of the parish house to the scaffolding that rises higher than the roof of the church. On the scaffolding, we looked first at the recently painted windows of the parish house and saw samples of cast stone for the architects to review. Cast stone will be used where needed. Then we began the climb.

FROM THE RECTOR: SATURDAYS OF OUR LADY

When Father Thomas McKee Brown, Saint Mary’s first rector, died on December 19, 1898, the parish community and many others mourned. He died in the rectory from pneumonia. In one of the meetings of the Saint Mary’s board of trustees in January 1899, there was a report about which vestments then in use were “property of the corporation” or personal property of Father Brown. The practice of Saturday Masses in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary went back to the beginning of the parish in 1870 in the church at 228 West Forty-fifth Street. Newbury Halsted Frost Read, a member of the board of trustees from 1929 until he died in 1950, wrote an account of the parish that was published in 1931, The Story of St. Mary’s: The Society of the Free Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York City, 1870–1931.

FROM THE RECTOR: ABOUT OCTOBER

Many congregations, including our cathedral, celebrate Saint Francis’ Day on a Sunday, whether it falls a Sunday or not. We commemorate Saint Francis on his feast day, October 4. Since the brothers of the Society of Saint Francis have established a house here at Saint Mary’s, it seems appropriate for us to celebrate Saint Francis this Sunday and for Br. Desmond Alban, Minster Provincial, Province of the Americas, Society of Saint Francis, to be our preacher.

FROM THE RECTOR: BEQUESTS

Father Edgar Wells began sending me copies of the-then monthly parish paper Ave after I met him in the fall of 1980 at Nashotah House. The priest who sent me to seminary had been a seminarian for Father Wells when he was rector in Waukegan, Illinois. One of the regular features of Ave was this announcement:

FROM THE RECTOR: BREAD AGAIN

There have been many surprises for all of us since March. I want to tell you about a COVID-19 bread surprise. To do so, I need to go back to Lent 2010. In the Angelus, for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 7, 2010, I announced that we would be using bread, not hosts, and table wine for the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday. It was a special Holy Week for us. The Most Reverend Frank T. Griswold, XXV Presiding Bishop and Primate, would be celebrant and preacher for Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. On the morning of Maundy Thursday, he presided at the Eucharist at the Washington National Cathedral. He arrived at Saint Mary's in time to be in the congregation that evening. When he realized we had used bread and wine at the altar, he wanted to know if we could use it at the Easter Vigil. My answer was, “Yes, Bishop.”

FROM THE RECTOR: SEPTEMBER

As I write on Friday, September 11, 2020, it’s impossible for me not to recall the tragic events of this day in 2001. I will never forget seeing on television people jumping from the towers to escape being burned alive. Our local fire station lost every firefighter on the morning shift—more than any other. No one went to bed on September 11, 2001, thinking that only 2,996 had died, itself a horrific number—in New York, Arlington, and Shanksville. The number would have been much greater if the planes had struck the twin towers at midday. What if the brave people of United Airlines 93 had not tried to retake control of the aircraft and our own Air Force had been forced shoot it down to protect the United States Capitol. Brave Americans laid down their lives for others.

FROM FATHER SMITH: LOVE & JUSTICE

I have been thinking about the relationship between love and justice this week thanks to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks—more about that in a bit. At one point, oddly enough, I found myself thinking about Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre. I’ve always thought of it as a story in which “love conquers all.” But things may be more complicated than that.

FROM THE RECTOR: RECENT COMMEMORATIONS

The 1949 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, meeting in San Francisco, approved the publication of a series of Prayer Book Studies by the Standing Liturgical Commission. Committees of members and scholars were formed. The first two, on Baptism and Confirmation, were published in one thin paperback volume in 1950. The series concluded in 1989 with Prayer Book Studies 30: Supplemental Liturgical Texts. All but three of the first series are available online here, a website maintained by The Society of Archbishop Justus.

FROM THE RECTOR: MISSING SINGING

Hymns have a unique way of touching lives and faith. After a few years as rector of Trinity Church, Michigan City, Indiana, I realized that Easter hymns were becoming associated in my heart with parishioners I had buried. As years passed, few Easter hymns didn’t remind me of people who had died. I never sing “The strife is o’er” without thinking of Marion Sprague. She was the first person in that congregation I called on. She had been an English teacher for many years at the local high school, the kind of person who helped others be their best. She loved the parish in which she had grown up. She made me promise not to sprinkle her coffin with holy water or cense it, and I kept my promise. But her coffin got handfuls of dirt at the grave. “Alleluia! sing to Jesus” and “For all the saints” I try never to let myself sing when I’m celebrant at the Eucharist. The words and the associations with those that have gone before can overwhelm me in a flash.