FROM THE PARISH TREASURER: STEWARDSHIP SEASON HAS BEGUN!

Oh, Stewardship! The very word is code for most churchgoers to run and hide, possibly clutching their wallets. But I have a different story.

I have been blessed with being a part of Saint Mary’s stewardship effort for almost twenty years now. I know that you think I’m being either nutty or facetious for my use of the word “blessed” there, but I’m actually being truthful. I have been truly blessed to serve in this way, and I’ll tell you three reasons why. (I only wish I could make the three of them alliterative like the sermons of our priest-in-charge!)

First, every year I get to meet with a group dedicated to Saint Mary’s to decide why we should be asking for support in the first place. It’s an opportunity for us to reassess what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how it aligns with what God is calling us to do. How often do we get to think about and articulate the very core of what we’re here for? Crafting the annual stewardship appeal is a chance for us to go back to basics and make sure what we’re saying—what we’re asking for—is real, is true, is aligned with what God wants from us. I treasure those conversations.

Second, stewardship season gives me and my wife Mary a chance to examine our own lives and decide what portion we should share with the church. What will we pledge? What an opportunity this is! Thinking about what we’re spending on or what we’re saving for; thinking about our daughter and what we ought to be saving for her; thinking about what we really need. What is “enough”? Aren’t these things we should always be considering? Aren’t these the questions that should be part of our life of prayer all the time? Stewardship of our resources and our priorities—we have this moment in the year to consider them. The opportunity to pause, take stock, and then commit for the coming year is a blessing.

Finally, my favorite part of stewardship season is one that most would consider a chore—the thank you notes. Each year, the committee divides up the incoming pledges, and we write thank you notes to everyone who pledges. One would think that this is an onerous task. And one would be totally wrong! There is nothing more joyous than spending time gratefully acknowledging our fellow parishioner’s commitment to Christ’s work. Writing thank you notes to those who share in this endeavor is a delightful, spiritual activity—each note its own prayer of gratitude. Of all the “duties” of stewardship, the thank you note is the one I never want to relinquish. Kick me off the committee, but I will still want to write and thank all of you who share in our mutual commitment to this parish and its work!

So, in this season—this month—of stewardship, I hope that all of you find ways to articulate our mutual faith, ways to renew your personal commitment, and ways to express our communal gratitude. And mostly, I hope that you can realign your thinking: Stewardship is not at all a chore; stewardship is a wonderful blessing! — Steven Heffner, parish treasurer

P.S. In addition to the pledge cards that were recently mailed out to the congregation, pledges for 2025 can also be submitted electronically via our website here.

PRAYING FOR THE CHURCH & FOR THE WORLD

A Prayer for Our Country (Book of Common Prayer, p. 820)

Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the Spirit of Wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

We pray for an end to war, division, violence, and injustice, especially in the Middle East, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, Ukraine, Russia, Myanmar, Sudan, and Darfur. We pray for justice and for an end to violence and discord in our city and nation.

We pray for the people and clergy of our sister parish, the Church of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, UK.

We pray for those who have asked us for our prayers, Meg, Grace, Brett, Andrew, Barbara, Jacques, Keith, Claudia, Suzanne, Susanna, Rolf, Adair, Dorian, Margaret, Leroy, Steve, Susanna, Rolf, Adair, Cedric, Elena, Rick, Richard, Josh, Maddie, Tony, Hattie, Paul, Nettie, Chrissy, Maureen, Tessa, Don, Robert, Duncan, Justin, Sheila, Audy, Carlos, Barbara, J.C., Gene, Jan, Pat, Marjorie, Sharon, Quincy, June, Barbara, José, Shalim, Hardy, Giovanna, Gypsy, Bob, and Liduvina; Keith, James, Barbara Jean, Eleanor Francis, and Laura Katharine, religious; and Jay, Julie, Jean, Robby, Matt, and Stephen, priests.

We pray also for the repose of the soul of William Benefield, Sr., Richard Alton, priest, and those whose year’s mind falls on November 10, Edward D. Robinson (1882); Ira E. Powell (1908); Anna R. Irwin (1943); Agnes Bausch (1955); Jane Pease (1967).

IN THIS TRANSITORY LIFE

Father Richard Charles Alton, 69, died on November 1, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Born on June 1, 1955, in Manchester, Connecticut, survived by his wife Barbara, son Francis, and brother Tom; preceded in death by Elizabeth Hawkins Alton and Richard Charles Alton in 1978.

Vespers will be held on Friday, November 8, at 5:30 PM. Mass will be offered on Saturday, November 9, at 11:00 AM. Both services will be held at Saint Clement’s Church, 2013 Appletree Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

A devoted priest, Richard began as organist and choirmaster for Saint Maurice Church, Bolton, CT, in 1970. He studied at Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire, and graduated from Boston College in 1978. Ordained deacon on June 11, 1988, and priest on February 25, 1989, after completing degrees at Yale Divinity School and General Theological Seminary. He served as deacon at Saint Mary's Church, Manchester, Connecticut, in 1988; as associate rector at Trinity Church, Southport, CT, from 1990-1994; as a curate and interim rector at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue from 1994-1996; as rector of Saint Mark’s Locust Street, Philadelphia from 1997-2007; priest in charge of Saint Andrew’s Church, Stamford, CT, from 2007-2012; as rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, PA, from 2012-2014; and died as rector of Saint Clement’s Church.

Richard frequently prayed the rosary at the Chapel of Divine Love. He also loved to iron, polish silver, rescue dogs, and walk in Philadelphia and on the Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Saint Clement's Church or The Polyphonia Society. — From Legacy.com

Father Alton was a much-loved and greatly respected friend, pastor, and mentor to several of our members and friends. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Monday, November 11
Veterans Day
Mass 10:00 AM in the Lady Chapel
Federal Holiday Schedule: the church opens at 9:00 AM and closes at 12:00 PM. Parish offices are closed.

Wednesday, November 13, after Evening Prayer (5:30 PM) and Mass (6:00 PM)
“Group Seeks God”
In this small-group experiment, Father Sammy and Renee Wood will demonstrate how simple practices like hospitality and storytelling create opportunities for engagement and invitation in our everyday worlds.

Wednesday, November 27
Eve of Thanksgiving Day
Sung Mass with a Quartet from the Choir 6:00 PM
Evening Prayer is not said publicly in the church on the Eve of Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving Day
Mass 10:00 AM in the Lady Chapel
Federal Holiday Schedule: the church opens at 9:00 AM and closes at 12:00 PM. Parish offices are closed.

Sunday, December 1
The First Sunday of Advent
Mass 9:00 AM
Adult Formation 9:45 AM
Litany and Solemn Mass 12:00 PM
Evensong & Benediction 4:00 PM

Monday, December 9
The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (tr.)
Morning Prayer 8:00 AM
Sung Mass 12:10 PM
Organ Recital 5:30 PM
Solemn Mass 6:00 PM

NEWS AND NOTES

A Requiem Mass will be celebrated for Abraham Rochester on Saturday, November 16, 2024, at 10:00 AM. The service will be played by Clark Anderson and sung by a quartet of singers from the Choir of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin. Interment will be in the columbarium here at Saint Mary’s. Abe was a longtime parishioner and a faithful member of the Saint Raphael’s Guild of Ushers.

The 248th Annual Diocesan Convention of the Diocese of New York will take place at the Sonesta White Plains, Friday and Saturday, November 8 and 9, 2024. Saint Mary’s will be represented by Father Wood, Father Jacobson, Steven Eldredge, and Elizabeth Nisbet. Blair Burroughs and Mark Risinger have agreed to serve as alternate delegates. We are grateful to all of our fellow parishioners who have agreed to serve in this way.

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with those who take counsel at Convention for the renewal and mission of your Church.

The Annual Requiem Mass of the Guild of All Souls will be celebrated on Saturday, November 9, at 11:00 AM at the Church of the Resurrection, 119 East 74th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues. The music will be Viadana’s Messe da Requiem. A light lunch—a gift of the parish—will be served following the Mass. The Requiem will be broadcast live on the Church of the Resurrection YouTube and Facebook pages and available for viewing later viewing as well. There will be a light lunch available at no cost after the Mass.

“Zoom Theology” with Our Friends at All Saints, Margaret Street . . . You are invited to join your fellow Saint Marians and some of our friends in London for the latest offering in All Saints’ ongoing series, “Zoom Theology.” On Saturday, November 9, at 2:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, All Saints presents “On Søren Kierkegaard.” This is the first such collaboration with our sister parish in London. On Saturday, a good friend of Saint Mary’s—he preached here not long ago—the Reverend Dr. Jeffrey A. Hanson, will introduce those on Saturday’s Zoom call to aspects of this compelling Danish philosopher. Kierkegaard was only forty-two when he died in 1855. (This coming Monday, November 11, is the 169th anniversary of his death.) His short life was lived almost led almost entirely in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has left us a remarkably rich set of writings of great philosophical and theological import and has been called the “Father of Existentialism.” Father Hanson is a senior philosopher for the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. His first monograph, Kierkegaard and the Life of Faith: The Aesthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious in “Fear and Trembling” was published by Indiana University Press in 2017.

The Zoom link for this event can be found here.

CELEBRATING GENEROSITY

After Evensong and Benediction on Sunday, November 3, Saint Mary’s hosted a very special reception in the Rectory. At this event we celebrated the generosity of some of the largest donors to our Open Doors campaign, the campaign that enabled us to restore our façade and repair our roof. These gifts are also remembered on the plaque in the narthex.

In addition, we gave thanks to members of the Legacy Society, whose members have chosen to remember Saint Mary’s after they are gone, some through a bequest in their will, others through gifts of property or securities dedicated to the parish. Throughout Saint Mary’s history, the parish has survived and thrived because of the generous gifts of its members and friends. Some of those gifts, such as those made by John Jacob Astor, Sara L. Cooke and Haley Fiske, have been quite large. Others have been smaller, but they have all been just as important. Each gift, each legacy, keeps our doors open and our ministries active. Legacy Society members represent the future of Saint Mary’s, and we invite all our members and friends to join us by making a provision in your will or through some other financial commitment. We are ready to help you with these decisions. Please feel free to contact Father Wood or MaryJane Boland, who is working closely with Legacy Society members. Both would be happy to assist you.

OUTREACH AT SAINT MARY’S

Neighbors in Need . . . If you would like to volunteer or make a cash donation, please speak to MaryJane Boland. We are also eager to receive donations of new or lightly used sneakers and shoes, in all sizes, for both men and women. The October Drop-by was held on Friday, October 18, when we served 50 people. Next month’s Drop-by will take place on Friday, November 15. In December, the Drop-by will take place on the second Friday of the month, not the third: December 13, not December 20.

We are looking for a few more good volunteers, who feel called and inspired to give this work a try. Please speak to MaryJane Boland or Father Jay about our work and how you might help.

ABOUT THE MUSIC AT THE SOLEMN MASS ON SUNDAY NOVEMBER 10, 2024, THE TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The organ voluntaries on Sunday are the Prelude and Fugue in C minor, BWV 546, of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). The Prelude of this pairing was probably composed in Leipzig between 1725 and 1729. It is a remarkable piece which bears striking resemblance, both in melodic and textural features, to some of the writing in Bach’s double choir motets and, particularly, to the opening chorus of Cantata 47, Wer sich selbst erhöhet (1726). The muscular chordal opening motive, the shifting back and forth from duple to triple rhythmic subdivisions, the expressive use of chromaticism, the simple but compelling theme which slowly rises five scale degrees and then more rapidly retreats back to the tonic; all of these elements distinguish this work. The Fugue, played for the postlude, is probably a revision of a work originally dating between 1706 and 1712. While mostly conventional in style, some of the episodic material departs radically from the austere counterpoint of the exposition. This Fugue in C minor retains the breadth and grandeur necessary to balance the Prelude.

The musical setting of the Mass on Sunday morning is the four-voice Missa Octavi Toni by the Italian Baroque composer Antonio Lotti (1667–1740). Lotti was born in Venice, although his father Matteo was Kappellmeister at Hanover at the time. Lotti’s career took shape at Saint Mark’s, Venice, where he was an alto singer, organist, and eventually maestro di cappella from 1736 until his death four years later. Lotti’s church music—Masses and cantatas—is well known. But he also composed madrigals and about thirty operas, some of which were produced in Dresden where he was employed from 1717 to 1719. Lotti’s liturgical compositions retain Renaissance characteristics but also bear evidence of the emerging Baroque styles in approach to harmony and functional bass. His Missa Octavi Toni is a setting for four voices and, while polyphonic in construction, may well be more tonal than modal in harmonic conception. It imparts the liturgical text clearly and efficiently.

The communion Motet on Sunday is a four-voice setting of O Sacrum convivium by priest and musician Giovanni Croce (c. 1557–1609). Croce, though overshadowed in historic reflection by certain other Venice-centered composers of the late Renaissance, was well known in his time for his madrigals and secular compositions as well as his extensive output of church music. Croce sang as a boy chorister under Gioseffo Zarlino (1517–1590) at Saint Mark’s, Venice, eventually succeeding Zarlino as maestro di cappella there. He remained in that position until his death in 1609, four years before it went to Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). The text O sacrum convivium, often attributed to the theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), found a home in the Roman liturgical cycle as the antiphon for Magnificat at second Vespers of Corpus Christi, but is also very much at home in any Eucharistic celebration. It has been set in Latin, as well as in vernacular translations, by distinguished composers of every generation. Croce’s setting of O sacrum convivium is in a conservative style with graceful falling melodic lines and close imitation between the voices. — David Hurd

CONCERTS AT SAINT MARY’S

The Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series at Saint Mary’s

The Marian Consort
Music from Renaissance Scotland
Saturday, November 16, 2024, 7:30PM

From the Theatre’s website: In their Miller Theatre debut, the award-winning voices of The Marian Consort present a program of sumptuous Renaissance polyphony from some of Scotland’s few surviving sixteenth-century manuscripts. Works from the Dunkeld Partbooks provide a glimpse of the musical riches performed in this period, including the beautiful anonymous Missa Felix namque (“For you are happy”). In addition, selections from the Wode Partbooks showcase pieces by local musicians responding to the changing musical styles and requirements of post-Reformation Scotland.

Visit the Theatre’s website to purchase tickets. Tickets cannot be purchased ahead of time here at Saint Mary’s or by calling the parish office.

The New York Repertory Orchestra
Saturday, December 7, 2024, 8:00 PM

J.S. Bach/Webern: Ricercar a 6
Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 6
Admission is free. A $15.00 donation is gratefully received.

FOR ALL YOU ANIMAL LOVERS: AT THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Central Park West & 77th Street

Pets and the City
Through April 20, 2025

From the museum website, www.nyhistory.org: Pets and the City explores the visual history of New Yorkers and their animal companions over the last two and a half centuries, tracing the ever-evolving relationship between Gotham’s people and its animals as the city grew increasingly urbanized and industrialized. Through a broad spectrum of works of art, objects, documents, memorabilia, and clips from film and television, the exhibition surveys the evolution of pets—from their presence among the Lenape and Haudenosaunee and the hunting culture of settlers through their insinuation into the urban family and onto the pampered pets of today, which enjoy their own public rights.

Drawn largely from The New York Historical’s collections, Pets and the City also investigates the reasons for the soaring pet population, especially after 9/11 and during the COVID-19 crisis, as well as issues surrounding pet adoption, the trafficking of exotic animals, and service animals.

We need your help to keep holding our services. Click below, where you can make one-time or recurring donations to support Saint Mary’s. We are very grateful to all those who make such donations and continue to support Saint Mary’s so generously.

Saint Mary’s is a vibrant Anglo-Catholic witness in the heart of NYC. 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.

This edition of The Angelus was written and edited by Father Jay Smith, except as noted. Father Matt Jacobson also edits the newsletter and is responsible for formatting and posting it on the parish website and distributing it via mail and e-mail, with the assistance of Christopher Howatt, parish administrator, and parish volunteer, Clint Best.