FROM FATHER WOOD: FORMATION AT SAINT MARY’S IN 2024-2025

The program year at Saint Mary’s kicks off in earnest on Sunday, October 6, when Catechesis of the Good Shepherd returns to the Atrium for our youngest kids, and adult formation returns to Saint Joseph’s Hall for the adults in our community, on Sundays at 9:45 AM. In CGS, the foundational scripture is the Good Shepherd (John 10), and each class begins with singing and a presentation on Sacred Scripture, Biblical geography, or the liturgy. Then each child chooses to work with materials that make the mystery of God more concrete.

This is the eighth and final article in a series exploring our statement of vision for our common life 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.

When the Board of Trustees first began discerning this vision statement in the fall of 2023, I confess the last six words were the first ones that leapt to my mind.

FROM FATHER WOOD: SAINT MARY’S LEGACY SOCIETY

A favorite poem of mine is Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” I love the absurdly counterintuitive recommendations Berry makes for how we ought to live.

Every day do something that won’t compute.

Not your average advice overheard from New York career consultants and financial planners.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

But my favorite line is:

Plant sequoias.

In 1892, Miss Sara L. Cooke, a dedicated member of this parish and friend of our founding Rector, Father Thomas McKee Brown, decided to do just that. She planted a sequoia.

FROM KATHERINE HOYT:
SAINT MARY’S IS OUR CHURCH

Several weeks ago, I attended a program called the College for Congregational Development, along with Father Sammy Wood, fellow board member, Clark Mitchell, and Brother Thomas Steffensen, SSF. I had originally heard about this program from the Reverend Canon Alissa Newton earlier this year, who has been involved in developing it, and it certainly intrigued me. The Reverend Canon Victor Conrado, who is well known to us at Saint Mary’s, has been involved in the College as well and invited us to attend.

FROM INGRID SLETTEN:
GOD IS NEAR. GOD IS WITH US.

Conversations about God, with another person trained in such conversations, is called spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is an ancient Christian tradition that survives and thrives today; it is a form of prayer we offer each other in the Christian community. Prayer is a balm to many of us and so adding a new form of prayer has often appealed to people of faith.

SAINT ANTHONY OF PADUA
ON THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

On Thursday, we celebrated the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Though the celebration of this feast dates to antiquity, the Roman Catholic Church did not define it dogmatically until 1950. In that declaration, Pope Pius XII wrote the following about Saint Anthony of Padua’s (1195-1231) contribution to our understanding of the Assumption . . .

FROM FATHER JACOBSON:
THE DREAM OF THE VIRGIN

On Thursday, August 15, we commemorate one of the principal Marian feasts of the Church year, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Assumption is typically referred to by an older title, the Dormition (falling asleep) of the Theotokos (God-bearer). The God-bearer’s falling asleep reminds me of a somewhat unusual fourteenth-century painting, the Sogno della Vergine (Dream of the Virgin) by Simone dei Crocifissi of Bologna, that I was struck by recently when visiting the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Ferrara.

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.)