During my recent trip to New York City, I tried to hit some of the churches with internationally renowned choirs for the occasional service.Naturally, our first stop was St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, the place with the fabulous men and boys choir, on Friday afternoon. Alas, it turns out they now only do weekday Evensongs Tuesdays through Thursdays, so there was nothing going on on Friday.
I probably should have gone on down to Trinity Wall Street. I have to say that it was very interesting being in New York this past Thursday and Friday during all the financial "market adjustments" and the conversion of all the i-bankers to run of the mill commercial bankers or to just the land of the unemployed.Picked up a program for Sunday..... they were planning to sing Bruckner's Os justi meditabitur sapientiam for the offertory and Elgar's Ave verum Corpus at communion, with Rheinberger's Cantus Missae as the Mass setting.
Saturday afternoon we went to "Smokey Mary's" a/k/a the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Times Square, where Ian and I listened to Evening Prayer being read. We left before Mass, though, because, like Evening Prayer, not only was nothing being sung, there was not a whisp of incense to be smelled!
Sunday whilst Ian worshipped with St. Mattress, I made it up to midtown to the famous St. Patrick's Cathedral, reputed to be the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in North America. It's a stunningly beautiful place! The architecture is neogothic with great height and intricate tracery, designed by James Renwick.
The first thing I noticed walking up to the cathedral were throngs of people on the sidewalks and an unexpected police presence all around the cathedral and with both cars and vans parked out front. There was no scheduled appearance by the cardinal archbishop of New York, any Vatican dignitaries, or any particularly famous worshippers, so I don't know why they would have so many, obvious, police guards around. Once I got into the cathedral, I was surprised to see not only more policemen inside the building, but the cathedral ushers were running around with earpieces and those curly cords like the Secret Service guys wear here in D.C. I guess being a Catholic Church is a high risk operation these days.
I'd gotten to church early enough I was able to get a seat near the center aisle in the first archway just west of the crossing, usually a good place to hear the musical balance. At St. Patrick's, the choir sings from the loft in the balcony and the entire organ appears to be back there as well. In actuality, there is a chancel organ in the north side of the chancel, but the gallery and chancel organs are essentially unified into one huge instrument with five manuals, 177 ranks, and over 35,000 pipes, all by George Kilgen and Son, I believe.
Rather than resting on the high altar or on a retable behind it, the office lights were tall candlesticks resting on the floor parallel to the ends of the altar, rather than being stretched across the length of the altar. This custom probably dates from the 1980s, when a new high altar was fashioned farther west of the old high altar to be "closer to the people" (more bad post-Vatican II decisions), and the old altar remains in back beneath an incredibly elaborate solid bronze baldachin. There were two large floral arrangements behind the high altar, but I had the distinct impression that they were old and wilting.
The music and liturgy at St. Patrick's are refreshingly good. My only criticism is that they mike and amplify their choir, and it detracts from the beauty of their music.
The Mass setting for the day was Schubert's Deutsche Messe, all sung by the choir and congregation with the exception of the Sanctus; the Sanctus and Benedictus were from Fauré's Messe (his Mass, not the more familiar Requiem) and were sung solely by the choir. They did Melchior Vulpius's Gospel Alleluia setting. And, contrary to the bad habits of the cathedral and parishes of the Archdiocese of Washington, the Gloria was sung straight through by the entire congregation, rather than being sung responsorially by cantor and congregation.
The choir sang Benjamin Britten's "Jubilate Deo" as the offertory and Dupré's "O Salutaris" as a communion motet. The choir and cantor (a tenor) were clad in burgundy albs with gold metallic trim on the sleeve cuffs and a large Chi Rho cross on the chests. Hymns for the day included Lobe den Herren for the processional, both Rendez à Dieu and Pescador (the latter in Spanish) after the communion motet, and In Babilone for the recessional. One odd thing I noticed had to do with the processional hymn. The choir and altar party processed in from the sacristy down the south aisle to the narthex whilst the congregation sang the three printed verses of the processional hymn. The organist played a bit of an interlude as the choir and altar party congregated in the narthex, before beginning the hymn a second time, during which time the choir went to the loft and the altar party processed up the center aisle. By the time everyone was in place and the celebrant had quickly incensed the altar, they'd sung all three verses again, plus the first verse a third time. I don't know why they did it that way; I don't know why they didn't sing any of the other verses of the hymn.
The organ prelude and postlude were both by Paul Creston, the former being "Prayer" and the latter "Prelude," both played by the cathedral principal organist.
The cardinal's throne is in the photo to the left.The Monsignor Rector was both celebrant and homilist.
I found the homily intriguing. To appreciate what the priest was saying, one needs to understand the fundamental differences between Catholicism and Protestantism and their concepts of salvation and the afterlife. As a matter of fact, the entire Protestant Reformation centered around this issue. Catholics believe that people are "saved" and reach heavenly glory by faith (in the Lord Jesus Christ) and by good works. Protestants, on the other hand, believe that people get to heaven by faith in Jesus alone. Catholics also believe that people who have the requisite faith but insufficient good works to counteract their sinful acts on earth must spend some time in a place called Purgatory to purge themselves of sin before heading on up to the heavenly streets of gold; Protestants completely reject the concept of Purgatory and have the faithful asleep in the Lord until the Day of Resurrection and Judgment, when the Elect go straight to Heaven.
Now, Monsignor's homily was a pretty straightforward illumination of the morning's Gospel reading, about Jesus's parable of the rich man who hires workers for his vineyard at different times during the day, and at the end of the day, pays every worker equally, whether he worked one hour or ten. It's supposed to be an illustration of God's bountiful mercy, encouraging people to make conversions late in life and even on their deathbeds. But here is where the homily got interesting: what if Jeffrey Dahmer or Osama bin Laden make sincere deathbed conversions and confessions and receive absolution?
Will we meet them in heaven?
That's a hard question for us Christians to face, usually much harder for Protestants who have no Purgatory as a "punitive" purifying buffer than for Catholics.
I can certainly hear the holier-than-thou crowd puffing up their chests and exclaiming about the absurdity of such a hypothetical, but I can also hear the words of our Lord Jesus telling us to judge not lest we be judged. I, for one, am certainly no angel, so I guess I'll have to leave open the window of opportunity for some very interesting bunkmates in Heaven.
Me, preparing for Heaven
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