The Rector's Message for the Week of June 9, 2024

Dear Friends,

A number of you have asked for a copy of the homily I preached on the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth, when we also commemorated the life of Betty Burr and transferred her ashes from the urn vault and into the Columbarium.  I was sent the lovely picture of Betty, above, and if you click on it, you can read the homily.  May she rest in peace and rise in glory. Amen.

The Choir School is now on its summer recess, and we wish all the boys and their families a lovely summer holiday.  Mo. Turner has sent some pictures from camp, which you will find in this message.

Please note that Sunday School continues during the month of June at 10am, and although the Noble Singers will also have a break, the 9am mass will continue to be sung with the help of a cantor.  That service lasts about 50 minutes, including a short homily, and is followed by a coffee hour in the Parish House living room.  If you want to go to church but want to spend the day with your family or visit friends, attending the 9am is a good way to do both.  We are inviting parishioners to sit in the choir stalls for the 9am service in July and August, just as we used to many years ago.

Although there will be no weekday Choral Evensongs during the summer, except for during the Girl Chorister Course, we shall continue our popular Summer Feast Days at 5:30pm with the Gentlemen of the Choir.  These services will be followed by cheese, wine, and soft drinks in the Narthex.

This Sunday, I am preaching at another Church of Saint Thomas, in Toronto, as part of their sesquicentennial anniversary celebrations. I was delighted to discover that one of our Vestry members, Darren Littlejohn, and his wife Liane were married at St. Thomas Church Toronto, and that we have a number of other parishioners who used to worship there. St. Thomas has a strong liturgical and musical tradition like our own, and I am looking forward to seeing their Rector, Fr. Nathan Humphrey, and some of his parishioners who joined with us on our pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2022. Several of our own parishioners will be in Toronto for the weekend celebrating our two churches and their anniversaries.

The Bicentennial Lectures have proven to be a great success and, this week, we welcome back an old friend of the parish, the Rev. Dr. Brandt Montgomery, who will speak about the tenth Rector of Saint Thomas, the Rev. Dr. Frederick Morris, whose tenure was during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. His influence on Saint Thomas and the wider community was so significant that, when he died in 1998, the New York Times printed an article about him. As rector, Dr. Morris ended pew rents that had existed since the parish was founded in 1823; he had the Skinner organ restored, and restored the Sunday School program and attracted young people to the church. He also oversaw the installation of four images of emancipators on the tower of the Church. You can find details of the class later on in this week’s e-news.

During Lent, we ran a small fund-raising campaign to help people who are crippled with medical debt. RIP Medical Debt (now known as Undue Medical Debt) is an organization that helps relieve the effects of medical debt on families and individuals, particularly when it is their chronic, acute illness, or disability that prevents them earning money. On average, every $10 donated relieves $1,000 of medical debt. Thus far, 11 billion dollars of debt has been relieved from low-income families. We set ourselves a small goal of $5,000, but we raised $8,443.90, which is 150% of our goal. That means around $844,000 of medical debt was relieved. Thank you to Erich Erving who helped organize this project and all those who supported it.

Mo. Turner has sent this short report from the Chorister Camp:

Last Saturday’s Prize Day and Sunday’s Leavers Mass, were both beautiful and memorable. This was an extra special weekend for our Grade 8 students who on Saturday, shared both sophisticated and wide-ranging solos, as well as received a number of prizes honoring their own particular gifts and talents.

The 11am Sunday service concluded with the annual blessing of our graduating class and a presentation of their crosses, all individually engraved. As the boys knelt at the altar rails to receive these gifts from are Mr. Seeley, Head of School, their fellow choristers sang ‘God be in my Head’. This always is a very meaningful and prayerful tradition which I am sure they will all remember for years. The service ended, as in previous years with the powerful words of Ora Labora, and its famous and most appropriate final line ‘Servants, well done’.

As you know Saint Thomas Choir School upholds a number of annual traditions, including ‘Going to Camp’. This year we left for Incarnation Camp almost immediately after the 11am Service, some boys still with tears in their eyes. Within a few hours we found ourselves in the leafy countryside, in Deep River, Connecticut.

Incarnation Camp was new to about a third of our community this year. It didn’t take them long to discover the hiking trails, the waterfront, and a range of outdoor and indoor activities, carefully planned for mixed age groups alongside many of the faculty and staff who equally entered into the rhythm of community in this vastly contrasting setting to the Big City. Here there is also space for some quieter times, discovering caterpillars, late night board games, and creativity seen in boys needlepointing, wood sculptures and boat making.

Our final day will end with further traditions, with a campfire and gathering in the outside lakeside chapel for Camp Awards and Compline by Candlelight. Here we will once again pray especially for our Grade 8 students who are now perfectly poised to move to pastures new, and also pray for the whole school community who will be pleased to say summer has now begun.

Thank you Alison!

Finally, parishioner Commander John Cupschalk USN (retired) regularly discovers fascinating pictures and facts about Saint Thomas and its envrions. On Memorial Day, he sent me this wonderful photograph of Colonel Franklin Bartlett leading a parade on what is now known as Memorial Day in 1899. In those days, it was called Dedication Day. You can clearly see the large tower of the third Saint Thomas Church, and how it us not dwarfed by the high-rise buildings that now surround the Church. Thank you, John, for this fascinating insight:

John writes:

Col. Bartlett was an interesting man. Born in Grafton, Massachusetts, he graduated from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1865 and from Harvard University in 1869. He then attended Columbia College Law School, was admitted to the bar in 1870, attended Exeter College, Oxford, (1870-71) and concluded the course at Columbia College Law School New York, in 1873. He served as a member of the constitutional commission of the State of New York in 1890 and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Chicago in 1892. In 1893, he was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Congresses, serving until 1897. After his term, he served as a Colonel in the U.S. Volunteers during the Spanish American War of 1898. He died of a kidney disorder at age 61.

He was a parishioner at the former Church of the Holy Communion on 20th & Sixth. He was a member of the Harvard, Knickerbocker, Manhattan, Union, Players and University Clubs and the New York and Coney Jockey Clubs as well as The New York Historical Society, The Camden Society of London and The Metropolitan Club of Washington. He was secretary of the Union Club for many years and for nine years on the governing Board of the University Club.

With every blessing,

Affectionately,

Your Priest and Pastor,
Carl