Meetings and Greetings by Bishop and Bishop-elect

Meeting and greeting seems to have been something of a theme this last week! Last Sunday I was pleased to convey in person greetings on behalf of the parish to Brother James Koester, who has just become Superior of The Brothers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE), across the river from us over in Cambridge. The brothers are part of the first religious order of monks to be formed in the Anglican Communion since the Reformation. While the original community was first established in Cowley, by the Revd. Richard Meux Benson, it soon spread to India and South Africa as well as the United States. I was delighted to meet the outgoing Superior also, Brother Geoffrey Tristram. Among other things, he is an expert on our celebrated sometime parishioner, Isabella Stewart Gardner. Indeed, it was her donations that funded buying the site on which the present monastery stands. It is emblematic of our various mutual links, that clergy from this parish have in the past alternated with members of the Order in celebrating the annual requiem for her every April at the museum which her will requires.

On Monday, the liturgical calendar reminded us of another religious order with which this parish had strong historic links, namely the Sisters of St Margaret, who long had a convent on Beacon Hill’s Louisburg Sq. (In what is now a residence of Senator John Kerry.) The Order was originally founded at Rotherfield, England in 1855 by John Mason Neale. Such was the novelty of this foundation, and so grave the suspicions of their being agents of Rome, that they caused a riot in 1857. The order later spread to the United States and it was for the heroic virtue of their Sister Clare, in 1873, that we call them to mind each year on 9th September. Sister Clare joined Sisters of St. Mary and others in ministering to the dying during a devastating outbreak of Yellow Fever in Memphis, Tennessee. She is remembered with Sisters Constance, Thecla, Ruth, and Frances, as well Fathers Louis Schuyler and Charles Parsons, all of whom died while working amidst the outbreak.

It was also on Monday, that I had the particular pleasure of welcoming Bishop Alan Gates and the Bishop-elect of Massachusetts, Julia Whitworth, for afternoon tea. We afterwards undertook a short tour of the church itself and had a deeply moving time of prayer together in the Baptistry.

I was most grateful for this early opportunity to say personally how much we look forward in the parish to working with Bishop-elect Julia, and to building further, thus, upon the relationship we have come to enjoy with Bishop Alan. We found much to share as we look forward to expanding yet further in a mutual spirit of good will, our future in the diocese. Bishop Alan reminded us of the point that unity does not entail uniformity —an insight that could only resonate with those of us familiar with the various and sundry quirks that always seem to attend Anglo-Catholic parishes! Happily though, the complex history of the parish has never yet encompassed a riot, in the manner of the good sisters of St Margaret, I am pleased to say! 

Bishops-elect can be a conundrum to address, so I took the liberty of calling to mind the observation of Archbishop Robert Runcie, upon hearing of his forthcoming elevation to Canterbury that, Increasingly Reverend may, in the interim, elegantly suffice. 

There was a curious numerical commonality we noticed as an aside. This is that Bishop-elect Julia will be the seventeenth bishop of Massachusetts, just as it so happens I find myself a seventeenth Rector of the Advent.

But when it comes to history, England has a way of lending historical context to such things as duration and time. The first Archbishop I worked with personally, was no less than the 103rd occupant of that office! But he always took this to be a reminder that, while he would come and go, the office would go on, by God’s grace, transcendent.

The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector

NB Fr. Alistair will be away attending to repairs to his cottage in the UK for a few days over the coming weekend.