First a Church

Here We Worship God

The Episcopal Diocese of New York includes 199 local parishes with approximately 66,000 members, 70 deacons, 600 priests and three bishops, including the Diocesan Bishop, who is the chief pastor. Cathedrals, regardless of size or splendor, are set apart from all other churches as the seat of a bishop and principle church of a diocese. The building reflects the glory of God as it houses the works of its community. At an Episcopal cathedral, scripture, tradition, and reason are equally valued. Every service and each event here gives witness to what lies at the core of our worship: the opening of the spirit.

SUB-DEAN PAT MALLOY The Cathedral is a house of prayer, a meeting place, a forum for discussion, a host to extraordinary events—and it is more than all of these. It is a sanctuary. It is where people come to build an abiding connection to each other and to God.

DEAN MORTON The word “religion” comes from the Latin verb regligare: meaning “to connect, to join together.” The function of every religion and every holy place is to make humans feel connected to all other human beings, to the earth, the cosmos—and ultimately to the Divine.

BILL BAKER We easily forget that of the sevenand-a-half-billion people on this earth, 85 percent, over six billion, have faith or are seeking faith. Faith is critical to most people on earth and has been through all of history. And somehow, that faith gets those billions of people through their daily lives and gives them a moral direction.

BISHOP MANNING Here in this metropolis of the new world, we are erecting this great building for no material or utilitarian purpose but to witness to the things that are eternal. This building speaks of the Heavenly realities, of the power and glory of the supernatural.

DEAN DANIEL This place is meant to be overwhelming, it is meant to be grand. But in the end, what the grandeur encases is the heart of love that yearns to touch human life. That’s what it’s all about. The love of God for all humans. It is my job as one who serves in this place to express that love the best I can in order that others might experience something of the love that created this building, our world, and everything in it. The cathedral is the spiritual center of the diocese. It’s where the Bishop sits, and it is where as a larger body, we’re drawn to convene and express what we can never express quite completely in our smaller parishes.

THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN The cathedral is the hub of a diocesan wheel. Everything feeds into it. In turn, the cathedral feeds everything back to the churches in the diocese. BISHOP DIETSCHE The first purpose of the Cathedral is to be the seat of the Bishop of New York. If you took away the Bishop’s chair they would have to change our name to "The Church of St. John the Divine."

BISHOP ALLEN SHIN Historically, there has been a tension between whether the Cathedral is a house of prayer for all people or the Episcopal Diocese of New York first. I think that’s a false dichotomy. It is an Episcopal Church, which is open. It also has the primary mission to welcome and be hospitable to all people from this city. They go hand-in-hand.

DEAN DANIEL The Cathedral is a great crossroads where a community comes together. It is like a mosaic of people and places and things. It expresses the diversity of that whole community.

THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN The Cathedral is a living laboratory. It’s a place that sets the standards for liturgy, for preaching, for theology, and it does that by having a broad worldview. Everything is contained within that building.

BISHOP DIETSCHE Why do we do have art in the Cathedral? Why do we have music? Why do we invite the city to be here? Why do elected officials speak from our pulpit, why do we engage in social action, direct ministries, and advocacy? Because this is a church. If we start by saying it is a church, a place “set apart” for the Glory of God, it means we will bring into that space, before the altar, and into our midst the very best of what we have from the creation and the expressions of our co-creation with God as artists, or writers, or musicians. When we begin by saying the Cathedral is a space set apart for the Glory of God, which is what any church is, it then becomes what do we “do” in that space. We worship God. We come before God here. We bring our offerings and oblations, the supplications of our heart, our whole lives and labors before the altar and here we pray, we offer praise. Here we worship God.

A Visual Symbol of Faith

Top left Farewell service for Bishop Moore, June 11, 1989.

Top right A Cathedral Chorister.

Middle right Procession in the Nave, March 2018.

Bottom left Dean Kowalski at the pulpit.

Bottom right Misa Español celebrated at the Altar for Peace by the Rev. Canon John B. Luce, January 1987. DEAN KOWALSKI There is nowhere you can go that has not been touched by the love of God. I don’t care what bad thing you do, you cannot be separated from that love. It just can’t happen.

MARSHA RA One Sunday morning, I just walked into the Cathedral. And I was terrified. My experience at first was that it was very dark, very big, very frightening. Then the organ started playing and procession started and you just had the sense that something really important was happening. I knew I was where I had to be. I know that every Sunday something very important happens and I’m a part of it and I’m very glad to be here. I think it’s the kindness and I think it fills everybody.

BISHOP DIETSCHE It’s not an easy thing to come before God. When we begin talking about coming before God, immediately we are captivated by our sense of unworthiness, the shame that we carry in our life, all the guilt, the things that we’ve done to other people, things that other people have done to us. All of this is the knot with which people live. We bring that into the church with us. And we want the church to create an opening where we can come in and apprehend—and I don’t mean an emotional feeling—but apprehend the presence of the spirit and have an authentic encounter with God where we may know we are forgiven and where we may forgive others and become one. Jesus said, “I only came for one reason: that all may be one as the Father and I are one.” He came to make us one. And we come into the church that we may be reformed as a holy people. This place is set apart for the glory of God. It becomes a clearing in the thicket of the world. So, when we gather in the Cathedral or any of the other 199 churches in my Diocese, or any other church in the world, we come to that clearing.

MARILYN NELSON A church has to be there to gently help people to wake up, to remind people that they are followers of the Christ, to indicate to people what Christ’s nature is, to help people think through ethical issues.

KALIE KAMARA People can go to religious sanctuaries thinking they are going to get their answers that day. But the Cathedral is always here. It’s always going to be here. Coming here is more like a piece to a puzzle for the next time or even the time after. Really, it’s for your whole life. DEAN KOWALSKI People are struggling to understand the spirituality of being human, or just “being what I’m meant to be.” They come here, and they start resonating. They start feeling they’ve come home.

MARILYN NELSON A church is not a where; it is a when. It’s when we gather to invite awe, when we strip our faith naked down to doubt, when we struggle to see beyond the surfaces to the bedrock of striving to understand. When ethics are not thou-shalt-nots carved in stone, but choices written with a stick in dust.

DENNIS REED In Harlem, Christianity for young black men is not a welcome option. It represents “turn the other cheek, be submissive.” I was surrounded by that. But as a kid I felt the rites of the church like a magnet. I would hear the name of Christ and cry. This pulled at me, and I wanted that to come out. Because of its bigness and the eternal stone, the Cathedral is a visual symbol of faith. The only place that could hold me was something as big and strong as the Cathedral. The grandeur and bigness center me. Every Sunday, amid the pageantry, I find deeper insights into the origins of the service. It’s a whole world for me.

MARSHA RA I hope that the Cathedral can be strong enough to survive hundreds of years into the future. People say they are spiritual not religious, but to me, you can’t be spiritual without religion—it doesn’t work. You can’t grow on your own. I would like to see the Congregation of St. Saviour remain spiritually very strong.

BISHOP DIETSCHE When I get up into the pulpit and I look out on 3,000 people, I know that there are people in the Cathedral who just found that they have Stage IV colon cancer and it’s inoperable. There are people sitting next to their spouse and they both know it’s over. There are people who are desperate for a child who’s spinning away from them. We bring all that with us into the church. We need the church to help us to apprehend the presence of the spirit. We need the church to help us make that journey into the presence of God.

An Authentic Experience of God

BISHOP DIETSCHE Our Episcopal house of prayer for all people invites those from many faiths to worship together in services held more than 30 times a week.

ANNE HARRISON Through the quiet round of daily services and the splendor of festive occasions it is the regular worship that undergirds everything that happens here.

MADELEINE L’ENGLE On any Sunday you will see worshippers of all races and of every economic standard. When I think of Jesus’ friends, and the people with whom He associated, I think He would have been at home with the Cathedral congregation.

DEAN MORTON The ancient word for worship is the Greek Madeleine eucharistia, “communion,” the emotional response to feeling connected— gratitude, thankfulness, and joy. It’s wonderful to be with my friend, my lover, my God and Lord.

BISHOP DIETSCHE What we’re trying to do in the church is to clear that space in the world whereby we may know the presence of the Holy Spirit and have an authentic experience of God. That’s what this is all about. When we get this right we can help people have an experience of God that is life transforming. JAMES CARROLL The Bible never exempts itself from its own judgment. In a similar way, the Cathedral speaks of and to its world from within because it points beyond itself to God as the one who saves. The Cathedral is not silenced by its own disorders, its own need to be redeemed. Indeed, its message is: We all need to be redeemed.

MADELEINE L’ENGLE The central activity of the church given to the disciples by Jesus is also the central activity of the Cathedral. There are celebrations of Holy Communion every day.

DEAN KOWALSKI The moment of the sacramental transformation is when we consecrate the bread and the wine, the body, and blood of Christ. “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” My arms are stretched back to the communion of saints and out toward the future. The old, the now, and the new. The point is the sacramental life, where ordinary things become extraordinary things. You start looking at what things can reveal. You are surprised by God.

JAMES CARROLL The vibrancy, enthusiasm, diversity and mere happiness that are the marks of this place and its people make the Cathedral’s simple, strong statement. Its many voices say finally the same thing, this: The Redeemer comes and comes and comes again. Jesus Christ. To name Him and welcome Him and submit to Him and eat with Him and hand over to Him all our troubles, the city’s, nation’s, world’s, and finally to glory in Him is the point of every song, sermon, and stone that builds this place, one on top of another; around the Book and around the Bread, even now.

Bishop Dietsche celebrating the Eucharist with clergy including the Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori and the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk.

“Planning communion for 3,500 people is like planning the invasion of