The final liturgy at St. Michael’s….
St. Michael’s Russian Catholic chapel is unusual among the churches we have covered in this series. It is distinctive neither in its architecture nor its furnishings – a smallish room on the ground floor of a 19th century administrative building. The decoration was pretty if simple – an iconostasis, candle stands, and a rich collection of icons displayed everywhere. Certainly, the size of the congregation was insignificant even by the standard of present-day New York parishes. Yet St. Michael’s was above all one thing – a liturgy, that it conscientiously celebrated from more than 80 years.
Fr. Andrew Rogosh arrived in 1935 to care for the tiny community of Russian Catholics. St Michael’s commenced life the following year. Since then, the parish has seen ups and downs, and a changing congregation. Even though more Russians arrived after the Second World War by the 1980’s there was hardly a Russian native left. Yet a new set of parishioners took their place. The congregation consisted mainly of those less fortunate than most in the material things of this world – the average parishioner at St Ignatius Loyola or Resurrection in Rye did not come here. Then, in the 1990’s there was a new influx from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That wave in turn dissipated. The last liturgy at St Michael’s, however, was attended by a congregation more youthful, on the average, than I had ever seen there before.
But through all these vicissitudes, St Michael’s treasure was the Eastern liturgy, celebrated precisely and exactly, with all the embellishments this small and meagre parish could afford; a model for Catholics and Orthodox alike. Anyone who has attended St. Michael’s Easter service – the candlelight procession through St Patrick’s graveyard, the joyous cries of “Christ is risen!”, the three- and one-half hours service, the concluding festive banquet after 2:30 – does not easily forget it. St. Michael’s was always welcoming, remaining open to visitors and the curious – unlike the strong ethnic focus of most Orthodox and Eastern Catholic parishes. Many hierarchs and noteworthy people attended St Michaels over the years:
St. Michael’s chapel down on Mulberry Street, in back of old St. Patrick’s Cathedral which is surrounded by a beautiful green church yard, with a cemetery filled with trees and shrubs. Toussaint Saint L’Overture, the Negro liberator, is supposed to be buried there. Also there are catacombs, so I’ve heard tell, beneath the church. When one goes to assist at the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and listen to the superb Russian choir, one feels that here is prayer for Russia indeed.
(Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, July-August 1947, 1)
And, on occasion, St Michael’s seems to have extended its liturgical mission outside the boundaries of its small chapel:
The first Byzantine‐Rumanian Rite mass to be celebrated at St. Patrick’s Cathedral since 1947 was sung there yesterday to mark the suppression of the Rumanian Catholic Church by the Communists.
During the celebration the Rev. Andrew Rogosh of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association was installed as Protopresbyter, a title conferred on him by Pope Paul VI. He is the only Catholic priest in the United States to hold this office.
Several thousand worshipers gathered in the cathedral to hear the liturgy of the Byzantine Rite, which was unfamiliar to many of them. (“Byzantine Mass sung at St. Patrick’s,” The New York Times, March 15, 1964)
But it is precisely this missionary, or, to use current terminology, “evangelical” spirit that seems to have deserted the Catholic Church of the present day. The neighborhood of St Michaels was in 1982 still a desolate, out of the way corner of New York – it now swarms with boutiques and restaurants line the Bowery. A small parish that survived through decades of obscurity and poverty has fallen victim to the property values prosperity brings. It is a story often repeated in the last two decades in the New York Archdiocese.
Thanks to the generosity of the Dominicans, the community of St Michael’s will be relocating to St Catherine of Siena parish. It will be quite a change – moving from a small one-room chapel to one of the grandest churches on Manhattan Island! The liturgy will be at the main altar at 11:30 on Sundays. We would hope that the mission of St Michael’s will continue in such unfamiliar surroundings. And, who knows – perhaps now, when it will be open to the gaze of a much larger congregation, the liturgy that the small chapel of St Michael’s cared for so many decades will find a new and larger congregation.
