James Otis Sargent Huntington, Monastic and Priest

Today the Church commemorates James Otis Sargent Huntington, who persevered in a life of prayer and service and helped to establish the Order of the Holy Cross within the Episcopal Church.

James was born in Boston in 1854. His father became the first Bishop of Central New York. After studying at Harvard and then at a theological school in Syracuse, James received ordination from his father and began to serve a working-class congregation at Calvary Mission.

At a retreat in Philadelphia, he discerned a call to the religious life. He considered joining an existing community, but he also saw a need for a community rooted in the life of the American Church.

In 1881 James began that work with two other Priests, Robert Dod and James Cameron. Dod took the lead in organizing their common life and wrote their first Rule. Together they served at Holy Cross Mission on New York’s Lower East Side, working with the Sisters of Saint John Baptist among poor immigrants.

Their days joined the Eucharist and the Church’s daily prayers to long hours of pastoral work. The demands were heavy. Cameron left when he discerned that the life was not his vocation. Illness forced Dod to withdraw. By 1884 James remained alone of the three who had begun.

He continued. On November 25, 1884, Bishop Henry Codman Potter received his vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. At his profession, James was still the only member of the new Order.

The profession stirred opposition in the Church. Presiding Bishop Alfred Lee wrote to Potter in alarm. He regarded the monastic vows as a return to a system the English Reformation had rejected. Potter answered that the Church already accepted sisterhoods whose members made the same commitments. He saw a place for men to undertake the same life of service.

James carried on among the immigrants, with particular concern for young people. The poverty he encountered also drew him towards the struggles of working people. He joined the labor movement and supported proposals to change the way land was taxed. His prayer brought him into the questions of wages, property, and the conditions in which his neighbors lived.

Other men began to join the Order. The community moved first to Maryland and then, in 1902, to West Park beside the Hudson River. James served several terms as Superior, the head of the Order, and wrote the Rule that shaped its growing life.

The Rule joined love of God to love of the people whom God had made. James wrote that love was never idle. Prayer and study were to bear fruit in service. He preached, taught, led retreats, and counseled people who sought help in their life with Christ.

His father and his brother died in 1904. After his mother’s death in 1910, James spent time with his sisters and later went away to recover his strength. The man who had sustained others also needed the care of his family and community.

In 1930 the brothers elected Father Shirley Carter Hughson, a fellow monk, as Superior and gave James the title of Father Founder. James did not welcome the title. He remembered Dod’s leadership when they had begun. The brothers were also choosing a direction for the Order that differed from James’s missionary vision. Yet he continued to give spiritual counsel and encouragement. People still came to him, and he received them.

In November 1934 the Church marked fifty years since his profession. He died at West Park on June 28, 1935, and his brothers buried him in the monastery church.

The Lord who had received his lifelong promise remained faithful through his disappointments. We place before him the work that has wearied us and the hopes we have not seen fulfilled.