Hope is Here

This past weekend we had the privilege and joy of serving out in Oakland, California, at the Cathedral of Christ the Light. The rector of the Cathedral is a fantastic young priest named Fr. Brandon Macadaeg. He and the men and women that serve alongside him are a self-described scrappy team, joyful and bold for Jesus Christ and the gospel. We had gone out to lead a Rescue Project mission over the course of three days, and the attendance was diverse in age and ethnicity. The liturgies at the Cathedral are reverent yet not stiff, a seemingly rare combination oftentimes in the Church. Mary often says about our ministry that we get a front row seat to watch God work, and last weekend was no exception. Truly, the gospel is power.

Mindful that a cathedral is more than a parish, it is the mother church of a diocese, the Cathedral is doing a number of things to go out of their way to make visitors feel welcome. For example, Fr. Brandon told us they strive to make sure every visitor is greeted five times before they get to their pew inside. This strikes me as most significant, and is one of many signs of a priest who readily understands that we are no longer in Christendom, and thus need to do all we can to make people feel welcome in our Churches. 

The Cathedral has a prayer wall, where members and visitors alike can write down their intentions. The parish team then gathers those intentions every day and brings them before the Lord, as one of their core values is unceasing prayer. We saw that value on full display. Next to the prayer wall is a sign that simply reads, “Hope is here.” 

I can’t get that sign out of my head.

Oakland is a lot like many urban cities these days. It’s gone through tough times these past few years. Just outside the doors of the Cathedral are people who are desperately in need of hope. You can see it on their faces. But this need for hope isn’t limited to Oakland, or other urban cities like it. Ours is a culture desperately in need of hope. Not wishful thinking. Or optimism. Hope. Sure, certain, immovable, solid hope.

Where does such hope come from?

Not from politics, as important as that is for the right and well ordering of a society. Not from law, as important as that is for governing a people. Not from anything or anyone other than the God who rescues, who liberates, who saves, who cares, who loves. Hope is in the cross. Hope is in the self-giving love of God. Hope is in the One who defeated the power of Death. 

But those people outside the Cathedral’s doors, or our own parish doors, won’t meet Him, won’t be drawn to Him, unless they are either invited by us, or they see something different, attractive, and engaging in us and ask us what that difference is.

We are rapidly drawing on Holy Week, a week that celebrates and calls to mind the singularly most important events of all time: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, for us. Nothing, nothing at all, compares to this week and these events. 

Mindful of this truth, mindful that these events are the reason for our hope, and mindful that most of us know people at work, in our schools, in our sports communities, in our neighborhoods, and elsewhere who are struggling because of one thing or another and who don’t know God, let’s prayerfully consider who we can and should invite to these grand liturgies rapidly approaching in the Church. 

Over the course of many years of teaching those who were coming into the Church, either through baptism or confirmation, I was always struck by how many of them would tell me that they would have gladly come to Church much earlier had only someone invited them.

Let’s do that this year. Let’s invite someone to Holy Thursday, or Good Friday, or to the Easter Vigil. For it is in the events that are made present in those liturgies that hope is found. And nowhere else.