Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s courageous and powerful words at the prayer service for President Trump’s inauguration at Washington National Cathedral on January 21, 2025, are still ringing in my ears as I write. In short, she implored President Trump to “have mercy upon” immigrants and the 2SLGBTQI+ community. She added, “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.”
The Church sets aside the season of Lent as a time of preparation during which we are invited to be more intentional about allowing God to draw us closer to Godself. Ideally, it is also a time during which God makes us more aware of God’s inbreaking reign of mercy and justice for all people, unleashed on an unsuspecting world through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. In God’s wisdom, God works through our parishes and through us, as fragile, as vulnerable, and as broken as so many of our communities are, to expand this reign—that’s God’s plan for the healing and reconciliation of this world God loves so much. Together by God’s grace, we embody the mercy and justice Bishop Budde calls for, especially with and for those on the margins, including immigrants and the 2SLGBTQI+ community.
It is one of the reasons we are so deeply grateful at the Cathedral for what we regard as a clear sign of God’s inbreaking reign of mercy and justice for all people, especially the ‘least, last and lost’ through the Cathedral Café. It’s not only the number of folks we see—around 200 visits per day, six days a week; it’s not only the amount of meals we serve—nearly 70,000 in our first full year of operation to December 2024; it’s not only in the range of services being offered—medical, paralegal, housing support (five folk were rehoused earlier in January), reissue of ID cards, haircuts, pet care, peer support groups… All these are great, of course. What moves me more than anything, is to witness first-hand God turning people’s lives around.
We hear stories of what God is doing in the lives of some of our guests at Discovery Bible Study on Thursday mornings, which Rev. Monica Romig Green facilitates; we see the transformation in the faces of those who now attend our Wednesday morning Eucharist; we participate in it around the font at Sunday worship as Jim, for example, responded to God’s call on his life through the waters of baptism.
The lives that are changing are not limited to our guests. Our volunteers tell us that they are becoming different people through the relationships they develop at the Café. Our parishioners are learning the meaning of true hospitality as some guests join us for coffee hour on Sunday. As a faith community, we are investing more in connections with our neighbours on James Street North so that together we can discern ways of responding to the scandal of folk being without homes and other supports in a country as wealthy as ours.
May Lent be a time during which God opens each of our hearts to those ways in which our parishes and we ourselves can lean more into the new order of mercy and justice for all people, against which no amount of chaos and contempt can stand.
Embodying Mercy and Justice: A Lenten Call to Serve the Marginalized
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s courageous and powerful words at the prayer service for President Trump’s inauguration at Washington National Cathedral on January 21, 2025, are still ringing in my ears as I write. In short, she implored President Trump to “have mercy upon” immigrants and the 2SLGBTQI+ community. She added, “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.”
The Church sets aside the season of Lent as a time of preparation during which we are invited to be more intentional about allowing God to draw us closer to Godself. Ideally, it is also a time during which God makes us more aware of God’s inbreaking reign of mercy and justice for all people, unleashed on an unsuspecting world through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. In God’s wisdom, God works through our parishes and through us, as fragile, as vulnerable, and as broken as so many of our communities are, to expand this reign—that’s God’s plan for the healing and reconciliation of this world God loves so much. Together by God’s grace, we embody the mercy and justice Bishop Budde calls for, especially with and for those on the margins, including immigrants and the 2SLGBTQI+ community.
It is one of the reasons we are so deeply grateful at the Cathedral for what we regard as a clear sign of God’s inbreaking reign of mercy and justice for all people, especially the ‘least, last and lost’ through the Cathedral Café. It’s not only the number of folks we see—around 200 visits per day, six days a week; it’s not only the amount of meals we serve—nearly 70,000 in our first full year of operation to December 2024; it’s not only in the range of services being offered—medical, paralegal, housing support (five folk were rehoused earlier in January), reissue of ID cards, haircuts, pet care, peer support groups… All these are great, of course. What moves me more than anything, is to witness first-hand God turning people’s lives around.
We hear stories of what God is doing in the lives of some of our guests at Discovery Bible Study on Thursday mornings, which Rev. Monica Romig Green facilitates; we see the transformation in the faces of those who now attend our Wednesday morning Eucharist; we participate in it around the font at Sunday worship as Jim, for example, responded to God’s call on his life through the waters of baptism.
The lives that are changing are not limited to our guests. Our volunteers tell us that they are becoming different people through the relationships they develop at the Café. Our parishioners are learning the meaning of true hospitality as some guests join us for coffee hour on Sunday. As a faith community, we are investing more in connections with our neighbours on James Street North so that together we can discern ways of responding to the scandal of folk being without homes and other supports in a country as wealthy as ours.
May Lent be a time during which God opens each of our hearts to those ways in which our parishes and we ourselves can lean more into the new order of mercy and justice for all people, against which no amount of chaos and contempt can stand.
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