Reconciliation and City Life Mingle at Cathedral

The community of the Cross of Nails is an international partnership of churches, schools, and charities focusing on reconciliation and peace-making. It has its origin and gets its name from a cross made of nails from the medieval roof beams of Coventry Cathedral, in England, on the days after the cathedral’s destruction by bombs and fire in World War II. Originally directed towards post-war reconciliation, a broader set of priorities has arisen, including witness to healing relationships in historical injustices such as racism and colonialism.

Christ’s Church Cathedral in Hamilton has a Cross of Nails over the pulpit. This was given to the parish, it is claimed in 1948, following a series of organ recitals which were fundraisers for the new Coventry cathedral organ. If the date is correct, it is one of the oldest such crosses outside England.

It has special meaning for me, having grown up in Coventry and having passed the rebuilt cathedral daily as it rose from a massive hole in the ground to its consecration in the year I left high school. In addition, my father was injured fighting the fires caused by the incendiary bombs in the old cathedral. His stay in the hospital introduced him to a young Irish nurse- and I was the result – a true Blitz Baby!

Dean Peter Wall and I introduced the praying of the Litany of Reconciliation, the core statement of the Community, every Friday at noon several years ago. We did so outside in the cathedral’s forecourt as we felt it was important that this should be a form of public witness. The cathedral is situated in the old downtown of Hamilton in a very unprepossessing and poverty-bound area although recently gentrification has gradually occurred.

We added to the litany itself, in the light of Canadian experience, prayers, especially for reconciliation with First Nations people; we also added our prayers for both victims and perpetrators of current conflicts, particularly Ukraine and Gaza. Thanks to an initiative by our Assistant Curate, Monica Romig-Green, we also recently added the reading aloud, and subsequent burning, of prayers provided on paper slips by anonymous writers. These come from two sources. The first is a monthly Art Crawl which coincides with a street festival and when we invite passers-by to come inside to see, hear, and feel the building. This attracts over a thousand visitors on the second Friday of each month, a crowd which is diverse in its faith background, including many who have never been in a church of any sort.

The second source of prayers is the Cathedral Café, a recently established resting, warming/cooling, and feeding program for the homeless and home-insecure. This attracts over 200 such people each day and is funded by the City of Hamilton with professional staff from St Matthew’s House, an Anglican-affiliated non-profit social service agency. The Café also has more than 120 volunteers, 70% of whom come from backgrounds other than the cathedral,

The prayers from these sources are remarkable in that they rarely ask for prayers for the writer, although heaven knows they deserve our prayers more than most. It is also noteworthy that many have prayers that ask in some way for reconciliation with family members, ex-spouses, friends, and others. They are a reminder that those who live on the streets and sleep in tents or in alleys or the doorways of our city, are amongst the loneliest members of society, for whom a friendly or reassuring voice is a rarity. This social, caring, and loving contact is, in many ways, the real importance of the Café. It is also why there is a natural link between the Litany of Reconciliation and our homeless guests.

Increasingly we find ourselves joined in the Litany and prayers by Café guests who, even if they are unable to read or understand the language, understand what it is that the litany is praying for and what forgiveness means, even if they have rarely experienced it.

It is also true that the Café benefits not only its guests. Increasingly both the volunteers and the congregation recognize that their own reconciliation is occurring in their conversations with those who were previously nameless and who they may in the past have ignored or even been frightened by, and who they now see as their friends and greet by name.

Reconciliation with those that we see (but often ignore) daily in our own community can be more difficult and demand more effort and resources than with those in countries far away, but it is an important part of our Christian life.