Cathedral Opens its Doors When Jesus Knocks

On Friday, May 2, Nadia Pizarro, secretary of the Western New York Coalition for the Homeless and co-chair of the Code Blue Collaborative, got some good news and some bad news.

The good news was that for the first time, Erie County had agreed to keep the Code Blue winter emergency shelter program open year round. The bad news was that there would be a one-month gap between the expiration of the lease on the winter shelter, and the beginning of the lease on the new shelter.

But Pizarro had met the Very Rev. Rebecca Barnes of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Buffalo in late December when the cathedral hosted the coalition’s annual Homeless Memorial, which commemorates people who died without a place to live during that year, and suddenly, she had an inspiration.

“God said to me, ‘Reach out to Dean Rebecca, right now,” she says. “I called her and said, ‘We have 100 people going to be homeless on Monday, is there any chance we can use your space?’ That was on Friday. By end of day she called and said, they could do it, and we opened the shelter on Monday night.”

In the interim, Barnes had consulted with senior warden Estelle Siener, and they had determined what the cathedral community could manage. St. Paul’s didn’t have room for all 100 people, but the 60-65 people who took shelter in its undercroft of the cathedral were among the most vulnerable and least mobile resident of the Code Blue emergency winter shelter that closed its doors on May 4.

“These are people in wheelchairs, people with walkers, canes, and people who were discharged from hospital right into the street,” Barnes says.

They will be in residence until early June when they move to a new location on the east side of the city.

In the meantime, the shelter will be part of the cathedral’s extensive ministry to people living on the streets and in shelters, a ministry driven by the need the cathedral sees around itself every day.

“Lazarus [the beggar who went to heaven in Jesus parable about poverty and wealth] is literally on our doorstep,” says Barnes, who was part of homeless ministries during previous ministries in New York City and who trained in Boston with the Rev. Debbie Little and the Common Cathedral. “We have to see the face of Christ in them. We have to be out there.”

Beginning in June, on Mondays and Wednesdays the cathedral will work with Feed 716 to offer premade meals fresh from the warming oven in the cathedral’s ministry center, which sits across the street from the church, during an hourlong lunchtime period. Barnes says the program hopes to begin hiring people who live on the street and in shelters to help serve the meals.

On Tuesdays the cathedral offers its Garden of Love program, a lunch and clothing program in the ministry center. And on Thursdays it offers the Cathedral Cares program, which includes an outdoor Eucharist when weather permits, as well as an outdoor lunch.

“I think just the connection between all of the homeless ministries we are doing right now is really important,” Barnes says. “If this isn’t the Holy Spirit with all of these things coming together, I don’t know what is.”

The work with people on the streets builds on the cathedral’s long relationship with the Western New York Coalition for the Homeless and the more recent work of Rachel Pinti, a former cathedral intern who is now a seminarian at Yale Divinity School.

Archdeacon Diana Leiker, a retired art teacher, who offers art instruction to residents of the emergency shelter at the cathedral on Thursdays, is one of the engines who makes these ministries go. Leiker previously ministered part-time at St. Peter’s, Eggertsville, where Pinti’s father, Dan, is the rector. She first came to the cathedral to help the younger Pinti with the Cathedral Care’s program, and then stuck around as the program grew.

The sandwiches distributed on Tuesdays are made by parishioners at Church of the Advent, Kenmore; St. Peter’s, Eggertsville; St. James, Batavia; St. Mark’s, Leroy and St. Paul’s, Harris Hill, St. Andrew’s, Buffalo, and the cathedral. The work is led by lay women, Leiker says, although at St. Paul’s, her grandson, Benjamin Gertsung, a high school junior does the shopping and enlists a Sunday school class in the work as well.

“It can be very difficult for older congregations that grew up in the suburbs or nice neighborhoods to see a way for them to be helpful in what can seem like a ‘downtown problem,’” Leiker says. “So this opportunity was huge. It just felt like the more people found out, the more their hearts were just saying, ‘We need to do more.’”

Felicia Cruz is chief executive officer of Sylvia’s House, a shelter named for her grandmother, which is the lead agency in the day-to-day operation of the emergency shelter at the cathedral. Like Leiker, her background is in the arts, and she’s already seen the work shelter residents are producing.

“Tuesday one of my clients brought me what they made and gave it to me,” she says. “It was pretty nice. It was a cross with a heart on it.”

She is grateful, she says, to Barnes and the congregation at the cathedral for their willingness to host the shelter. “Dean Rebecca has been phenomenal,” she says. “She gets it.”

The cathedral does not have showers or a laundry, so it cannot serve as a long-term shelter, but Barnes and Leiker say they hope to continue ministering to the people currently living at the cathedral through art and other ministries.

“To be on the streets in the winter in Buffalo, that’s about as hard as it gets,” Barnes says. “When you ask people to help, most of them respond very affirmatively.”