The Cathedral

The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle creates an aural and visual atmosphere which encourages and nurtures prayers, reflection, and compassion. The Cathedral remains a welcoming quiet space where all thoughts, all concerns, all emotions are not expected to be directly expressed to everyone. Here is a place of love and spiritual development. Here is a place of goodness, kindness, holiness. A bouquet of mercy, compassion, and hope the doors of the Cathedral are often open, help and assistance can be found. Prayer offers a patient intensity. Prayer can lead to more humility, charity, obedience. Prayer can lead to personal discernment about life, vocation. The Cathedral is a very handsome space which photographs well with Brides and Grooms but the space is equally handsome for soul searching about personal themes about religious identity and cross cultural identity and reference points.

The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle is often at the epicenter of Washington, DC life. Homilies often refer to current topics, world leaders. Prayers are said for all mankind. Although the Cathedral is Catholic, prayers for peace, prayers for all humans are said each and every day. Love is not simply spoken of in the abstract but it is a vital important part of the life of this parish which relies upon the prayers and humanpower of many volunteers to fulfill the mission of the church.

The Cathedral is a place for human beings, a place for sinners, a place for the damaged and the broken, for the abandoned and the forgotten. It is a place to celebrate birth, death, and everything in between. It is a wonderful monument of hope and love. The Cathedral remains stubbornly accepting, stubbornly compassionate, stubbornly merciful to all of those who need it, to all of those who walk through the doors.

Here is a sheltering place of beauty. A place where silence is encouraged. Here is a place to escape the hurly-burly of a fast-paced, frantic life where everybody is psychotic or neurotic , where everybody is talking.

Here is a place for honest, simple communication.