Stubborn Hope with Cecilia González-Andrieu, Ph.D.

Preaching for Palm Sunday, Cecilia González-Andrieu, Ph.D., offers a reflection on "stubborn hope":   "And so – we are called out of ourselves to take this road with Jesus – to take up the gift of the reign of God we are called to bring, while knowing that there will be murderous opposition to that gift.  As we step out of our comfort into the starkness of what is real, we transcend fear to see clearly that we must continue on to Jerusalem because that is where change happens.  This Holy Week we sit with Jesus in the underground cistern, where he was likely kept overnight as he awaited trial and try to fathom how it is that he continued to love and work for love in spite of so much evidence that he should just give up.  Humanity must have broken his heart.  They were hopeless, mired in their own self-preservation, and yet, there were those women, his mother, the Magdalene, the others. Fearless they pushed on, wanting him to see them, to know their nearness.  Like in so many of the stories of his Jewish community, they enacted God’s reign, the few who made visible God’s love, showing that humanity was not without hope."   Cecilia González-Andrieu, Ph.D., is professor of Theology and Theological Aesthetics at Loyola Marymount University.  Her work explores systematic theology, theological aesthetics, and political theology from the particularity of the Latinx experience.  She is the author of Bridge to Wonder: Art as a Gospel of Beauty and co-editor of Teaching Global Theologies: Power and Praxis.  A scholar-activist Dr. González-Andrieu speaks and marches with those who thirst for the liberative power of theological thought in a number of interlaced areas of inquiry.    Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/04102022 to learn more about Cecilia, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.