And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. – Matthew 16:18
Dear Beloved of God at St. David’s,
I will turn 30 in January 2027 and will hopefully be ordained a priest that same month—God willing and the people consenting. To celebrate, my best friend and I are planning a trip to London next summer. He is a priest, and he shares my affection for our Anglican identity and for seeing churches. Our trip will consist essentially of visiting cathedrals, walking, eating, and attending worship. For two Episcopal church nerds, it is the dream.
Wherever I go in the world, I make visiting churches a priority. Whether it is a grand and storied place like St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, or a tiny country parish in rural Ireland, I walk into these churches with a renewed sense of awe and wonder. Visiting new churches is a humbling reminder to me that Christ is and has been present in each of those spaces through the mystical power of the Holy Spirit and has been present with those communities in joy, sorrow, and everything in between.
In the 2,000+ years since Christ’s Ascension, holy Mother Church has been a place of hope, refuge, and community for Her members. Through famine, plagues, war, destruction, persecution—and to be honest, her own sins—the church remains that wonderful and sacred mystery where God’s people are made new. One might think that all the messy, broken humanness in and around the church would have (or should have) put an end to it by now.
And yet.
Jesus assures Peter (and the disciples) that “the gates of Hades will not prevail against [the church].” It is a promise that the church will be an eternal community against which nothing, not even the powers of evil and wickedness, will prevail.
Perhaps that is the source of the awe I feel when I walk into churches: Knowing that nothing will prevail against the work of the Spirit done in that place. This doesn’t change the fact that bad things can and will happen. Rather, knowing that not even the gates of Hades will prevail against the Bride of Christ (the church) grounds me and anchors my faith in the church when I feel it beginning to falter.
It’s a gift to be in God’s church with you all.
With love,
The Rev. Anne Alexis Harra
Assistant Rector
Published on August 20, 2026.
Image: Blue overlay over “Stunning Interior of All Saints Church in London.” View more by Poetarojo . from Pexels used with Free Content license in Canva.