As is our custom at this time of year, we recently commemorated the 26 souls – 20 of them children aged six or seven, six of them adults – lost to senseless gun violence on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
This year, St. Paul’s Cathedral Episcopal hosted the gathering, attended by about 100 people, many of them survivors of gun violence in their own right.
The members of the cathedral schola (choir) lifted their voices to honor the Sandy Hook victims and all the tens of thousands of lives lost to – and tens of thousands more live irremediably altered by – gun violence in this country.
We heard prayers and reflection from Bishop Cornelius Bowser of Shaphat Outreach, Br. Yusef Miller of the North County Equity and Justice Coalition, and Rabbi Devorah Marcus of Temple Emanu-El. Bevelynn Bravo of Mothers with a Message gave survivor testimony.
Four speakers read the names of victims of gun violence in San Diego during 2025, as a single gentle gong accompanied each name. Then several attendees walked to the microphone and added the names of yet more people dear to them who have been lost to gun violence.
Our vigil regularly attracts elected officials, several of whom commemorated with us. This year, Rep. Scott Peters intoned the perennial lack of action at the federal level while highlighting the very real, grass-roots progress taking place in schools and communities across the nation.
Coming on the heels of a campus shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island and a hate-crime shooting at Bondi Beach near Sydney, Australia, our vigil was all the more alarming. It’s a somber vigil, and it gets no less somber with each passing year.
Words fail.
Which is probably why the Very Rev. Penny Bridges, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, pronounced a blessing as counterintuitive as the fact that, in the only country that has this problem, nothing, it appears, can be done:
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and politically expedient solutions, so that you may live with integrity deep within your heart.
May God bless you with righteous anger at violence, cynicism and the needless suffering of innocent people, so that you may work for peace and freedom from fear.
May God bless you with tears you shed for those who suffer pain as victims, perpetrators and witnesses of gun violence, so that you may reach out your hands to heal them and to turn their pain to joy.
And may God bless us all with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in the world, so that we together can do what others claim cannot be done to free our communities from the scourge of gun violence and give us all the opportunity to live in peace.
Amen.
John White is a volunteer with San Diegans for Gun Violence Prevention.
Photo credit: St. Paul’s Cathedral Episcopal (from full-length video of Dec 14, 2025 vigil)
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