An Ignatian Reflection from Los Angeles: “I’m Hoping for Hope”

A firefighter fights the Palisades fire in LA on January 8, 2025. (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection)

The morning of January 7, 2025, when the Palisades fire erupted, was bright and sunny. The atmosphere had a spectacular crystalline clarity common in the east but observed in Southern California on occasional winter days. That Tuesday, for a few hours, was a day like many when LA’s visitors consider moving here. Those of us who live here do sometimes answer the question, “How you doin’ today?” with “Just another day in paradise.”

By late morning, I could see a massive ashen-gray cloud rising from the coastal mountains north of Loyola Marymount University, where I work. The winds were so strong that the smoke, instead of ascending, streamed horizontally across the low sky, thick and full, like a grey quilt being unfurled above the coastline. I imagined the dry canyon brush and grasses that must’ve been fueling the fire. I never imagined that the community of Pacific Palisades, which I’ve drive past on Highway 1 but never entered, was being destroyed.

Later that day, the Eaton Canyon, north of Los Angeles and bordering the community of Altadena, began to burn. By then, we learned that high winds at night would prevent firefighters from attacking a blaze from the sky. Hurricane winds would keep all water-dropping planes and helicopters on the ground. An emergency response expert on NPR said that if you cannot fight rapidly expanding Southern California wildfire with airborne resources, the battle is hopeless until you can. Because friends of mine live in Altadena, I closely watched local TV news on my laptop, flipping from stream to stream. I’ve been there often and know the feel of their sofa cushions, the artwork on their walls, the annoying narrow short and sharply curved driveway. During a crisis in my life, I lived there for a week or so in their house that was a refuge to me.

The remains of the Altadena Community Church after the Eaton fire (public domain)

My friends’ home was west of a major artery, with hundreds, if not several thousand homes, between them and the fire. The forest would be ravaged, I thought, but they were safe, their home secure. City neighborhoods never burn in California wildfires. By morning, however, blocks and blocks and blocks of Altadena were gone. Entire neighborhoods were burned to the ground.

In the first few days after our catastrophe, Los Angeles, a city of more than 3 million people, seemed to become smaller. A single fire can seem distant to the unaffected. But here were two, not close together yet each near places we all know and that many of us see on any day. “From the mountains to the sea,” in fact, was the verbal calling card of one of LA’s longtime popular news anchors, nearly as well-known as Vin Scully’s trademark broadcast call, “It’s time for Dodger baseball.” For countless Angelenos, either the Palisades or the Eaton fire seemed close by. The Los Angeles community — government agencies, religious congregations, community groups, individuals — quickly responded with assistance.

There is hope in that response.

But I must confess, perhaps to myself more than to others, that for now I feel little of it. LA’s fires broke out on the day after Epiphany, a day celebrating the visit of the three wise kings to the newborn Jesus and a day that marks the end of the Advent and Christmas seasons. But tragedy, destruction and plain worry dominated my environment, much like dark, enveloping smoke clouds: wars and threats of wars, tens of thousands dead in Gaza and elsewhere, politics of punishment and recrimination.

On Advent’s fourth Sunday, Mass at LMU’s Sacred Heart Chapel ended with the hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Throughout the liturgical season, I experienced little quiet, joyful waiting. Because of turbulence throughout the modern world, I often felt the Nativity passage that best captured the spirit of our time in late 2024 was not that of the promise of a king and savior, but Matthew 2:16-18: Herod’s murder of male children 2 years old and younger, the slaughter of the innocents, fulfilling Jeremiah’s prophecy:

A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamenting and weeping bitterly:
it is Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted
because they are no more.

No one would choose to be accompanied by that Advent image.

“The Massacre of the Innocents” by Peter Paul Rubens (public domain)

At Mass that day, the hymn began: “In the bleak midwinter, … earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.” With only piano and voice, and a slow mournful tempo, I realized that my Advent, too, had been bleak. Promises of a king, a savior, an angel choir were far from my imagination. I just wanted Advent to end, Christmas to get here, and not because I couldn’t wait to celebrate. “Can we just get that baby born, before it’s too late?” I thought.

When scenes of Pacific Palisades and Altadena began to emerge on January 8, I thought of Los Angeles as a city of lamentations. At one point nearly 200,000 were under evacuation orders. As of January 17, there are 27 people known dead and 31 missing. A Facebook post from someone in the Loyola High School community says the homes of 60 students are gone.

It’s true that there are signs of hope. Verse 1 of “In the Bleak Midwinter” is followed by four verses of hope, and the last is one of stubborn hope, desperate hope perhaps. Christmas Tree Lane, a street in Altadena whose deodar trees are filled with Christmas lights by neighbors each December, mostly survived. But LA’s losses — the homes of young families, the death of elderly people stranded in the flames, the obliteration of communities and their institutions — remain nearly unfathomable to me.

In the Ignatian tradition, we are accustomed to finding God in all things, or trying to. I just want to find hope. I’m hoping for hope.

Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is editor of LMU Magazine at Loyola Marymount University and host of the magazine’s podcast, “Off Press.” He has worked on the magazines of three higher education institutions, and his freelance book reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and Commonweal. He is a lifelong fan of magazines, starting at the age of 10 when he appeared in a photo in Sports Illustrated.

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