Interfaith Homeless Memorial Prayer Service

Dozens of students from Archbishop Rummel High School – theology students and members of the basketball and baseball teams – carried up candles in memory of the lives lost.

"We gather to honor precious lives lost," said Rev. Leigh Rachal, a Presbyterian elder who is executive director of the Louisiana Interchurch Conference.

"Each human life is sacred. There's nothing anyone can do to make themselves more or less sacred or more or less worthy of society's care.

"Sacred worth is not earned by achievements, nor is it diminished by struggles. A person without a home is no less precious than a one with a roof. A child in the street is no less beloved than the child in the nursery. Every human being carries with them a light that is unquenchable, a spark that demands recognition and care.

"A person may be without a house or even shelter, but they are never without the divine image of God imprinted on them. And tonight, we gather in our shared grief to remember the precious sacred lives that have been lost this year. Even in the shadow of grief, there is also a call to hold fast to hope. ... Hope is an active deliberate decision to believe that change is possible."

"A lot of times we say, 'Out of sight, out of mind,' and tonight we do exactly the opposite," Archbishop Gregory Aymond said. "They are in our hearts and in our lives as we come together to pray with them and for them."