Prakash Anthony Lohale, OP, is a Dominican friar with a Licentiate in Spirituality from the Angelicum in Rome. His extensive ministry focuses on teaching, justice, and interfaith engagement. He has served in international leadership roles for the Dominican Order in Rome and as the Director for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue for the Archdiocese of Toronto. He remains deeply engaged in interfaith work through several boards and committees. He currently serves as the Social Justice Animator at the Mary Ward Centre and is a sessional instructor at Regis St. Michael’s College.
I used to believe God lived in the quiet places—the hushed sanctuaries, the mountain trails, the retreat centres far from the clamour of urban life. As a lecturer teaching spirituality, I’d often framed cities as obstacles to contemplation—places you passed through on your way to peace.
Then I was requested to teach an intensive course called Retreat on the Streets: Finding God in the City for the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology, and it revolutionized not only my teaching—but my entire way of seeing.
This wasn’t a conventional class. Our syllabus was the streets of Toronto. Our primary text was the city itself. We met less in lecture halls, but on street corners, in parks, and in community spaces. And what began as an academic experiment became one of the most spiritually formative experiences of my life.
Learning to See Again
We began with a simple but radical premise: Pay attention. On our first retreat day, I sent students—and myself—out with contemplative exercises rooted in Ignatian spirituality: “Apply your senses. Be present. Receive what is already there.”
I remember sitting on a bench in Berczy Park, amidst the dog-walkers and lunch-break crowds, and just… listened, watching people pass. I heard snippets of Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, and Italian. I saw an elderly man leaning heavily on a walker, a young woman laughing into her phone, and a group of children chasing pigeons near the fountain. Gradually, my perception began to change. I wasn’t just observing strangers—I was witnessing stories. The sacred wasn’t hiding from the city’s noise; it was breathing within it.
That’s when Matthew Snowdon introduced the concept of the “Holy Passage.” So much of city life is spent in transit—on subways, streetcars, sidewalks. What if we saw these moments not as empty time, but as sacred time? What would it mean to treat our daily passages through the city as pilgrimages?
Unlearning to Relearn
Back in our temporary classroom, we gave words to what we’d felt outside. We studied Toronto’s Indigenous history, acknowledging that this land was sacred long before it was a city. We watched documentaries on the history of York, and I saw students’ faces change as they realized the ground beneath our feet held ancient stories, treaties, and wounds.
We visited the Canadian Native Centre. Sitting in a traditional Lodge, listening to Noah Macdonald and other First Nations speakers, was humbling. It reoriented us. You can’t speak of God’s presence in a place without honouring the people who first recognized that presence here.
We also read Deacon Robert Kinghorn’s The Church on the Street, which challenges readers to see those often overlooked—the homeless, the addicted, the marginalized—not as problems to be solved, but as people in whom God is present. That wasn’t just theology; it became our practice. We talked about how true hospitality isn’t inviting someone into your space, but recognizing you already share space—the same streets, the same air, the same humanity.
The theoretical framework from our readings—like Philip Sheldrake’s The Spiritual City—came alive on these retreats. The doctrine of the Incarnation—God with us—was no longer abstract. It was embodied in the people around me.
The Revelation in the Relationship
By our second retreat day, something had changed. We walked through Kensington Market and no longer just saw hipster cafés and vintage stores—we saw a living example of shared economy and community. The clang of the streetcar wasn’t noise; it was the rhythm of a collective journey.
One afternoon, I was on the Bloor-Danforth line during rush hour. The train was packed—shoulder to shoulder, heat and breath and silence. And then it hit me: This is it. This crowded, noisy, imperfect train was a thin place. Not despite its intensity, but because of it. Here was life, in all its friction and beauty. Here was God, not distant, but intimate—in the tired eyes of the nurse heading home, in the patient slump of the student, in the kind gesture of someone making room.
I didn’t need to escape the city to find peace. I needed to learn how to see within it.
A New Urban Spirituality
That course reshaped my teaching and my faith. I no longer see cities as spiritual deserts. They are landscapes of revelation—if we have the eyes to see.
God isn’t waiting for us in quiet places far from the noise. God is here—in the hum of the streetcar, in the diversity of our neighbourhoods, in the struggle for justice and belonging. The divine is present not only in stained glass and hymnody, but in the messy, glorious, and holy encounter with our neighbour.
The revelation was always here. We just needed to learn how to see.
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