“You really can’t go anywhere!”

Years and years ago I went on a pre-Christmas shopping trip with my parents to Kenwood Towne Center, the mammoth mall in Cincinnati. As we made our way slowly through the packed throngs I was suddenly surrounded by a trio of children chanting, “Fr Lou!” I barely had time to wave goodbye to my parents as they whisked me away to see their mom and dad. (Not to mention in those days before cell phones wondering how I would ever find mine again.) When I finally rejoined my parents and explained it was a family who had moved to Northern Kentucky two years before, my dad responded, “You really can’t go anywhere, can you?” Over the years dad was proved quite correct.

Well it happened again last week in New York. Walking down 9th Avenue to dinner and a show I heard a voice calling out my name and title. And when it registered that the chances there was another Fr Lou within hearing range were probably even slimmer than what was happening, I turned around to see the one person out of the millions in the city who used to play keyboards for Sunday mass at UofL. Justin was on his way to his own show where he plays keyboards for Broadway now.

After last year’s Christmas of Isolation, it is good to get physical reminders of how the central act of our salvation weaves and connects our lives. As the eucharistic prayer that I’ve been using during Advent puts it, “When we ourselves had turned away from you on account of our sins, you brought us back to be reconciled, O Lord, so that, converted at last to you, we might love one another through your Son.”

And these aren’t just connections of memory. They are bonds forged by the Word made Flesh. They are the strong ways of Love that weave us into a family so much larger and more varied than what we might first name as our family. Those bonds were all there a year ago, but as a flesh and blood human being it’s soooooo helpful to see and hear and touch. So I am very grateful to God for the tap on the shoulder on 9th Avenue, to let me feel that reality once again. That across the miles and the years we are all of us sisters and brothers in the babe born at Bethlehem.

Merry Christmas to you and all  of yours!

-Fr Lou