Living Monstrance

Emmanuel. Emmanuel means, “God with us”. What does this mean?

As a postulant with a Franciscan community for a time, I was privileged to be able to assist the brothers with some of their apostolate. For the week before Christmas, some of the friars did a parish mission for a church in Virginia called St. Louis Parish. Some of the friars came from nearby Maryland, but a few of us had to make the journey from Massachusetts.

Now there’s something you should know about these Franciscans: there is no car and no money. That means we rely on God to provide for our transportation. Usually it’s legs. But to Virginia? This needs some explanation…

First, a generous person gave us train tickets to get from Lawrence, Mass - our starting point - to Boston. A generous person had also given us train tickets to get from Boston to Providence, Rhode Island. Now another generous person had given us bus tickets that were supposed to take us to New York City. But when we tried to get on this bus, the bus driver said, “Sorry - wrong tickets.” So here we were at 8 o’clock at night, trying to get onto this bus, when a man comes by to talk to us about our faith and about the Lord Jesus. He asked what was going on. When I told him the situation, he said, “I’ll buy you guys bus tickets.” He went to the bus driver. But the bus driver didn’t have time to wait - he left.

The man then said to us, “You know what, there’s an Amtrak station just down the street. I’ll buy you train tickets.”

So we happily went to the train station, and as I was speaking with this man, an Amtrak police officer approached me and said, “Brother Pio!” That’s not my name, but it is my brother friar’s name. This man met the friars before. He loves the Blessed Virgin. He said, “Come with me. I’ll get you on the train for free.” A wave of the hand, a few words to the conductor, and we were on a train - not to New York City - but all the way to Washington, DC!

Now on the train we met a wonderful man and told him about the Lord and who we were, and when we got off at DC, he offered to buy us the tickets we needed on the DC subway.

We got on the subway and took it to the end of the line - on the wrong train! At this point it was the next day, we were tired, and we headed over to a Dunkin Donuts to eat some leftover food we had.

The people at Dunkin Donuts generously gave us free coffee, and as we were resting and eating, a man came and sat next to us. We talked a bit, and as he was leaving, we asked him if he knew if there was a nearby church where we could find some quiet. He said, “I’m going by St. Lawrence - I’ll give you a ride.”

He took us in his car to the church, but when we got there, the church was filled: no quiet. So he asked us where we were going, and we said St. Louis parish. He said, “I’ll take you there.”

We arrived at St. Louis Church 18 hours after we left Lawrence - on no money, no vehicle - only the Providence of God.

I told this story to a hall filled with children at St. Louis Parish. You can imagine how the kids felt to have this bald-headed, thickly-bearded friar dressed in grey wool and sandals tell this story. When I was done, the kids were so excited and amazed. Then one of them asked, “Why did you come here?”

Silence.

I paused.

I paused because I wanted to make sure that everyone heard the question, and everyone heard the answer. Then I told them the truth, simply and from the heart:

“To be with you.”

I was so happy to be with them, and they were so happy to be with me. I’ll never forget it.

Jesus has come a long, long way to be inside Mary’s womb.  He’s come a long, long way to hang on the cross.  He’s come a long, long way to be in the tabernacle. Why has He come here?

To be with you.

Emmanuel. God with us.

That is the meaning of the Incarnation.