I tried not to say it. I really did.

Anyway, a bit on the Amarillo Eucharistic Congress.

Unfortunately, I was in and out – working with two small airports is rather a pain, you know. To do one session on a Saturday morning required two days out of my life – to even just add one afternoon session would have required three, since there would have been no night flights for me to catch. And I really can’t (and don’t want) to do that, unless the whole crew is with me.

So, I arrived Friday evening, was picked up at the airport by a very nice volunteer, went to drop off books at the Civic Center, met the indefatigable Kim Richard, who deserves big props for co-ordinating such a marvelous event with speakers from all over, including at least four prelates. Kim introduced me to Bishop Yanta, fresh from celebrating the Tridentine Rite Mass (they had four opening Masses – English, Vietnamese, Spanish and Tridentine – which struck me as odd, but at least they had a single final Mass on Saturday), still in his fiddleback vestments. What a sweet man – really. I met him twice more over the next day or so, and each time he was just so kind.

I was then dropped off at the Bishop DeFalco retreat center where I met, upon walking into the lobby, Fr. Stephn Rossetti of the St. Luke’s Center in D.C., and author of the book The Joy of Priesthood. 

Since this was a, you know, retreat center, there was no television and even worse, no internet (just kidding about the "worse," although I did have slight withdrawal pains. I hadn’t even brought the laptop.) – so I simply called home, got the report on the football game, and read for a while.

Rising in the morning (no alarm clock either, so I found the alarm on my cell phone and set it, petrified that I’d sleep through it – the bus was coming at 8:15 to haul us to the Civic Center), I went into the lobby to find it teeming with cassocks.  Bishop Yanta, again, Cardinal Martino, Archbishop Gomez of San Antonio and Bishop Luong of Orange County. I just sat and watched and didn’t introduce myself to any of them, but I will say that my major regret is that I couldn’t snag a copy of the Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church for Cardinal Martino to sign – people had them and he was signing them, but I could never figure out where they were getting them. Not that I had hours to figure it out.

Rode the bus over with Rosalind Moss of Catholic Answers, whom I was very happy to meet, and met several  others including Dr. Alveda King, of Priests for Life. There were lots of folks associated with Priests for Life because the new Missionaries of the Gospel of Life is located there, and they’d just had the groundbreaking for their headquarters and formation house, which is actually quite well on the way – it appears they’ve bought an old public school and are redoing and building on the site – again, I didn’t have my camera when we passed, or I would have taken a photo – it’s at an interesting half-way point in which is sort of looks like an elementary school and sort of like a Catholic church…

Talk went fine, sold about half my books (look for a push here soon…got to get them out of here!), met lots of interesting people, including a Floridian, Rachel Scott, who is the mother of eight and is working hard to open hearts to "Raising Larger Families." Lovely people, all of them – lots of sisters from various communities, and it seemed to me, quite an easy relationship between the various ethnic groups in the diocese – I mean, being there for less than 24 hours doesn’t tell you much, but sitting in my booth, watching folks greet each other and converse, moving between Spanish and English, the old-time Anglo Texans stopping to talk to me about Adoration and such in the most winning Texas twangs and then turning to embrace their Hispanic Texas friends, men with long, jet black hair and huge Guadalupe images on their shirts – it all seemed like a good scene. United in Christ through Eucharist – it should be, shouldn’t it?

Smooth flight back, rain when I returned, heart-stopping sadness the next day learning about a Comair crash with, as they say, 49 souls onboard lost. We pray for them and for their families – that peace and consolation might be theirs.