Coincidence: When God Chooses to Remain Anonymous

The following is a case of one of those hundreds of life stories and happenings, when a mere coincidence seems to be "something more" than mere coincidence. (The older I get, the more I understand why God focused at least one commandment on "remembering"). Here's where this memory starts. My last blog mentioned Fr. Leo Patalinghug, the priest-chef and his ministry and website "Grace Before Meals." My wife went online, printed off one of his family recipes, and started her great cook-off for our own family meal on a Saturday night. In the meantime, we headed off for our monthly check-up, our "first Saturday" trek to Confession. (I shouldn't really say "trek".... as the Church is located across the street). The regular priest was out of town, so a missionary priest was going to be there hearing confessions. (Why do I like it when that happens?) When we walked into Church, the confessional "light" was on, so, after a little extra "examination" and prep, I went on in first and knelt down. Silence. "In the name of the Father and of the Son...." Silence. "Bless me Father for I have....." Still silence. "It has been..." The silence was "too loud" to bear. "Father?"........... "Father.....are you there?" I pulled back the confessional "veil" and lo and behold, the only trinitarian presence in the confessional booth was "me, myself and I." When I walked out, I got a grin from one of the mothers who had been in Church before we got there, and who knew that the confessional was empty. Offering a slightly embarrassed smile back to her, I chalked this up to another meritourious moment in time to add to the bank of humility.
Rather than leave it at that, however, I walked on over to the rectory and rang the door bell. Within a few seconds, there he was at the door, Fr. Alex Vadakumthala (as I would come to find out later). Apologetically, he said he would be over in a few minutes; he had just arrived from India, via Frankfurt, via Chicago, via St. Louis, via Flint Hill, MO and St. Theodore's Church. (O.k, we'll let the excuse slide this time:-).
Well, glory be to God, we all got to confession. But here's where providence seemed to pull back another veil, as he occasionaly does for us. First, after my confession, without highlighting anything I had specified in the confession, Father prayed for a specific virtue / intention that I had been petitioning the Lord with over the past few days. Kind of interesting. Second, later on that evening, after following a prompting to make a special visit to a new neighbor across the yard (even though I didn't really "feel like it"), from my new vantage point, I was able to see Fr. Alex walking down the street. Hmmm. Earlier, Lynette had mentioned something about a meal for him, which I had dismissed with something to the effect, "they've got that covered at the parish, I'm sure." Well, with this other conversation coming to a close, I left and went over to Fr. Alex, invited him to the house for dinner, and sure, enough, a few minutes later we were having a conversation and found our way to the wall map (see picture above) tracking down the geography of Father's homeland. Third, in the midst of our dinner dialogue, I was asking him about all things "India." (He was a missionary priest, trying to raise funds for Medical Missions and the building of hospitals and the like in India). When I asked him about what the main meals are in India, he said, "rice and curry." And guess what "still warm" leftovers we were able to present to our special guest that evening? None other than Fr. Leo's family recipe of chicken with, go figure, "rice and curry".

We had a delightful visit (including a "gotta take a picture of this" snapshot moment as two of our "on loan" parakeets from vacationing friends both landed on his arm at the same time). The night ended with a prayer and a his priestly blessing on our family. After he left, we did our usual Saturday night "read the Gospel reading three times" family prayer time. For this Sunday, (19th Sunday in OT Year C), the readings were none other than being prepared for a guest to come knocking. I'd like to think that this knock was certainly more than a "coincidence" which, as someone once defined, "when God merely chooses to remain anonymous."

(P.S. Father's mission website is http://www.cbciheal.org/)