Holy Cross Parish will have a table at Mt. Airy Day. Hope you will stop by and/or consider volunteering to help spread the word about our special church.

I am sure that I am not alone when I say that my Sunday Mass practice is something I take with me on my travels. In fact, it is the lightest piece of luggage I carry and by far the most important. Well, last weekend I found myself in Las Vegas on vacation and in search of a Sunday morning Mass. The first church I found was ‘Our Lady of Las Vegas’ — I didn’t know there was such a Lady. After reading in their bulletin that they had a Polish language Mass, and a Tagalog music Mass, I was confident that I may have found a diverse Catholic community in this desert city. Leaving the hotel, I jumped into the first taxi in the taxi line. Unbeknownst to me, this was about to be my Vegas holy moment. After telling the driver where I was headed, she asked what type of church it was. I said it was a Catholic Church. She shared that she was baptized Catholic, but had not ‘received the bread for many years’ since she has been attending a Christian church. Since I didn’t know how easy it was to get a taxi after Mass, I asked the driver if she wouldn’t mind picking me up in an hour at the end of Mass. Wait for it… She graciously agreed to swing back around if she was available, otherwise she’d send a colleague to get me. A few moments later, she says to me ‘this might sound weird, but do you mind if I join you for Mass?’ At this point I haven’t seen more than the back of the drivers head, but I quickly welcomed her to join me. The Greeters were gracious, the church and grounds were meticulously kept, a statue of the Santo Niño awaited us at the entrance, and La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Black Madonna of Częstochowa adorned the walls of the sanctuary. We were home in Las Vegas. I invited the driver, Mona Lisa, to sit wherever she liked. She sat at the middle isle and I sat off to the side, we were familiar strangers feeling each other’s presence from a distance. The church filled up quickly with parishioners of all ages and ethnicities, it felt truly Universal. After Mass, Mona Lisa and I found our way back to the taxi. What she shared on the ride back to the hotel was this: she never works on Sundays, but she had to pick up this shift for some reason. She prayed for her father and husband whom she had lost recently. She had been sad for some time now, and longed to feel that connection again. She cried the whole Mass, a cleansing cry that washed her worries away for that moment, lightening her heart and mind. That truly was a holy moment. We were in the right place at the right time in the right taxi with the right destination. Praise be to God!

Gabrielle with her co-star and grandmom, Barbara Purnell.