: this year’s turnout for the March for Life was the second-largest I’ve seen: I haven’t heard any estimates yet from March organizers, but I’d guess 75,000 attended. Tuesday night’s Vigil Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception — can anyone convince Msgr. Bransfield to get the title shortened, please? — had an enormous turnout, overflowing to the lower church and with standees in the vestibule.
Stranger than fiction? I love the way the March and the Vigil always seem to lead to unexpected meetings. Sometimes they’re just cute little connections that happen when the right people cross paths, but to me they serve as a witness to the communion of saints. My friend Bro. Matt and I were among those standees in the vestibule along with another layman. Jerry was attending the Vigil Mass for the first time, and during the homily the name on a young man’s name-tag happened to catch his attention. It reminded him of a Catholic classmate who had put her pro-life conviction into action, twenty years ago and six hundred miles away. While Barbara and Jerry attended the same college, she became an unwed mother through her boyfriend of the time and gave birth to Samuel. And here was little Samuel’s name, first and last, hanging on the jacket of a young Knight of Columbus who was an usher for the pro-life Mass. He squatted down in front of us to help a young lady who had felt faint. When he stood up to go, his name tag jogged in Jerry’s memory, and a couple of questions later, Samuel had confirmed that yes, he was Barbara’s boy. Jerry took my pen and wrote on the usher’s Mass program “Barbara– Sam is looking good! — Jerry….”