The suprises of God's providence in Philadelphia

My life has been rather busy lately. Life at home with five boys 13 and under never seems to go at a slow pace—especially during CYO football season. But I’ve also had to deal with the sickness with my mother, my parents selling their home and moving into a condo, along with a period of unusual busyness at work.

So I did not do as much research about all the things going on in Philadelphia connected to the World Meeting of Families that I might have otherwise prior to making the trip here.

But I found out today that this may have been a good thing.  When I visited the Basilica Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul with several other pilgrims from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, I was quite taken aback by various things I encountered there that I did not know about until I arrived.

The first was a makeshift shrine to Our Lady, Undoer of Knots on the grounds beside the cathedral. This is a favorite devotion of Pope Francis, one that has emerged in the Church in Latin America. The shrine was marked by literally thousands of strands of paper (made out of a hardy fiber) on which people had written prayer intentions. They then tied them to the surrounding fences, chicken wire, other netting and a domed structure made out of strips of wood.

The physical witness of so many prayers offered up by so many people to our Lord through our Lady’s intercession was powerful and brought tears to myself and other pilgrims as we wrote down our own prayers and added them to all the others.

Then I walked into the cathedral, turned down a side aisle and soon saw a case of second degree relics of St. Gianna Beretta Molla, an Italian wife, mother and physician who died in 1962 four days after giving birth to her fourth child. During her pregnancy, she was diagnosed with a tumor on her uterus but refused her doctor’s recommendation of a hysterectomy. She demanded that priority be given to her unborn child.

(The child born shortly before her death, Gianna Emmanuela Molla, became a physician like her mother and will be a speaker at the World Meeting of Families.)

The relics included her wedding dress, a stethoscope, photos, books and a rosary. Nearby were also first degree relics of St. John Paul II (a vial of his blood), St. Therese of Lisieux and her parents, Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin.

Encountering the relics of such wonderful saints, one who died just eight years before I was born, and a shrine overflowing with faith and prayer would be wonderful on any occasion. Coming across them as a total surprise made the experience all the more powerful and evident that it was a gift of God’s loving providence.

What a gift this pilgrimage is also, even though it comes with the sacrifices and trials of any pilgrimage. May the grace of God so evident in this city be brought back by the pilgrims of central and southern Indiana to bless the faithful of the local Church there in every new and surprising ways.