By FR. MICHAEL P. ORSI
The week between Christmas and New Year was usually uneventful at St. Paul Catholic Church.
That is if it didn’t snow. With so many folks away visiting family and friends, and the Stone Harbor, N.J., snowbirds having migrated to Florida for the winter, we were always short of muscle for shoveling.
As fate would have it, one year a snowstorm hit on New Year’s Eve. It lay beautifully around the church. But, with people arriving for the Vigil Mass, the danger of someone slipping outweighed the postcard quality of the scene.
Of course, I was younger then, and even with the obvious effects of Muscle World on my person, I knew I couldn’t clean the billowy drifts by myself.
After pacing about in my attic suite and praying for help, I heard the scraping of shovels outside. I looked out of my penthouse window and, lo and behold, there were, what I imagined to be, three elves that Santa left behind cleaning the sidewalk and the church steps.
On closer examination I realized that they were my altar boys, Scott, Bobby, and Brian. I opened the front door of the rectory and asked them how they knew I needed help. In unison, they sang, “Our Mother Sent Us, Fa La La La La, La La La.”
And, I chanted back, “Glory to God in the highest!”
Dear reader, please excuse the poetic license above. But, the thoughtfulness of Mom and her elves made my heart warm.
Christmas is the season of giving not just material gifts but, more important, the gift of ourselves to others. After all, isn’t this what Jesus did?
I have kept in touch with this family over the years. The elves are now men with their own broods. Knowing how they were raised, I am sure they are passing on their mother’s lesson to their children. I, for one, after so many years have passed, and a snow-capped crown lying on my head, cannot forget it.
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