My Retreat in Corpus Christi, Texas

The week end was a whirlwind of grace! I traveled to Corpus Christi, Texas on Friday with my daughter to give a retreat to a wonderful parish - St. Helena of the True Cross Catholic Church.

To start off, the flights got messed up on Friday due to the plane sitting on the runway (with us in it) for an hour and a half before take off. We reached Washington DC just as our connecting flight was about to take off. I ran right to a desk and told the gentleman there that we had to get on "THAT plane!" as I pointed out the window behind him.

"Last names?" he inquired. And then he clicked away at his computer keys without saying a word. We waited. I thought he was putting in an urgent word to hold the plane for us. Unfortunately, no. I tried my best to get them to allow us on the plane due to their problems with the flight in NY, but to no avail.

"I can maybe get one of you there and the other sometime tomorrow," he said without looking up from his computer as he continued to click away looking for other options.

I told him that was not acceptable since I wouldn't leave my daughter behind or send her ahead.

"I can sent you back to NY" and then he proceeded to tell us the 4 more flights or so to get us to our final destination at some point around midnight.

I told him that I didn't want to go back to NY and there must be something else.

He said there wasn't anything else and he could at that point only put us both on standby in Atlanta with the hope that we would get a flight to San Antonio and then catch our ride that was waiting there to take us to Corpus Christi. If we couldn't get on a plane that day, we would have to stay some place overnight and get a flight the following day. The problem with that scenario was that Mass was at 8:30 AM to begin the retreat, followed by breakfast and then my first talk. We might not get there until late afternoon according to the airline guy who was assisting us.

My daughter and I prayed and got word to our Corpus Christi hosts and hostesses about our dilemma asking them to pray even harder! We found out that we could run and get on a flight that was just about to leave for Atlanta so we had to make the decision immediately to go that route and rushed and got onto that plane.

We didn't have much of a choice. After arriving in Atlanta we had at least a couple of hours until we could see about getting on the next flight to San Antonio. We found the people at that airport to be much more challenging to work with.

Another hour went by and we prayed. Everyone around us of the 43 "stand bys" compared notes and looked up at the monitor to see where they stood in the line to be picked for that flight which was said to be over-booked anyway. Mary-Catherine's name and mine were the top 2 on the list! Praise God! Still, we waited and prayed many Hail Mary's and Memorares. I was then told that my seat was confirmed. I expressed to the woman at the desk that I could not go without my daughter. She said that we wouldn't know if she could get on until everyone boarded the plane. I told her that we would be praying.

She said, "Well, you had BETTER START NOW!" To which I responded, "We have already started!"

All of the "stand by" people waited and hoped to get on that plane. The woman then called me over to stand on the side ready to board. Of course, I wouldn't get on until I was sure my daughter could also. I'd give my seat to the next in line.

It turned out that the were three seats open. But, just after she announced that, people who had confirmed seats came out of nowhere to get on the plane after the announcement had already been made three times for final boarding time! We continued our Hail Mary's and Memorares.

Finally, the woman looked at Mary-Catherine and called her over and checked her through! Praise God! We then boarded the plane and were off to San Antonio! It was our third flight of the day. We would have had to take one more flight from San Antonio to Corpus Christi, but two lovely women, Ada and Nury from the parish came all of the way out to get us and drove us to Corpus Christi.

To be continued...sorry about that! Duty calls. I'll write a continuation later today, God-willing.