C’mon St. Anthony, Please Help Me Find It!

Act 1

My wife was so far ahead of me that she could barely hear me yelling at her. “Who is the patron saint of lost things?!”

“What?!” I barely heard her reply over the noise of the busy Charles de Gaulle airport terminal.

I inhaled deeply before trying to be heard again. “WHO IS THE PATRON SAINT OF LOST THINGS?!?!”

I was truly desperate. 

In between boarding in Houston and deplaning in Paris, Air France lost our double stroller. I knew that it made the transatlantic flight because I watched the gate agent in Houston tag it and the baggage handlers load it into the belly of the aircraft before we took off. But after landing, it was nowhere to be found. And now, after a long night trying to coax sleep from my angry, crying baby boy, I was beginning to panic. 

“ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA!!!” 

Dang. She must have really yelled because she didn’t even turn around. And I easily heard her despite the fact that there were hundreds of people and half a football field between us.

We were young parents still and naive enough to think it would be easy to take two kids under five on a two-week trip to Europe. But we were smart enough to bring that stroller. It was sturdy enough to hold both kids and some of our bags and stout enough to handle European cobblestone sidewalks. And after spending our entire three-hour layover filing a claim with Air France, we had to sprint through the never-ending terminal to catch our connection to Germany, each of us holding a crying child, gripping a car seat, wearing a backpack, and dragging a carry-on. Sweating profusely doesn’t even begin to describe it. 

“C’mon, St. Anthony. Please find that stroller!” 

I was still a new Catholic, a convert of just five years by then. And this was my first appeal to St. Anthony, a saint renowned for reuniting lost people and lost belongings. It was a plea from the heart, born out of near despair, not piety.

After running half a mile, we barely made our connection and were whisked aboard. The four of us were completely spent from the long night, the stress, and the mad dash. We were breathing heavily, sweaty, and sticky, but we were so tired it didn’t matter. No sooner had we collapsed into our seats than all of us fell asleep.

Ninety minutes later, we awoke just before landing in Nuremberg. We deplaned, gathered our things, and made our way to baggage claim. My sister-in-law was waiting for us, excited to begin our long-awaited visit, blissfully unaware of all we’d endured the past eighteen hours. 

We hugged and began to share our plight with her. A siren blared, and the baggage carousel began to spin. And the first thing to emerge from the plane was a stroller that looked exactly like our stroller. It couldn’t be. Is that our stroller? I rubbed my eyes. 

As the carousel brought it closer, I became convinced before I even grabbed it that it was OUR STROLLER. But how? I carefully watched every single item (suitcases, boxes, golf clubs, other strollers, etc.) get unloaded from the plane in Paris, and ours simply wasn’t there. I reached out and grabbed it and began looking it over. Yep, this one was ours. Praise God! 

But it gets better. 

While checking it out, we noticed the destination tag attached by the gate agent in Houston was missing. Without it, there would be no way for Air France to know which of their 200 flights per day to put it on. And yet, through the intercession of St. Anthony, we were reunited with our stroller.

Act 2

She didn’t want me to take her brand-new camera, but I insisted. 

My father, my twelve-year-old son, and I were taking a trip to New York City over a three-day weekend. Principally, we were going for the sports: a Mets game on Saturday evening and a Giants game on Sunday afternoon. However, around those appointments, we planned to cram in as much sightseeing as possible: St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Central Park, Times Square, the Empire State Building, the 9/11 Memorial, and more were on the list. 

We’d hoped to create memories that would last my son’s lifetime. And to do that, I reasoned, I needed my wife’s camera instead of the inferior one on my phone. After a fair amount of cajoling, thankfully, she relented.

Our trip began unusually early the next morning, so we were in New York before lunch. The three of us took a taxi to our hotel, threw our stuff inside, and left to explore on foot. I took dozens of photos of my son staring up at the impossibly tall buildings, eating a hot dog we bought from a street vendor, riding a horse-drawn carriage through Central Park, and standing in front of Trump Tower, among many other landmarks.

For dinner, we chose a restaurant in Times Square, perhaps the biggest, busiest, loudest, and certainly the brightest city square in the world. Part of the reason we chose this place was that it was located five stories above street level, and as night fell and the billions of lights around us came to life, my son was totally and completely mesmerized by the scene, just like a boy from Mississippi would be. And I got some truly great photos of him with his nose to the window, lost in wonder about the busy life he saw buzzing below. Our meals came. I hung the camera by its strap on the back of my chair and dug in.

We set an alarm the next morning so we could be at the Empire State Building when it opened. We had a full day planned and couldn’t afford to start the day by standing in a very long line. We got dressed, ate breakfast, and headed…Wait, where’s the camera?  

My heart immediately sank. I frantically looked around the small room, but it was no use. It was gone and probably long gone. I couldn’t believe it. I had been so careful with it the entire day before. How did I manage to lose it? And where exactly was it?! My wife is going to kill me.

I began retracing my steps mentally, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that I had lost the camera in Times Square. Dread filled me. Did I mention that my wife was going to kill me? What are the chances of finding a lost item in Times Square? Just about zero, I figured, but I called the restaurant anyway. Perhaps a Good Samaritan found it and gave it to management. No one answered, but then, I remembered that it was Saturday. They wouldn’t be open for hours, so I had no choice but to enjoy the day with my father and son and to try the restaurant later. 

As we set out, I suddenly remembered the episode from nine years earlier in Nuremberg. St. Anthony had certainly come through once before in a beautifully miraculous way. Perhaps he would again?

“C’mon, St. Anthony! Please help me find that camera!”

In the intervening years, I had not called on St. Anthony a second time, so it felt a little presumptuous for me to suddenly call on him in the moment. “Hi, remember me?!” Just like the first time, I was desperate for many reasons. I didn’t want to face my wife, of course, but I also didn’t want to lose the photos I had taken. Nor did I want to miss capturing moments for the rest of the trip. 

Over the next few hours, I kept my pleas to St. Anthony on my lips and in my heart as we checked the first few sights off our list. Finally, it was time, so I called the restaurant again. They were open, but no one had turned in the camera. I was welcome, though, to come over and look for myself. So my father and son went back to our hotel for a rest, and I headed to Times Square on foot. “C’mon, St. Anthony!”

I stepped off the elevator, and no sooner had I introduced myself to one of the staff than another person stepped forward with the camera. After my call a few minutes earlier, he’d walked around the restaurant and saw the camera hanging on my chair from the night before completely undisturbed. “Sir, you know this never happens. People lose stuff here all the time and never see it again. Someone must be looking out for you.”

Yes, indeed. Someone is. “Thank you, St. Anthony!” To say I was overjoyed would be an understatement. I held the camera in my hands for a few minutes, marveling at just how good both the Lord and St. Anthony had been to me. Quickly, I had this overwhelming urge to find the nearest Church, drop to my knees, and give thanks. I consulted my map and saw that St. Patrick’s Cathedral was only seven blocks away. I hadn’t planned to go there until Mass on Sunday morning, but there was no time like the present. So off I went!

Jubilant, I floated all the way there. I walked in the large door facing Fifth Avenue and was struck both by the immensity of the place and by the incredible number of people there. 

Seemingly, there would be no truly quiet place to pray, so I made the Sign of the Cross and decided to pray my way through the Cathedral, pausing at the Stations and various works of art to give thanks. The St. Patrick’s nave contained many side altars, paintings, sculptures, and reliquaries. I could spend all day there and not see it all.

I turned to the right, quickly came to the first side altar, and (in the biggest mic drop moment of my Catholic life to that point) saw that it was dedicated to … drumroll please … St. Anthony of Padua! 

Coda

I learned many lessons from these two episodes, beyond just having great stories to share with others. A few of them are: 

First, God is real. He lives! And He wants to do real things for real people right now. I believe Jesus meant what He said when He preached, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matt. 5:7-12). He actually wants us to ask Him for things, big and small. 

Second, the Communion of the Saints is real. Our holy brothers and sisters in the faith who have gone before us into eternity are literally in the presence of God right now. They not only want us to join them, but they also desire to help us on our earthly pilgrimage. Pray to them! 

Finally, God is whimsical. Often, I have witnessed the Lord resolve problematic situations in the most playful of ways. That the Lord saw fit to return these two material items to me through St. Anthony’s intercession was amazing enough. And if the story had stopped there, it would be a great story!

But the fact that I had the impulse to go pray, that He led me to St. Patrick’s, that I turned right instead of left, and that the first altar was dedicated to St. Anthony…Well, that was a Divine Wink. It was the lagniappe, the icing on the cake, and the cherry on top! It was a superfluous detail, an unneeded extravagance for the story to have real power. Praise God that He doesn’t like to do just the bare minimum! He not only loves us, He is Love. And Love overflows into abundance, often including playful finishing touches to stories a decade in the making, all to say “I love you.”