Dinner with a Sinner

What one priest learned from a troubled mother.

By: Fr. Pat McNulty

I was watching the disheveled young woman carrying her illegitimate baby as she boarded the 7:00 a.m. city bus.

Then just before the doors hissed shut, she ran back to me, kissed me on the cheek, and said in a loud voice, “Thanks, Fr. McNulty. I may be back again tonight.”

Because I used to say the 7:15 Mass at the cathedral just across the street, I knew many of the people who had just gotten off the bus on their way to that Mass! I don’t remember what I did after the lady kissed me there in public, but years later someone who saw it all said that I just shook my head and walked away. I was probably thinking something like, “Lord, it couldn’t have turned out worse if I had planned it myself!”

And if the look on the face of the priest going into the chancery office next to the bus stop was…

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