Pizza and Coffee

These are probably the greatest food and drink that the ingenuity of man has come up with (although not together): the best way to start (coffee) and finish (pizza) the day. They are many other things I could say about them but I want to relate a story about each of them from the past few weeks.

We have pizza fairly regularly in Rome. Usually, the brothers pile the slices on so they can fit 8 on a platter. Unfortunately, the cheese from below often sticks to the pieces above. One of the brothers serving gave our half-empty table a platter with only 4 pieces on it to avoid this problem.

Unfortunately the table had 5 brothers. I realized I was going to be the second-last so I decided I would put it beside my plate as if I was serving myself and then place the last slice on the last brother’s plate instead. However, the brother before me outsmarted me.

He tried to skip himself and give me the platter with 2 slices. I refused it. “You need to eat something.” So he put it down beside his plate, and did exactly what I was planning to do but with the pizza ending on my plate.

On Ash Wednesday, I sat down for breakfast and realized our table didn’t have coffee. (Even though it is a day of fasting, I need the coffee to concentrate during class.) As I got up to go and get some, another brother who was about to sit down signalled that he would do it. About a minute later, a brother comes by with coffee, but it’s a different brother. The first brother returns after another minute and we end up with two pots of coffee. Both brothers had seen we were missing it and tried to help us all out.

These little events might not seem like much but love is show in the details. A deacon was visiting back in December, he studied a few years with the Legion (about 1999-2004 but don’t quote me) but will be ordained for his diocese soon. He gave a homily at the mass just before he left and said that he realized that the spirit of the Legion was still alive when the brother appeared after night prayers the night before with all his laundry washed and folded so he could pack it for his trip home.