I am not sure nonCatholics would "get" it, but for Catholics it is an amazing experience. I had three really improbable experiences there.

This was a trip by the Order of St John Soveriegn Military Order of Malta. They bring sick people to Lourdes to be blessed at the Grotto. You have to be nominated and one of the Knights sponsors you. They knew of me from working in Haiti and had wanted me to go two years ago but I was too ill. This year , the doctors asked me to go and one of them sponsored me and paid the airfare for my wife and I to go. He had never met me, he just read my medical history on the application.

We met on the plane ride over and were in shock. We realized we had actually already met one month earlier in line for Confession at the Vatican in Rome ( there was 100,000 people there!)

The next day we went to a Mass with 25,000 people. I was seated next to another " malade" from a chapter based out of New York ( I wAs with the DC group). I heard her call me by name...she was one of my partners patients who had moved back north for the summer.

On the way home, they called me to assist with someone having a reaction to an oral chemotherapy drug.. I thought I recognized the doctor assigned to that "malade"...after talking we realized..he was the anaesthesiologist for my surgery two years ago at Moffitt!

What are the odds ?