At Home in Buffalo

By Mara W. – Alumn and Director of Outreach

For Memorial Day Weekend, we headed up to Buffalo, NY for a Con-solatio family reunion. We were welcomed by our own Father Peter (missionary in Argentina and now diocesan priest), Selen (Italy and El Salvador), Julia (Peru) as well as Fr. Peter’s family and my own (I, too, am a Buffalo native). We were also joined by Tori (Honduras) from Texas with her husband Jesse and three beautiful daughters, Marian (Brooklyn) from Pennsylvania , and Sofia (Senegal) from Michigan.

It was a weekend to discover – as we like to say – the REAL New York State, far from the Big Apple. But more than that, it was a weekend to rediscover the richness of our belonging. Although it did require a good amount of planning to gather us all together for four days, our union was far deeper than what we could attempt to organize or orchestrate. We all enjoyed Niagara Falls, a barbecue and bonfire, hosting an intense poker night, running in the Buffalo half marathon, and watching the sunset over the great Lake Erie, but the highlight for me was to witness the unmistakable joy that shone out from within each person, a fruit of the palpable communion that we lived.

I was certainly, literally, “at home” in Buffalo, but I also had the impression that all of us were “at home” – not so much because of the location, but because where two or more are gathered in His name, there He is in our midst. He has come to each of us through this mission family and given us a home to share. “Con-so-Buffalo”, as Fr Peter called it, was a great success and we can’t wait for our next edition in 2026.