When I hear the name St. Ambrose, I confess to thinking not of the fourth-century Bishop of Milan, about whom I knew nothing until my late twenties, but of a twentieth-century church in Rochester, New York.
St. Ambrose was my mother's childhood parish near my maternal grandparents' home, and I have memories of baptisms, "five o'clock Mass" on Sunday afternoons, and the funeral Masses for my grandfather Benedict and godfather Albert. (There's something quintessentially Catholic in that, don't you think?: making "unthinking" connections, sacramental and otherwise, with — in the mind of a boy — an anonymous member of the Communion of Saints.)
"Uncle Al" died without warning about twenty-five Decembers ago at the age of 42, and on the day of his funeral the church was packed with mourners. One man, distraught with grief, pounded its brick walls with his fist. That evening marks the first time I saw my father weep openly.
The intervening years have not been kind to St. Ambrose. The Irondequoit neighborhood which surrounds it contains an increasingly fewer number of Catholics, and I'm not even sure the parish school attended by my mother uncles is still around.
So when we say "St. Ambrose, pray for us" this evening, it will be done with a special intention.
