He’s always there, year in, year out. There’s always a special seat for him set out in the front middle, and while he’s likely to sit in the chair for some time, he’ll often move over to the side and watch the parish Polish group put on their Christmas program.

He’s a polyglot, but he has only very limited Polish in his linguistic arsenal. He can greet people, say the Hail Mary, and thank people.

Yet his passion for Poland and all things Polish is never wavering. Among the gathered Poles, with his small stature and dark complexion, he stands out. As Polish parishioners offer each other they opłatek in the Polish wafer tradition, he stands smiling and watching until someone realizes he’s been left out and brings him over a square of the wheat-and-water wafers, explains the tradition, then offers the square of bread. They break off a piece of each others’ bread, wish each other well, and Fr. Theo’s smile grows even bigger.

He turns to watch everyone around him, shuffling among friends, opłatek extended, smiling, hugging, kissing.

In her NPR piece, Sarah Zielinski explains what Fr. Theo, an immigrant himself from Columbia, initially was missing:

Nothing says “I love you,” at least in my Polish-American family, quite like the sharing of a thin, flat, tasteless wafer called an oplatek at Christmas. […]

“For us, Polish Americans, the opłatek, that wafer, is Christmas Eve,” says Sophie Hodorowicz Knab, author of the book Polish Customs, Traditions and Folklore. “It defines people’s heritage.”

It’s a cultural thing, to be sure, but it somehow goes beyond that. That simple sharing of bread makes a family of just about any group of gathered Poles.

It’s a phenomenon I’ve witnessed myself many times in Poland. Even students who didn’t particularly like each other shared with a smile their little squares of dry bread without a hint of animosity or hesitation. Of course our pastor hasn’t see all those experiences: this is his first experience, to my knowledge, with the tradition, with us, this Sunday.

Everyone seems eager to share with Fr. Theo, and he seems equally pleased to share with everyone else. In a sense, many are strangers, but that’s the beauty of the opłatek tradition: no one stays a stranger for long.

Afterward, I ask him what he thinks of the tradition. “Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.”

The choir begins singing again, though, and I leave Fr. Theo to shoot a few more pictures and let him enjoy the music in peace.

This is the fourth, the fifth time the local Polish community has held its jasełka at St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church, and it’s the fourth (or fifth?) time that Fr. Theo, the pastor, has been there.

As K, the informal Polish choir director (or probably more likely, formal at this point) leads the choir through its final carol, Fr. Theo takes the mic to address everyone.

“You thank us,” he smiles, “for having this here, but we are the ones who are blessed.”