Conformity.

Jen's post today is a must-read.  

The ride home from the airport after we picked up our Kidsave child Rita was a little tense. We quickly found out that when they said in her bio that she speaks some English, by "some" they meant "not a single word." A Colombian social worker named Maria was with us as well, and she didn't speak much English either.

"Is hot too where you live?" I asked in broken Spanish.

They barely managed to nod and smile. They had arrived a day late after getting stuck in Atlanta overnight, and were too exhausted to strain for conversation topics. Rita was so tense and stressed by her strange new surroundings that she'd developed a bad headache. In the forty-minute drive back to our house we made some other efforts at chitchat, but it was hard work. Our group consisted of a suburban American family from Texas, a young career woman from the bustling city of Bogota, an orphaned child from rural Colombia, and we were all tired. It was pretty quiet for most of the ride home, the main sound being the air conditioner straining to beat the sweltering heat.

Then Maria started to say something, hesitating to make sure she chose the right words. "I hate to trouble you," she said apologetically, "but it's very important that Rita and I go to Mass on Sunday."

When I told her that we are Catholic too, everything changed.

In one moment we went from having nothing in common to having everything in common. 

Read the whole thing;  it sums up succinctly one of my favorite things about being Catholic, namely, the blessed conformity of the Mass, and why it's so beautiful to know what to expect, no matter where you are.   I wrote the word "conformity" just now having only skimmed Jen's post, and went back to discover that she, too, used that term with affection.