What does God do when mankind weeps?

The Passover Week ended with the same silence and wonders of the gardens as in the Holy Week. The Easter Hallelujah continues to resonate throughout the park in the thousands of enthusiastic birdsongs, this powerful choir answering in echo to the singing of our small community.

Sometimes it feels like time has stopped! But the phone calls from relatives, retreat goers, families, some affected and bereaved, keep us on track in the terrible fight that is playing out without respite. The evening news and the endless litany of victims only shows the world tragedies in the light of the pandemic. Fear, anguish, anger, distress, and indignation can be seen in its many aspects: they appear en masse in the front the cameras and on social media networks. But strangely, the tears and sorrows seem to run away from these cameras; unless it is the cameras that are running away from them?

Just as the silence took us by surprise in the early days of the confinement, this unusual absence suddenly became a presence. Hidden behind the death counts and images of intensive care patients appearing daily in front of our screens, how many men, women and children are in tears, how many are in sorrow while in solitude during confinement? Man’s invisible and incessant flurry of tears of our times knocks on our door and invites us to face the inevitable question arising: What does God do when man cries?

We continue to draw from the treasures of our heritage for you, discovering texts that strangely enough could well have been written for these current days, such as the comment by Florin Callerand that we bring you today.

"The prophet weeps because he is unable to indicate two paths, he knows only one, he shows only one, and this one is far from pleasing everyone... “. These words from Françoise Porte introduce Florin’s work: “A pauper calls, God responds” and more specifically to his comments on “beatitude” to "those who weep", we give you this text...

Danièle Valès

French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon