With you.... on the Annunciation day

Dear friends,

Tonight, the bell of the Roche d'Or will ring at length in unison with all those of the French churches. Tonight, we will put little lanterns on our window sills and light torches on our terraces. The bell (Marie-Antoinette is her name) will ring at length as she does on Easter night. The lanterns will burn for a long time as they do on the night of December 8th. On this feast of the Annunciation, we will fill our little lanterns and the music notes of our bell with this Word which, for a time, we can no longer proclaim:  "Trust, I Am with you every day... ».

Like you, we are visited every night by this dramatic wave of pandemic toll. The news and images that come to us simultaneously reveal treasures of loving and generous humanity, as well as abysses of unconsciousness and selfishness. In the heart of all of this, we are graced with being able to celebrate the Eucharist, every day at 8:30 a.m. on behalf of all of you. Of course, we can't do what this Italian priest did when he put the pictures of all his parishioners on the chairs of the church where he celebrates mass, alone. Yet not one eucharist is lived without the consciousness that it goes far beyond our walls and our homes.

A few days ago, we read a story in the press we could relate closely to: Hospital staff witnessed the violence of Covid-19 and the difficulty of the situation. A nurse tells the story of a 48-year-old man in hospital: "I put him in an artificial coma and on a ventilator. This gentleman was crying before he closed his eyes. Not because he was scared, but because he was alone. His wife and six children were not allowed to come and see him. He told me: "So, is this my death? Alone, in the hospital, without my children around me and three people at my funeral. "I promised him I would do everything in my power for him to open his eyes again. He passed away tonight at 7:50 p.m."

One cry in the midst of very many others. Close to us, a nurse from Besançon University Hospital concludes her call for everyone's responsibility with these words: "... those who die do so alone. The last vision they have before being asleep without knowing if they will ever wake up is us, dressed as cosmonauts."

A roaring sense of protest rises in our hearts. Like Olivier and many of you I have taken-up Florin Callerand's book "Look at everything with me: The drama of the world" again. Françoise Porte's introduction, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, resonates with burning relevance:  "God is put in the dock: Why does He allow all this? That is the eternal question being asked. Is He the culprit? The whole world is asking questions of all kinds that didn't even come to mind until now, and so much the better, but where are the answers? There are, of course, no ready-made answers to such a tragedy, but silence would also be incongruous or enigmatic". It is because we don’t want to be silent that we’d like to offer you the chance to read this text from Florin written in 1994, the day after the sinking of the ferry-boat Estonia in the Baltic that had led to the death of 800 passengers.

The Holy Week is approaching and will truly be a celebration of and together with the world. We will experience it with you and will see you again on this blog for Palm Sunday.

Danièle Valès

French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon