Catholic testimony

When I started this blog, the idea of ​​writing about the liturgy quickly came to me. Not to claim specialist status, but to share my sensitive experience of what represents the heart of a Christian's life. There were therefore two roads which had to merge: It was necessary to express the splendor of the mass, and then to entrust the journey which had allowed its revelation.

Part 1: Which mass for which Church? - In front of the church

During 1987, I thought my time had come. My life was falling apart. Life never falls apart, it will take me a few years to figure it out; either it stops, or it is transformed. My life was therefore transformed, violently, intensely, it offered me the enantiodromos as the Greeks say. The enantiodromos is this road which splits, which separates, which becomes two, and confronts us with a choice. The enantiodromos allowed me to understand what freedom was. It was an unprecedented situation, I was about to realize it. This crossing where life takes a completely unexpected turn marks the passage from childhood to adulthood. This moment has no age. I mean you can experience it at any age. What you shouldn't do is not live it. Not understanding what differentiates the freedom experienced in childhood from the freedom chosen in adulthood. Because the choice made, we become another; the experience reveals to us and gives a framework and foundations to the personality.

During this year of 1987, I wandered the streets of London, verifying how boredom is a creative source; time which should be compulsory for young people; time that helps to overcome the ego and defeat the demons. Free and unbridled boredom, the one who likes to embrace heresy. During this wandering in the streets of London, I went from church to church, I took my quota of silence and peace, I cut myself off from the world, I lived everything internally. I quickly got into some habits, I favored certain churches, the priests recognized my face and I liked this soft and discreet intimacy. To be recognized, without knowing. I did not speak to the priests, a smile was enough for me. It took me years and a meeting in Sainte-Odile in the mid-90s to become intimate with a priest again. I cannot explain this mistrust. I don't know why it took me so long to confide in me, after my studies with the monks, thus surrounded by monks, out of shyness, out of a desire not to disturb, out of difficulty in trusting. It took me years to understand that intimacy with the priest, especially in the sacrament of Confession, is intimacy with God. Why it took so long to understand such a simple thing, I don't know.

I attended the office although my rudimentary English was cumbersome; I mostly spent a lot of time just praying, shrouded in silence, between services. Expatriation, a certain poverty, a loneliness blowing the doors of narcissism, I lived a dizzying dialogue. It must be said here that I was very early attracted by the church. I'm sorry to have to say — to confess — which can always seem pretentious, or pass for a package deal: I've always believed. I have always deeply believed and I only lost faith through play, boasting or bravado, that is to say momentarily, that is to say that even if I wanted the opposite I continued to believe, intensely, deeply. It was a part of me. My person could not be understood without this requirement, this faith pegged to the body. I sometimes had the impression that this was a burden to bear - an understandable feeling for a young man who realizes that he cannot let go of qualities that he did not choose or more precisely that he thinks he hasn't chosen or that he thinks different from his deep nature — but above all, over time, I understood that it was an immeasurable force that saved me so many pangs that I see borne by young people today.

I moved around a lot in London. I moved all kinds. I met extraordinary characters ¹ , street saints, gutter saints as I said then. And then, I knew my hour of glory during this purgatory, towards the end of my stay, of this discreet and wise glory like the caress of a mother on the cheek of her child at bedtime. I moved to Covent Garden. I had decent accommodation, accommodation in the center; in central London. Covent Garden was the omphalos for me. The center of the world would have been said in a film by Mike Leigh ² . And by moving to this address, Providence was going, as often, to do things well. While, as usual, I was wandering the streets of my new neighborhood, I discovered a small church, sunk, wedged between the Victorian houses: Corpus Christi. Behind the theaters of the Strand, on Maiden Lane, I discovered a small church, the church that I had been looking for unconsciously without knowing it since the beginning of my wandering, the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. I entered this church and I was transported. I don't quite know how to explain it, but I immediately felt that I had come into contact with something real. The liturgy that I had known since childhood, the only liturgy that I knew, various liturgies if you will, because celebrated in several ways by different personalities, but the same liturgy celebrated in French, the same liturgical base, already blunted, already transformed and badly digested because badly degurgitated, at a time, in the 70s, when we had fun thinking that degurgitating rhymed with tradition; one would not wait so long to discover that degurgitating rhymed rather with regurgitation. I was of course not aware of all that I write now. And I wouldn't want people to think I've come to settle accounts. I don't have a score to settle. I don't belong to any chapel, to any group, I'm more of an itinerant — an attitude of vagrancy kept from England — and only have ties with one or two priests whom I see once there. 'an when I see them. I thus keep a totally disinterested eye on the internal quarrels which agitate and agitate from here to there, which does not mean that I am not interested in them. I just want to transcribe a bit of this exciting feeling that has stirred and maintained me for almost thirty years now, when, after having attended a mass according to the missal of 1962, I had the impression that everything was in its place, that everything was taking place, that nothing could be ordered otherwise. That everything was in its place because everything made sense. Yes, the word is slipped. Meaning. This sense that sometimes seemed to be missing during regurgitation; this sense giving an imperious solemnity, provoking the absorption of the whole community into a single entity, bathed in smoothness, in sweetness, bewitched and placed, disposed in a state of adoration. I thought this liturgy was the best way to love Christ. This liturgy was the doorway, the royal doorway, to perfect adoration and sacrament. I had understood absolutely nothing of what was being said, my level of Latin had not finished declining since the classes where I had studied it, but I had understood that a truth lay there. All of this seemed obvious to me, crystal clear. Intuition has always done wonders for me. Instinct — but is it only instinct? — gives us what no reasoning would allow us and we must, with humility, accept that we cannot explain what we feel. I immediately bought an English-Latin missal from the priest who must have taken me, first of all, for a fanatic. In my joy, I sought to know everything about this liturgy. My level of English had improved over time under the sarcasm of the English people on the street. I could embrace my new passion. From then on, I attended masses in Latin at this church every Sunday. I learned shortly after that it was a mass of Saint Pius V. I did not know who Saint Pius V was. I knew that I liked his mass.

I returned to Paris after a year. I hastened to find a mass of Saint Pius V. I understood the difficulty of the task. The times were stormy. Many spoke of the Mass in Latin without knowing it: either wanting to appropriate it or wanting to destroy it. I admitted that it was human to want to seize or claim a treasure, just like to want to get rid of an inheritance which one does not know what to do with and which clutters the attic. I already regretted the innocence and candor of my discovery in London. I spent some time at Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet, but I didn't like the Cour des Miracles which moaned or jeered on the forecourt, and hardly any more the egocentric and political speeches declaimed from the pulpit; it all seemed to me too full of itself. I bitterly regretted the time of humility, the time of childhood in London. Innocent and lively times, ingenuous and reckless. I quickly took refuge in a small chapel in the 15th arrondissement, Notre-Dame du Lys. I still go there from time to time nowadays. Another shelter. I continued to give myself time to enter fully into this mass that is now called de forma antiquior or extraordinary form, I had to go deeper into it, to feel at home there. Like the salmon, I had returned to the source of my religion and I drank there greedily. A rupture occurred at Notre-Dame du Lys. Unfortunately, no one escapes the most common torments. But, a bad thing for a good, a young priest came to show the example and knowing nothing about the mass of always, he learned it and celebrated it for years. This is what I called the Benedict XVI generation. Under John Paul II, there were traditionally trained priests who became diocesan. Under Benedict XVI, there are young diocesan priests who have discovered the tradition of the church without prejudice, without partisanship and without regurgitation. It is likely that this new generation, ³ and the one that will follow it, will be of an excellence that we have not seen for a long time. It is likely that scalded by scandals, villainy and sarcasm, they will become, not in number - although I know nothing about it -, but in quality, the long-awaited new soil on which the Church of tomorrow. For twenty-five years, I wandered from one church to another. Wherever the ancient rite was respected and loved. From the Barroux monastery to Sainte Odile, from Saint Germain l'Auxerrois to Notre-Dame du Lys. But I also reconnected with the mass after 1962, the ordinary form. I in turn rediscovered it in these certainties. Above all, I mustn't start regurgitating too! For a time, I saw only the youth of the Mass of Saint Pius V and then I grew old and realized certain qualities in the Mass of Paul VI, when it is respected. The concern is that it is impossible to criticize the Mass of Paul VI without your opponents thinking that you are criticizing the Second Vatican Council. Labeling is a syndrome of the French petty-bourgeois mentality. Whereas in fact, there is no longer the Mass of Saint Pius V and the Mass of Paul VI, but the Catholic Mass in two forms. I who also had my habits at Saint Julien le Pauvre, I also liked the shape of Saint-Jean Chrisostome, I sometimes stuck with three shapes! How fortunate are these differences as long as none of them sinks into regurgitation. It is always surprising to see how the worshipers of difference in general are so reluctant to practice difference; whether they are Christians or not makes no difference.

Over time, I went from the monastery of Barroux, to the monastery of Fontgombault to the monastery of Solesmes. And I can return wherever His Holiness the Pope is, with the liturgy, respected. I don't have blinders that prevent me from going right or left. I was lucky enough to return to Le Barroux about ten years ago. Or to meet the good monks during their visit to Paris, to Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, not long ago. You have to admit, and it's just an admission, isn't it?, that the Abbey of Barroux was like a second home for me. If I continued my confession, I would say that Corpus Christi in London, then Le Barroux, during my years in Nîmes, and finally Sainte Odile in Paris represent three places essential to my humble Christian witness, Notre-Dame du Lys also whose permanence must be rented. All these places where the prestige and beauty of the liturgy are intact. I know that for some my conduct is abnormal, not partisan enough. I know people will say I'm too eclectic. I have already been criticized for it. When I go from one church to another, from one rite to another, if the liturgy is respected I am happy. In this series of articles that I inaugurate today, I wish to share my experience of liturgical life and reweave a certain historical thread like a Moire. There is nothing pretentious and I hope that on the contrary we will see a strong and healthy humility. My goal depends on interiority: telling the story to understand it better. Trying to say smoothness, a difficult bet, perhaps impossible. One day in front of the liturgy, I had the taste of this smoothness. I want to give back to the liturgy and its richness a little of what it has given me, what “the most beautiful thing this side of paradise” can give (Blessed Cardinal Newman).

Part 2: Christianity, king of communities – At the foot of the altar

When I lived in London, the thought of spirituality never ceased to inhabit me. My quest boiled down to the permanent search for the inner life. This beating, throbbing heart could only be flesh and blood. That was my intuition. Twenty-five years later, it's a certainty that lives in me: not to let this heart beat and throb without giving it enough time, attention and affection. Unceasingly, seek to deepen this mystery which surrounds it. Anything that prevents this dialogue, anything that interferes with this connection, provokes my deepest contempt. This burning intimacy has perfect enemies hatched by the modern world, enemies like communitarianism and syncretism.

What gives the initiatory journey its quality often boils down to what it brought to the person who lived it, how it managed to change the point of view of this person, how it allowed him to evolve, to metamorphose, and to be the same… new. When I arrived in London, I had been educated with the Jesuits and the Marists, and yet I knew very little about Catholicism. Religious education in Catholic schools since the 1970s had shrunk dramatically. But I would be wrong to only blame religious teaching to have your approval here and to feel that you agree with me. I, me, ego, was perhaps not very attentive to what was said, not for lack of faith but for lack of conviction to learn my religion. If I come looking for something without thinking about what I'm going to give, I risk missing out on the essentials. The content of this article is contained in these last three sentences. Innocuous, but obliging the thought to be made and to be undone. And that's where my thoughts were headed: did the inner life amount to cutting oneself off from the world? I think (with hindsight, I had no idea twenty-five years ago) that the inner life was tantamount to cutting yourself off. First of all. After all, there is no pressing need to say "I" except in contact with others. What would be a need for individuation vis-à-vis oneself, or vis-à-vis a god? Only a god, or a demi-god could want to stand out from another god. An almighty god already knows everything about me.

In London, I fled what prevented the interior life. The first victim of this flight (which in this case had everything of a fight, of an “agonism” as Unamuno would say) took the form of community. I had the intuition that the community was denying this holy intimacy. The community forced syncretism, it asked me to share my intimacy and barter all or part of it with others; she wanted to destroy it, trample it underfoot, crumble it. I developed an early dislike for community and for syncretism. They forced me to break with what I loved. I saw this two-headed hydra, I pierced it up to date and I apprehended its game, its perfidy, wanting to force myself to accept its finished form: communitarianism. Syncretism, the agreement of the lowest common denominator, the need, so little obvious, so obviously perverse, to find an agreement, this agreement which under its good-natured airs so often seems the cornerstone when it is going to become the crack of the building, this agreement of unequal equality, this democracy as the modern world calls it, provoked my deepest aversion. Even today, I mean, after so many years, I refuse syncretism. But in a community, how can we act otherwise? How, if not to provoke an open war? I think I need that space in order to stay a Christian so I don't have to compromise all the time. There is no misplaced pride here, rather there is a willingness to assume one's limits. Community can be tempting, but it always has a propensity to turn into communalism. Once all the ideas of each other have been filed down and planed, combed through the agreement, each will be nothing more than a group whose common veins will not be long in boiling with the will to power.

Let us advance that the syncretism of the community gives a quality to those who did not necessarily have any, but it diminishes those who benefited from a stronger personality. I admit that I don't know if syncretism has any utility other than politics. It is possible, for example, to say that Christianity invented the most perfect democracy, but Christ never, oh never, showed the slightest syncretism. And for good reason, He came to lay the foundations of a new world. The confrontation becomes clearer: purity and syncretism face each other. Community leads to syncretism which leads to communitarianism. By reducing the individual to his role in the group, it forces him to take into greater consideration what he has not disavowed, he condemns him to cling to what unites and to forget what divides, the group does not even need to threaten it, the individual knows the importance of finding an agreement. Otherwise, he can only leave the group.

From syncretism to communitarianism
During my stay in London, I observed at length the communities I encountered. There were many of them, because London, as a good Anglo-Saxon city, had always practiced apartheid. Not with each other, but with each other. The city is divided into Chinese, Indian, African, etc. neighborhoods. People mixed during the day, cloistered in the evening. I was a foreigner, therefore less permeable to this way of living. But that was to forget the power of the city (which has never really ceased to exist since antiquity). Foreign or not, little by little, on a microcosmic scale, London forced communities to create and recreate themselves. Among the foreigners, bands of Italians, French and Japanese were forming. In any case, uprooting encourages community, because it circumscribes isolation and organizes solitude. I remembered my town in Brittany which, ten years earlier, had already presented symptoms. The West Indian community, the Maghrebi community (a bit at the time), the Armenian community and the Turkish community (equidistant)… At the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, for the communities to live happily, they lived hidden ⁴ . Communitarianism was advancing in disguise, perhaps a little less in the Parisian suburbs than in the provinces, but it was only a matter of time. A few bars, a few restaurants, vague neighborhoods here and there, often on the outskirts, out of the field of vision; not unknown, but ignored, pretended. The secret was called discretion. No claim. Few news items. The community, before the advent of SOS Racisme, but also of the National Front, did not require taking sides, or in a very parsimonious manner, to settle ancestral struggles, or settle a one-off dispute. If syncretism is present, it does not overflow and does not fight civil peace, it does not prevent “living together”. Communities live closed in on themselves, their components come together like in an oasis where memories flow. As soon as they leave this organization, the components of the community become individuals and are forgotten, and if ever their facial features, their accent, prevent them from hiding, they will attenuate this handicap by their exalted integration - politeness, friendliness, desire to do more — we are facing the integration process, they succeed in being other and even ⁵ . They are still themselves, but they are also a little more ⁶ . This plus is a tunic for winter evenings. Evil tongues call this plus a composite of tinsel, as an old and desolate thing which does not deserve to be given the slightest importance to it. But these same scoffers also call politeness, or even education in general, a composite of tinsel. Leaving the community, each individual is equal to another individual: he can be insulted or find himself involved in a fight for at least as many reasons: because he has a big nose, because he has short hair, because he wears blue clothes, because he doesn't smoke... All these reasons are at least as good as the racial reasons. Moreover, for those who know a little about quarrels, insults are very often only a reason to push oneself to the limit, to have an opportunity to become violent, to give vent to one's violence ⁷ . Communitarianism here also finds a good reason to revolt and to call on the will to power to the rescue by picking up the insult and making it a symbol. Communitarianism makes a symbol out of nothing because it wants to imitate life. Communitarianism picks up the insult, equalizes it (understand: makes it conform), legalizes it (understand: establishes it in law), proclaims it (understand: exhibits it like a panache that must be followed until the next elections). Process summarized in one word: syncretism. Political act and declared as such, intended as such. Worm in the fruit, which will grow and which, in our modern democracies, means apologies from the authorities, strong emotion at all levels of society, implementation of special and unequivocal measures, proposals on the honor to definitively resolve the problem with the most drastic measures possible, desire to put an eternal end to this problem that we should no longer encounter in an era of such great technological advances...

Would the syncretism that naturally arises from a community also signify the end of it? From syncretism to communitarianism, it is the community that dies. Syncretism will gradually grind down all the differences, and if it accepts that they continue to exist, it will sanitize them. Syncretism becomes the master standard, it rules everything, it decides which quality can be noticed.

The end of personalities, the end of particularities
There is a certain courage in entering into a community. There is a resignation to realize in communautarism. It is cowardice. It is the establishment of ease, baseness and sewage. A community consists of several people who breathe together, who want to breathe the same air because they know each other and recognize certain commonalities. They may want to be together for many reasons: because they have the same skin color, because they speak the same language, because they have the same passion. A priori, the community could even be an antidote to envy. But as often in the history of men where a good idea has disastrous conclusions, the community experiences abuses. There is always a world between a priori and a posteriori! A world that man has never properly considered. I mean other than from his point of view. And this drift is called communitarianism. If in appearance, communitarianism blends into the community by borrowing its characteristics, relying on its characteristics, it acts by business. Its fundamental purpose is to create envy. Communitarianism has well understood that an individual who finds himself in a community feels stronger, is quicker, accompanied as he is by companions with whom he feels in communion of thought, to let a certain will to power flow into his veins, ready to be heard, to thunder, to demand. With method, communitarianism presses on the wounds: failures, bullying, humiliations will clump together and sharpen the anger against. Communitarianism lives on being against. Communalism creates antagonism to forget the natural and inherent agonism of life. Heat the embers of revolt, reopen the wounds, revive the sufferings of the past, with the sole aim of creating revolt, always more anger. Versus. These techniques made common today, used mainly by socialism in all its forms, but also conversely (like the other side of the coin) by capitalism, taste the passion of envy by bringing suffering to the pinnacle to turn her into anger. As if there was no other way to do it.

Syncretism is a remedy for exchange. He takes the finery of the exchange to extract information and turn it against the person and thus that he is based in the group. The person becomes part of a whole that goes beyond him. It becomes a crowd "unfit for reasoning." (…) very fit for action”. Gustave Le Bon in The Psychology of Crowds.

Catholicism or the unequaled community
There would therefore be a courage to be part of a community and a resignation to accept communitarianism. The acceptance of communitarianism resembles a cowardice, a resignation more exactly, or first of all; first a resignation which therefore leads to a resignation, a cowardice. Any resignation is imprinted with cowardice for a Christian, with renunciation of his mission.

Entering into community also leads to seeking the same and finding the other. This is where there is courage. There is also courage in wanting to go beyond what one is; and it is necessary to go in front of an unknown person, all the more so when this person is a constituted group. So there is a real courage to enter into community. But there is also an ease. Ease is this search for the same (which can bring the other, but it is only a possibility, a coincidence). What community is not realized in reunions? What community can exempt itself from being together? The community must breathe the same air, agree on the same themes (or feign agreement to cement the group). As is often the case in human endeavors, an extra soul is needed for the other side of the coin to take over. Communalism is the worm in the fruit of community.

To my knowledge, only one community exempts itself from being gathered together for more than 90 minutes per week. And yet its members do not exchange words. This does not mean that within this community, some do not live together longer in the week, but it is by no means an obligation. This is the Christian religion. If it is impossible not to consider it as a community, it is also the only one that cannot be transformed into communitarianism. It brings together totally different people who, if they did not have God to aspire them upwards, towards much higher than them, towards the summits, would perhaps not get along, would perhaps even war one way or another. And Catholics achieve an even more extraordinary feat by extending this community to the dead and to all the living across time and space with the communion of saints! Of course, if the Christian religion had not suffered from communitarianism, it would not have three denominations, however no other community can claim to be so little lobbyist, to bring together such different people, and to keep them around of an idea that surpasses anything that can be imagined. And it seems obvious to me that if an institution like the Church has existed without fail for 20 completed centuries, despite all the attacks (internal as well as external), all the infamies (external as internal) it is due to the diversity which composes it which , for many, inspires and reveres her well-worn name of catholic, universal.

The family antidote to the community
When I was in London, I sat down at a kneeler, I saw other people in the same position as me, I knew that we were part of the same family or even siblings. Yes, from the same family. What does that mean? That the family would be an antidote to the community? How many people surrender to the community to forget their family? From one family to another...

The family has this virtue of being a melting pot and of not allowing itself to be transformed into communitarianism. This is also the difficulty of the family: a crucible is a breeding ground for bacteria. Especially since in the family the ties are inalienable. The family is a cabinet of curiosities that cannot be visited. Intimacy and modesty are logically her two breasts. But since the original sin, everyone knows that tragedy lives in the world. The ancient Greeks had perfectly analyzed this process of evil which comes out of good: The man who tries his hand at good and who sinks, victim of his fate, of his destiny, of his clumsiness and his pride, always of his pride. But let's leave out what we've perverted. Let's leave aside the misdeeds, the immodest and outrageous family. Leave that aside, because we are Catholics and no, we are not politicians. A politician would come here to pick up the slack, collect the facts and the rumours, he would come and place all these bad and corrupt things that the family can also create, because it is human and the human condition is imperfect, he would place them for us in another crucible, a crucible that he would like to be edifying, and strong of what he would have collected, he would teach us after having carried out a marvelous and effective syncretism, that the family is, in fact, the worst thing that the world has ever known ! He would thus raise in less time than it takes to write it an army of partisans of the family against an army of partisans of its destruction. What a beautiful war to put in place! What power felt in its elaboration!

In search of lost humility
During my wanderings in London, I remember these groups I encountered: a community of French people, Italians, Japanese… Small juxtaposed groups. All these communities had a common characteristic. Their skin was thick, rough like those fish bristling with spines that criss-cross the oceans without ever fraternizing. The communities did not clash, but they protected each other. A community that protects itself already reveals a fear of the other. A fear of what is not it. A community that protects itself is one step away from transforming into communitarianism which is a cult to the same.

The individual who enters the community comes to give what he is, he comes to discover what he is not, he comes to express his state and share it, to find common points of course, but also to discover feelings. different in people who, if they share an ethnic or cultural origin, are nevertheless beings in their own right and therefore can be, being surely, infinitely different from him. That's the exchange we're talking about, isn't it? We are talking about an individual transforming into a person, aren't we? We are indeed talking about this particular alchemy which consists in adding a culture to a nature and making it a being subject to free will, aren't we? We are indeed talking about this alchemy which is called civilization and which proceeds from the nature and culture of a people and which gives it its history, isn't it?

Is acculturation a syncretism?
There are different syncretisms.
Japanese syncretism allows Shintoism and Buddhism to coexist, without ruining anything for either. It is in no way a question of crossbreeding: Shintoism and Buddhism exist side by side and it is only a question of compromises - and not of compromises. Another form of syncretism which is similar to acculturation takes on a much more positive color. Syncretism comes closer to what it seems to fight: the truth. Acculturation adopts syncretic colors. Acculturation is syncretism plus one, in this case truth. Catholics know it well, its advantages and disadvantages, because it was the foundation of the Jesuit strategy for centuries. The Jesuits thus practiced acculturation by absorbing habits and customs and “pushing” them in the right direction: God. In the speech of a Jesuit, the interlocutor counts almost as much as the content of the speech. It has been common to talk about the method, but the results have been surprising. The Jesuit is infinitely less concerned with Christianity than with converts ⁸ . At the time of glorious Rome, legions returning from foreign countries installed the new pagan gods of their victims in their pantheon, a way of integrating its new pagans more easily. But before Christianity, everything was only political among the Romans, and syncretism reigned supreme, as the cement of the Fatherland (who would reproach the Romans for their syncretism when it was to such an extent the seed of Europe?). Acculturation offers exchange. Acculturation raises questions, because it requires, not to deny one's position, but to rethink it according to one's interlocutor. Acculturation is based on syncretism, which when practiced well, forces humility, the primordial quality of the encounter.

Humility Guardian of Good
Humility is the most perfect antidote to envy. Nothing fights this cancer better than envy. The source of evil always draws from pride; it cannot dry up. Humility forces you to chart a course and follow it. This path towards the other, without preconceptions, by becoming petrified, most certainly represents humility. Humility is a journey within and outside of oneself. Draw in yourself the strength to break with pride, to stifle it and to go towards the other without prejudice. This natural empathy must be one of the first qualities of the Christian: he calls it the beautiful word of compassion. It is an empathy driven by faith.

I have always found communitarianism impossible. I always found it impossible to let myself be locked into a group and lose all intimacy because this group had to take precedence over everything. Unfortunately, I found communitarianism everywhere I went, every day of my life, on almost every street corner. Communitarianism impedes the truth so well and allows people to believe themselves powerful so quickly. The difficulty for a Christian is obvious: to ask someone who has encountered the truth not to be intransigent with error! And the problem with truth is that everything else is error. And everything else is a continent. Sin is error, the sinner is in error, but we know the difficulty of calmly explaining error and making it understood. Nowadays, everyone thinks they have the truth. Everyone thinks they are right. Welcoming the sinner and refusing the sin is the Christian's challenge. The deep nature of Christianity, the word of Christ, forbids it and serves as a guide against the temptation to enter into communitarianism.

But communitarianism awaits all of us at all times; at any moment, we want to slam the door on each other. Why argue with someone who doesn't understand that Mass is a sacrifice? Why argue with someone who shouts at seeing the Pope as an impostor? Why speak with a follower of secularism thinking that religions are at the origin of all wars? From one extreme to the other, the same desire to put an end to the current discussion. The truth is like the tradition which is the cement of the family: when you come into contact with it, you can't help but believe you have it. To believe that you possess the tradition is to mislead it. It is entering into communitarianism.

How to proceed so as not to lose your soul and not to condemn without appeal? What is our faith if it is like a cudgel? And can the club be a hypothesis? During these long months in London, I was often in contact with communities, but I ignored them and ran away just as often ⁹ . Certainly out of pride. I looked good in my twenties. But just as much out of humility. It could have escaped. Of this humility which draws from oneself, which goes in search of oneself, in search of this other in oneself which speaks in the interior life, of this boy who had already lived very quickly in the manner of a character of Nimier. This is where the line is drawn: whether sins are white or black, a man has access to an infinite tonality. We must always look for man beyond sin ¹⁰ .

When I first entered the church of Corpus Christi, I was at the end of my London journey (cf. Christian testimony — 1). I had passed this church many times, but I had never touched it. I didn't deserve it. In this church located on Maiden Lane, just behind the neon lights of the Strand theaters where I worked in the evenings, I found myself naked, stripped of all superfluities. Faced with the beauty of the rite, before the revelation I received, I discovered the deep meaning of my faith. It was at that moment that I understood that the mass was the sacrifice of Christ, the triumph over sin and death. I was truly beginning my journey, the vocation of every Christian of the Catholic faith, I was going to follow Christ's entry onto earth, his life, his teaching, his death and his resurrection. What the Mass tells us: the history of salvation. But for this, I had to continue my enterprise of nudity and purification: Asparagus me, confiteor and infinite beauty of the mass of extraordinary form: introibo ad altare Dei ¹¹ . Like Abraham obediently at the feet of the altar ready to sacrifice his son at God's command. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam (Towards God who fills my youth with joy). At the most sincere of the confessionio . Just before going to the altar. The ascent towards God.