When I started this blog, very quickly the idea of ​​writing on the liturgy came to me. Not to claim specialist status, but to share my experience about what is at the heart of a Christian's life. There were therefore two paths that had to merge: It was necessary to tell the mass (and its benefits), and then entrust the journey that had revealed it.

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).