And everything takes its place

A friend from the parish taunts me: “What are you taking?” “Pardon ?” “To do everything you do, what do you take?” I admit that my life is busy.

First my job as a physiotherapist. It’s fifty-five hours a week, not physically demanding, but requiring a lot of attention: listening to the patient, adapting to their requests, being present. The climbing club, one evening a week, a moment shared with my wife and a couple of friends. It’s good to get tired a little, to defy gravity, to try to progress.

And then… there is the life of the parish and the diocese. I play the double bass and with my wife and a few musicians of goodwill, we liven up the celebrations. A service that I really like, but which is demanding. A titular organist of a cathedral organ, to whom I expressed my preference for the orchestra at the foot of the altar, in the assembly, replied to me: “You don’t realize! For an orchestra to play at mass, someone would have to enter all the scores, transpose for the instruments, distribute the scores, and again you would have to rehearse an hour before the mass. It’s impossible!” No one has ever described so well the work that we, the musicians, do, in our parish and for the diocese, more than thirty times a year for twenty years.

We also participate as a couple in the wedding preparation team, so four Saturday evenings a year. To which has recently been added the “Come and See” course that the parish is setting up. And we accompany a catechumen, one evening a month, which is also a great source of joy. Plus the life of the liturgical teams, the training that we try to put in place, the “frat” (a team of sharing and prayer around our priests), and you will understand that a week without an evening at the parish house, we do not know.

“No, but what are you taking? » I take half an hour, daily, to read the texts of the Mass of the day and pray Lauds*. Every morning, I put myself in the presence of my Lord, and I pray. And everything takes its place. I entrust to him those I love, those who suffer. I ask him to guide my life. And during the day, frequently, this litany recurs: “Thy will be done!”

* Sunrise office.