Every Wednesday, these parishioners pray and meet homeless
Every Wednesday, from 8:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Parisian parish of Saint-Ambroise (11th arrondissement), around forty people participate in an original prayer evening, mixing adoration and maraude. “The idea of meeting our street brothers came four years ago, in the middle of Covid. Very quickly, we associated it with a prayer vigil, because the stake is the same: to honor the body of Christ, whether through a poor person or in the worship of the Holy Sacrament, ”explains Pascal Negre, parish priest for five years.
At 8:30 p.m. tackling, the celebration begins. Students, young professionals or residents of the older district gather around the altar, adorned with large bouquets of white gladdles. On the ground, a map of the neighborhood has been deployed. After a short prayer, participants, leaf in hands, start to sing.
8:45 p.m., the priest invokes the Holy Spirit and, immediately, eight boys and girls disappear. Equipped with coffee thermos, gloves, scarves, sweaters given by the parishioners, they leave two by two, to meet the SDFs in the neighborhood. “It is faith that leads us to go to people on the street. The idea is to spend an hour with a homelessness by talking about everything and nothing, without soliciting him on too personal subjects, and listening to him carefully, ”explains Thibault Tourres, 33 years old.
A coffee for the road
“I want to take the time to stop with these people we meet every day in the street,” says Quentin Humann, 24-year-old engineer, who teams up that evening with Thibault. The two men do not need to walk for a long time on Richard-Lenoir boulevard to come across a camp of five men aged 42 to 60.
One by one, Marcelino, Basil, Rahim, Bogdan and Nicolas, from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, come out of their tent, all surprised that passers -by are interested in them. “Isn’t it too cold?” »Asks Thibault to start the exchange. Coffee warms hearts and unties languages, even if migrants have difficulty speaking in French.
Back in Saint-Ambroise, each of the marauders puts a candle on the map, in the precise place where he met a homeless. And said his name at the microphone. “May the Lord bless them!” “Concludes the priest. The evening ends with our father’s prayer, just before the final song.
