Simon Marsh

FROM CHATELET TO NOTRE DAME for early morning Mass. Memorial for Ss Cornelius and Cyprian is made by gently spoken priest and a people quiet and contemplative as those at Sacré Coeur yesterday. And my French isn’t good enough to comprehend quite everything that’s said in the so familiar Liturgy. So again, like yesterday, it’s not so much the words as the quiet actions, the ancient space, the echoes of countless thousands of pilgrims who have come here, on mornings like this, further back in time than I can grasp, that bring me to Communion … that encounter with something utterly other; with someone Utterly Other. And a good half hour before we sit down to breakfast back in Chatelet a quite specific hunger is satisfied.