France Ars Retreat Update Oct. 1st, 2009

The day began with a procession of St. Therese's relic by several priests into the basilica. I saw this relic in the sacristy of the Basilica of St. Therese last Thursday while I was visiting Lisieux. Immediately after Cardinal Schonborn's talk priests flocked to the relic to pray. The rector of St. Jean Vianney's basilica pointed out that we had in our presence both the incorrupt heart of St. Jean Vianney and a backbone of St. Therese. He prayed that may we priests receive the heart of Jean Vianney and the backbone of Therese.

Cardinal Schonborn began his talk with a story of an elderly priest in Normandy. The cardinal's sister lives in Normandy, and he stayed with her few days and visited her local parish and spoke to that elderly priest there. It turns out this elderly priest(75 yrs old) is pastor for 27 parishes! The elderly priest said he would be lucky to have 230 people at mass at any given church. This evening I was having dinner at our meal tent, and a French seminarian/ deacon across from me was telling me that his seminary in Normandy has only 20 seminarians among 3 dioceses. Cardinal Schonborn pointed out that crisis of vocation in Europe is starving the people of Eucharist. He then gave a reflection on the Last Supper, especially on the washing of the feet.

Later in the afternoon, Jean Vanier, the founder of the L'Arche community for the mentally handicapped led us in the foot washing outside by the grass. Each of us (in a group of 9) washed the feet of one next to us, and the one whose feet were washed laid their hands on the person washing and prayed for them. It was a very touching experience.

The dinner in the evening was a special one. They had bottle of wwine on each of our table and music was sung by the Community of Beatitudes. We were handed each a stem of rose in honor of the feast day of St. Therese. We ended up using it to wave it in the air when the African priests formed a line dancing across the tent. We cheered them on with our roses.

Fr Paul