nightfall kept the memory of the beautiful sunny day. The air was mild, the sky cleared. Many people in the streets but few among the employed population seemed imbued with the spirit which ought to permeate the atmosphere and make our actions and our actions more measured, learned our words and our eyes close as veiled by the passion of our Lord. That was the day Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Holy Thursday. In all churches of the world, tabernacles are empty. This gaping hole in the heart of our temples is also a huge wound in our hearts ... So I crossed the city to go to St. Paul, Dominican convent where the altar was open to the adoration of the faithful until midnight. In the dimly lit nave, fifty people had stayed after Mass to hear the text read by the brethren. In a side chapel was erected the altar, a magnificent canopy of red cloth decorated with gold braid, the altar full of white flowers and foliage, with two beautiful garlands of lilies and greenery, candles and two angels on each side of the altar, ruddy. The impression of entering the atmosphere full of glory and piety of the painters of the seventeenth century ... The beauty immediate, visible, desired by the brothers, this atmosphere is added special places of prayer, the night when, lying in the middle of the city, in the world, they seem to capture a different energy and yet part of their environment. Not out of the world, but him and beyond him. The sielnce, the little light, perfumes, all combine to make this course feel peace and serenity. We prayed, each with its words, attitudes until midnight. Some were kneeling, others forehead against the floor, others on benches, in chairs. Something strong, like every year spread among us and rose, filling places like the swirls of incense spread in the nave at the offices. He was there in that little closet of marble and copper, surrounded by flowers with intoxicating scents. And came to my ear the famous choir of St Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach that we sing tomorrow at the office Friday. I could have stayed there all night, so full in this silence, facing him, totally present and both painfully so far. And those words resonated within me ...
"Mache dich, mein Herze, kidney,
Ich will Jesum, selbst begraben.
Denn er soll nunmehr in mir
Für und für Seine
süsse haben.
Welt, geh aus, lass Jesum ein! "
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