“Prayer is the only revolt that is acceptable.”

Georges BERNANOS (1888-1948)
Writer, novelist, essayist

“Thinking of my journal, I day-dreamed of the Easters of my boyhood and my youth, Easters which conditioned and structured the whole of French society – Easter observers and non-Easter observers, Mass-goers and non-Mass-goers, the believers and the impious, – for, what is religion, what is faith, if it does not produce ritual, doctrinal, moral and social structures, the kind that are necessarily visible and influence the life of the world, as the sap of roots produces and gives structure to the branches of a tree, as the DNA of every living thing produces and structures its anatomy, its psychology, its behavior. Thinking over all that, I saw again, I see again now, as if it were before my eyes – the capital Z which, even more precisely than Palm Sunday with its Gregorian Chant of the Passion according to St. Matthew, with its Chapter of Canons processing with small steps on the cobblestone pavement of the Cathedral of Châlons-sur-Marne, making their palms rustle – real palms that were used each year – behind the venerable Bishop Tissier, who would knock with his gold Crozier at the bronze grill of the sanctuary, thus symbolizing the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem…to the acclamations of Hebrew children, Pueri Hebraeorum, yes, even more than this Sunday, Palm Sunday, which each year announces the solemn and grave, sad and joyful events,it was the capital Z, the first antiphon of Tenebrae that, for me, inaugurated Holy Week…”

Jean-Marie PAUPERT (1927-2010)
Essayist and novelist