Connected.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where every person around you isn’t speaking your language? Well earlier this summer I was visiting a friend of mine in France with nothing but the miniscule French education I had received in middle school that left me with the ability to say hi, count to five, and ask where the bathroom is. Needless to say, that is nowhere near enough for me to get by in most situations. Consequently, I found myself in Sunday mass that week, banking on my 19 years of experience as a Catholic to give me a vague idea of what was going on around me.

The church itself was gorgeous, as every church I’ve been to in Europe so far has been and filled to the brim with young adults from the local university. The atmosphere itself reminded me so much of my church at home that it made me smile, but the instant the entrance hymn started all sense of familiarity went away. The priest talked so quickly I understood maybe one word the whole time and it was bonjour.

By the time the intercessory prayer rolled around I had basically given up, but the response was written on a handy yellow pamphlet in front of me so I did my best to stumble through it, butchering the pronunciation all the way. The response itself wasn’t something simple like Lord here our prayer, like I was used to. Instead it was this long string of French words that everyone sang. And at that moment, it didn’t matter that I had no idea what I was saying or that my pronunciation was so bad that I probably wasn’t even saying real French words, because I knew why I was singing. There was something so powerful about being in a huge room full of other young adults as we all begged in unison for the Lord to hear us and help us, and despite the fact that I didn’t speak the language and everyone around me lived in a completely different country than I did, I have never felt more connected to the church. Because underneath it all, we are all just children of God in need of our father’s mercy.