Father Maxime Deurbergue, vicar at the parish of Sainte-Marie des Batignolles, is also a doctor in art history. He teaches at the Collège des Bernardins, in Paris.
Past the deserted square and the obelisk pointed towards the heavy sun, I crossed the door and, as always, I began my pilgrimage with a prayer in front
of Michelangelo's
Pietà
.
Usually you have to make your way through the brandishing of screens, to gain silence within yourself - since only it really allows you to see.
But there were hardly a few masked survivors, leaning against the marble of the curbstone, freed from the photograph, inhabited by this mother as young as the Son and by her impossible posture which suggests, by the slight recoil of the bust, the painful distance and sacred of death;
by the serenity of the face, by the hand which supports and by that which offers, a peace stronger than the distance, able at least to remain there.
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