Kermesse

      At shortly after 8:00 a.m., Josianne Lascaux was at the staging area for the kermesse to begin after the 11 o'clock Mass to help with the set-up for the meal.  Katy had organized everything, brought tomatoes from her own garden, ordered the Auvergnât ham, pork pâté, melon, roast chicken thighs for those who would not be having tripes, cheese, bread, apple tart and coffee.  Jean was cooking the tripes, Marcel had brought the rosé, the red and the bottled water; others, like Simone, had organized the sale of handicrafts, and still others, the betting on the bottle toss and which of the ten rabbit hutches stuffed with carrots the animal would go after.

     For 15 Euros, each person would have a plate of slices of melon, ham and pâté, accompanied with a beverage of choice, followed by either tripes or chicken, followed by camembert, followed by tart, followed by coffee.  Those who wanted an apèro  before the start of the meal could buy pastis, or any of the wines, plus hors d'oeuvres in the form of small sandwiches.  It was important to have a good, long apèro before the meal, because the individual drinks purchased filled the coffers of the kermesse; but not too long, because everyone was supposed to fast for at least an hour before the Mass, so by noon everyone was hungry and drinking on an empty stomach.

     Katy's helpers worked like slaves, cutting each tomato into fine slices, placing them on plates onto which the chicken thighs went, for those who could not appreciate tripes.  After that the line went into production of the first course, lining up two slices of cantaloupe next to one of mountain-cured ham and a triangle of páté, altogether almost three hundred paper plates, each wrapped in plastic wrap to keep the bees away until the apèro ended and it was time to start the service.

     The service had to go like clockwork: once one table saw another being served, it became impatient to get its own food.  In a group, people who were otherwise very reserved made outrageous demands: if one table had a few missing members, that beside asked whether they could eat the portions as seconds, forgetting that perhaps the portion had been paid for and the table members would be late arrivals.

     At the dessert course, everything began to calm down.  Josianne was able to sit down and enjoy a glass of blanquette de Limoux with Jean, who, the tripe recipe having gone down well, could rest on his laurels.  The games began while the coffee was being served, the ham strung up so its weight could be guessed, then the cards for Loto distributed.  Marcel called out the numbers for 90 minutes, then the tombola drawing, a jackpot including a coffee service, a bottle of blanquette in a cooler, locally made confections and a coffee pot.  The prize went to a widowed parishioner who rarely entertained.

     Père Philippe, whose sermon touched on why the chapel drew visitors to the kermesse who never went inside the chapel, made a brief appearance among the attendees, stopping to talk at a table near where Josianne and Lascaux were seated.  The man has an amazing ability to understand human beings, Lascaux thought to himself.  Instead of criticizing those who come to the kermesse for a good meal for little and never set foot inside Notre Dame du Cros, he chooses to talk about the roots of their attachment to the chapel and to describe it as a link, however distant, with the God so many find inside. Was Jesus like that? Lascaux wondered to himself.  Père Philippe's internal stillness, while not always on display, was the essential part of his nature.  Although, Lascaux amended, living in an hermitage it was probably easier to keep that part of himself to the fore than had Père Philippe been assigned to serve, say, in one of those parishes in Marseille --The Three Kings for instance-- where gunshot rang out and fleeing go fasts burned rubber every night, whatever the police did to try to reduce the drug trafficking.

     Père Philippe would say, however, that had he been assigned to such a parish, his work would not change essentially.  His calling as a priest was not to change the world, but to make those who would hear aware that a world beyond the impermanent world existed, was within the reach of those willing to seek it.  It would reveal itself as superseding the immanent, although immanence is a property of God.  However, to think God is only immanent is to deny that the world is without evil and to ignore that it is transcendence that ultimately gives human beings the capacity to supersede human limitations.

     After eleven years of sitting in the pews of Notre Dame du Cros, Lascaux could call to mind Père Phlippe's homilies without effort.  He was a remarkable priest, even if the villagers found him too much of an intellecto, with his books about what it all means.