There was a large crowd waiting to enter the basilica: when we entered, all the seats were taken. Like many of our brothers and sisters, we stood throughout the celebration, which is wonderful news: consecrated life was present and we prayed for one another!
The vigil was organised into four parts, each opened by a passage from the Bible, followed by a spiritual text and a contemporary testimony that echoed it. A song, a prayer and sometimes a psalm completed each part.
The diversity of those assembled was remarkable, and it showed in our faces, in our varied clothes (religious or not), and in the different languages used officially during the vigil. I enjoyed contemplating these brothers and sisters, feeling the strength of a life consecrated to serving the world in all its diversity.
We returned joyful and enriched by a text by Madeleine Delbrêl, which speaks of the passion of patience, recalling in poetry how the passion of Christ, both his love and his agony, is actualised in what tests our patience : We wait for great moments to give our lives. In doing so, we forget the everyday life that invites us to give our lives in love through a thousand small exercises in patience.
