Sunday 31 August 2025
Our Lady Immaculate
First mass back after a week in France. I thought a lot about that trip as Canon P gave his homily. Not about all the cakes, the treats, the indulgences, or the blissful countryside. But how lucky we’d been.
Not just to visit places like Provence, or the Auberne. But for the generosity of my brother-in-law and his partner we’d met up with there. The dinners out, all paid for. The wonderful lunches at their home, all delightfully prepared (and then mercifully cleaned up). The endless refills. Above all their company. We missed them as we drove north and home.
I don’t remember them showing any fuss about seating arrangements (although the waiters did serve ladies first and in age order). Neither did they show any sense of entitlement for their lavishness. Nothing was owed in return.
Which brought me back to the homily, and taking the lesser seat.
I heard this from my pew in church, with it’s restricted view behind an enormous pillar. But I thought how often I get preoccupied with seating arrangements at home, and my occasional insistence that I should be positioned at the head of the table. And how a perfect demonstration of this mattering not one jot to our hosts, who put themselves last, and my wife and I first.
Well the first shall be last. I perhaps I was in my proper place after all.