Today is the anniversary of my appointment to Ambricourt. Already three months! I prayed hard this morning for my parish, my poor parish—perhaps my first and last parish, because I would like to die here. My parish! I can’t speak those words without deep emotion, or more exactly, without a great surge of love. At the same time, I become aware of my own confusion. I know that she exists, that we have been given to one another for all eternity, because she is a living cell of the imperishable Body of Christ and not a simple administrative fiction. But I would like the good Lord to open my eyes and my ears so that I might see her face and hear her voice. Am I asking too much? My parish’s face! Her expression is surely gentle, sad, patient—much like my own, I imagine, at least at those moments when the inner struggle subsides and I allow myself to be propelled along by that immense invisible river that carries us pell-mell, both the living and the dead, into the depths of eternity. It would be the face of the Church, of all the little parishes together, or perhaps the countenance of the poor human race God gazed upon from the Cross. “Forgive them; for they know not what they do …”
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The idea came to me to use that last passage, slightly amended, in my Sunday sermon. “The eyes of my parish” evoked a general giggle, and the distinct impression that I was playacting made me stop right in the middle, though God knows I was being sincere. But there’s always something not quite right about those images that stir our hearts so deeply. I’m sure the curé of Torcy would have scolded me. After Mass, M. le Comte said to me in that odd nasal voice of his: “You had quite a flight.” I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me.
— Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest (tr. Tobin, 2025)
Notes from a Room 