The Good Samaritan

I'm not much of a church go-er. I was baptized a catholic and for most of my life have followed that faith but for right or for wrong I haven't always seen the need to go to church, especially not any old church just for the sake of it. This changed when I moved to France for the first time. I felt lonely being away from my family and going into the church to pray or listen to the service was a comfort to me. I never understood the words of the service, I could recognize more or less the order of service but I couldn't really follow the words and there were no mass books available. During my first year in France, going to church became part of my Sunday ritual, especially as there was little else to do on a Sunday but more particularly because I found a really nice church near where I used to live. It was quite a modern building but the congregation was quite mature. However, the service was vamped up a bit, for example one day, after the gospel reading and a very short homily, the congregation was told to get into little groups and to discuss what the gospel had meant to them. I was invited into a little group of ladies who started talking enthusiastically about what their interpretation of the gospel was. My French was not very good so the best I could do was nod and smile and say "je suis d'accord". I agree. Despite the fact that I couldn't contribute much to the conversation the ladies were very nice and welcoming. I liked the service in this church even though I didn't understand much of it but I still enjoyed being part of it. My Sunday ritual was therefore: go to church, pick up hot croissant and pain au chocolat, as well as a baguette (which I learnt to pronounce as 'peng' it being the south of France and all); go home eat breakfast, go to launderette to do the week's laundry, make weekly telephone call to parents, then maybe once all that was done go for a wander around town. This helped to make Sunday's pass quickly and ease the solitude somewhat.

One cold Sunday in October I realized that I had no clean socks to go to church in. Also although I'd packed a few winter items, I had arrived in France at the end of August and until then had been able to wear light summery clothes. I didn't think anyone would notice and anyway I was going to do my laundry a bit later so I got dressed, put on a warm winter coat and went off to church wearing no socks. At church I sat down next to a little old lady. During the service the basket for the offerings came round. I put in a couple of francs (it was in 2001, France changed to the euro a few months afterwards) and passed the basket down the pew. The little old lady who had been sat near me threw a few francs and I took the basket back to hand over to the eucharistic minister. Once the basket had been taken off me the old lady grabbed my hand, instinctively I held her hand back because I thought she was looking for support, but instead she pressed a 50 franc note into my hand (the equivalent of 5 pounds sterling at the time). I looked at her in astonishment "C'est pour que vous puissiez vous acheter les chausettes Mademoiselle" she said pointing at my bare feet which were showing above my shoes and below my trousers. I tried to protest and explain to her that I was in no need of money to buy socks and that I would be doing my laundry later that day but despite my protests she refused to take the money back. I felt so touched but didn't quite know what to do with the money. I just smiled at the lady and thanked her for her generosity. I had two choices, either to pass the charitable act along and give the money to charity, or accept the gift as she intended it and go and buy myself some socks. And that was what I did later that week. I bought socks!