Hidden away in the bowels of Dijon Hospital, next to the ambulance entrance and opposite the snack bar, is a door marked Oratoire. Intrigued, I pushed open the door and came across a notice board with information for people wishing to speak to a priest. Next to this was a picture of John Henry Newman and an extract in English from a letter he wrote to a friend in 1846. It was a strange feeling to come across these words in a hospital where very few patients, visitors or staff understand English:
'I am writing next room to the Chapel. It is such an incomprehensible blessing to have Christ's bodily presence in one's house, within one's walls, as swallows up all other privileges and destroys, or should destroy, every pain. To know that He is close by—to be able again and again through the day to go in to Him; and be sure, my dearest W., when I am thus in His Presence you are not forgotten. It is the place for intercession surely, where the Blessed Sacrament is. Thus Abraham, our father, pleaded before his hidden Lord and God in the valley'.
'I am writing next room to the Chapel. It is such an incomprehensible blessing to have Christ's bodily presence in one's house, within one's walls, as swallows up all other privileges and destroys, or should destroy, every pain. To know that He is close by—to be able again and again through the day to go in to Him; and be sure, my dearest W., when I am thus in His Presence you are not forgotten. It is the place for intercession surely, where the Blessed Sacrament is. Thus Abraham, our father, pleaded before his hidden Lord and God in the valley'.
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