Thursday, 29 July, 2010

Eating out

This is a random reading selected from the CRED collection

Daily Reading for 19 August 2003

We were out for a meal, and our young waitress was very inexperienced. She apologised, saying it was her first day working there. Then the headwaiter came up to ask about the wine. He looked like a Frenchman, but when I mentioned the name of the wine producer (from Chianti in Italy), his eyes lit up, and, assuming I was from Italy, he spoke to me in fluent Italian. I answered back, but then he told me he was a Romanian.

Later we spoke more to him, and learned he had worked for years at sea. This was where he had picked up so many different languages. He was very proud of his accomplishments, and well he might be. Martin spoke to him in German, but he was not so fluent there. He told us he longed for the day when more people from Ireland would visit his beloved homeland. Europe seems to be much smaller than ever.

CCC 2331: “ ‘God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image…, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion’.” (Familiaris consortio, 11)