Our attention was completely occupied in the words of Fr. Luke in front of the altar. He was a short, barrel-chested Indian in jogging shoes, his white cassock falling to above his ankles like a muttawah. Fr. Matthew had asked me to assist him during the mission (retreat) while he was away. I had no reason not to refuse his request, so I became involved in the four-day Lenten retreat, which is called a "mission", in the capacity of Eucharistic minister. I too had to wear a white cassock, and so I looked perhaps like Don Quixote to Fr. Luke's Sancho Panza.

Indian Catholics are largely from Goa and Kerala, places I would like to visit some day. Fr. Matthew, an Indian, took over from Fr. Francis, an Oxford-educated Englishman, as pastor, the year I left Al Ain and the UAE for the first time in 1994. The church building has not changed since then despite the growth in number of parishoners. Today, as usual, I felt like a sardine in a tin in the sacristy during the Friday children's Mass. Late arrivers attending the Mass crowd together into the sacristy without any compunction or regard for another in intruding into her personal space once the back of the church is full. I am no longer amazed at how many can fit in a pew. I learned after two assignments as Eucharistic minister that it was better that I get dressed in the cassock before Mass started rather than to wait until after the Our Father was said to go to the sacristy to put on my cassock. Otherwise I had to squeeze my way through a crowd of immobile parishoners deeply involved in the Mass.

The Indians and the Filipinos who make up the large majority of the congregation are very pious. Filipinos, especially, have the habit of stepping over the calves of a kneeling parishoner thus passing behind her. Where I come from, one politely sits back in the pew and lifts up the kneeler to allow the one entering the pew to pass or even moves down the pew to allow for room. Usually the Filipino who has been 'climbed over' is not in the least flummoxed especially when she is deep into saying, or responding to, the rosary. I find this reassuring because I know that where I come from an 'un-Christian' response of indignity would ensue, though many a regular church goer where I come from would have stopped attending the church because of its sardine tin capacity. I know of one Filipino, however, who has stopped attending for that very reason, especially because of an Indian woman who had not the least regard for showing common courtesy. I have to add that the kneelers are attached to the pews and so can not be lifted up. I have found myself sometimes standing with my knees slightly bent because my calves are not perpendicular to the floor because they are touching the back of the pew. Consequently, I have to turn my foot at an angle to lift it up to extricate it from the narrow space of the pew because the pews are pushed together to economize on the little space inside the church. I've noticed one chap who even puts his feet in front of the kneeler when he stands as there is more space there.

This description of austerity goes to prove that faith, or at least piety, has nothing to do with our comforts because you may well imagine that the pews are manufactured from slats of wood, which does not make for comfortable sitting and the cushions of the kneelers have so lost their sponginess that one may just as well be kneeling on the carapace of a beetle. But there is air-conditioning and sometimes it's too cool because Fr. Matthew has high blood pressure and he likes it especially cool.

So I must admit that I was not looking forward to the retreat which Fr. Matthew (a man who does not stand on ceremony and shoots straight from the hip) had roped me into, and which was to take place inside the church. On the contrary, I was more than pleased to find that Fr. Luke was a very dynamic speaker and obviously not only pious but a holy man. I was especially intrigued when he described part of his novitiate as a Jesuit priest. He had chosen to live on the streets for a month ("on the footpaths" as he put it) of Bombay with the rag pickers and such sort from the untouchables caste. He recounted his experience to illustrate his point that suffering, quite simply, is part of life and that God is with us despite and because of the suffering. His mother, who had no idea where her son was exactly, in fact decided to sleep on the floor during the month he was on the footpaths. Fr. Luke said this relationship of a mother who identifies with her son's suffering is exactly the relationship of God to us. I wish my friend, who expressed his rejection of God on the basis of the seemingly uncaring Father who has the power to alleviate suffering and evil but does not, could have listened to this short, hairy, childlike Indian with the dynamic delivery, this holy man who happens to be a Jesuit priest.

At the end of the retreat I had the honor to thank Fr. Luke and announce how much we had donated to him for his time and inspiration.