THAT'S PUSHING IT!

It was a very short journey – just to the other side of the Arc. I needed some petrol in the car, as I had a trip to the airport later in the day and I didn’t want to risk running out of petrol and having to ask a bishop to get out of the car and help give me a push! Traffic was light – many of the natives, I understand, were off on a ‘bridge’ somewhere! – so getting through the Etoile was no problem. I usually go to the petrol station under Avenue Foch, and I was just turning to head down the ramp, when I spotted a motor cyclist coming up against me. To anyone driving in Paris, that in itself wouldn’t raise even an eyebrow – pavements, pedestrian crossings, one-way streets, are all fair game to many of them – so a guy coming up a down-ramp wouldn’t normally merit mention in such a prestigious publication as the St. Joseph’s Parish Bulletin!

The difference with this guy was that he wasn’t on his bike, but was attempting, rather unsuccessfully, to push his bike up a pretty steep slope. The fact that it was a scorching hot day, and he was dressed for the North Pole, wasn’t helping his cause any. His mood didn’t seem to be helped by the fact that at the top of the ramp there was a pretty young lady astride her own bike, who, while offering lots of verbal advice, clearly had no intention of helping in any practical way. While I was taking all this in, maybe 5 seconds, a whole line of vehicles had assembled behind me, and were already beginning to impede the junction on the main avenue. The infamous horns were already giving a few speculative toots!

Despite my remarks above, I do have some appreciation of the world of the motorcyclist, having myself been one for a considerable number of years, and I do remember they’re not fun to have to push on level ground, not to mind up a slope. There was only one thing for it! Out of the car, down the slope, behind the bike, and heave! At first I think the guy thought I was going to attack him, but once he realised I was relatively harmless, (he probably sensed I was a naturally peace-loving Irishman!), he steered and I pushed, and ten seconds later, problem solved, call off the horns, traffic moving again!

I’m not pretending to be a saint – I know I wasn’t really helping the motor-cyclist, I was actually helping myself! I needed petrol, and that was the only way I was going to get it within a reasonable time-span! And isn’t that the way very often with our ‘kind deeds’ - they can be self-interest disguised as concern for others? But when Christ shows concern for us, it is totally our best interests that are involved. When He promised to send the Holy Spirit it was so that we wouldn’t be left on our own. He wanted to ‘breathe new life’ into us – His life.

I can’t imagine the guy on the ramp saying to me ‘buzz off, I want to do this on my own’! Today we’re reminded that neither do we have to do life on our own – the Spirit is on hand at all times. It’s in our truly best interests to let him help! Anything else might be, as they say, ‘pushing it’.