Terrasse à St-Germain Jul et Mad 2012

A sacrament is a rite that makes a visible sign of an invisible reality of God present and allows participation in it.

"Sacraments must be felt," writes Pastor Rainer Maria Schießler in his book "Heaven, God, Sacrament." Not, as taught in priest training, to carefully dip a thumb in the chrism oil for a baptism and mark a cross on the child's forehead, only to immediately remove it with a cotton ball pinched between the index and middle fingers, but rather to generously anoint the head and body of the new earth citizen with a proper dollop of wonderfully fragrant chrism oil.

Apparently, I was baptized in a methodologically correct way, as I do not remember the scent of the chrism, but I imagine it to be like Terrasse a St. Germain by Jul et Mad. Anointing is thus the main theme of the fragrance, as well as the untouched, innocence, naivety, and holiness of new life. Security - being carried by the floral, creamy nuances of the scent on its patchouli base. Gently surrounded by holiness, like the soft fluttering of angel wings, which surely especially love and frequently visit those baptisms where the pastor does not skimp on the chrism.

I find it a bit difficult to connect the name of the fragrance with its texture. The image of a terrace on the Seine island of St. Germain in Paris emerges, surrounded by an ochre-colored clay wall covered with lush, colorful flowers. The fragrance rather sings of the warm, radiant clay wall in the gentle autumn sun than the flowers dreaming away there. Imperceptibly, sand trickles from the hand-formed clay bricks made a few hundred years ago, reminding us that the invisible reality of God is always and everywhere around us.