Thank God that the fundamental structure of Notre-Dame Cathedral has been saved from yesterday’s fire. I imagine that it is in no small part due to the bravery of the Parisian fire brigade that it has been possible to type that sentence. So thank God for them as well.
The problem with signing up to this business of the Christian faith is that it is accompanied by risks, such as the risk of cultivating a heart sensitive to all that is beautiful. And the risk of loving: as well as loving people, loving the beautiful things in which they have expressed the deepest truths and which generations have preserved. If you believe in such a thing as absolute beauty, then you cannot just shrug off the loss when beauty is destroyed. It means unavoidable pain.
Pain and rage, because, in this age of destruction, this is yet another loss we cannot afford to sustain. Why our Church, again? That is not to wish destruction on anybody else, but we are on the ropes as it is, we on the ground trying to defend the faith we love. Now we are confronted with a horribly symbolic sight, the incarnation of our fears: the material, as well as the spiritual, fabric of our Christian heritage going up in catastrophic flames, beyond our power to save.
Why France, whose sorrow never ends? And why must this beautiful building be ruined, while every week a smug, ugly addition is topped out in our cities? Have we not had enough destruction? Why do sinners’ ways prosper? as Gerard Manley Hopkins paraphrased the prophet Jeremiah. What does one do in an age in which churches are not built but destroyed?
Millions have stood or knelt in this mighty cathedral. When I spent some time in Paris as a student, I was one of them, quite often taking advantage of the privilege of being able to come to Mass here, and otherwise I spent a lot of time under its roof. Around the 850th anniversary of the laying of the cathedral’s foundation stone, I had the unforgettable experience of running my fingers over the new bells cast in celebration, when they were displayed along the nave before being hung. Later I heard the tremendous sound they made on (I think) the first Sunday they were rung.
Worse grief is suffered all the time by people around us: the bereaved, the dying, the abandoned, the downtrodden. And I know that the French, whether believers or secular, will show their mettle now as much as ever, and they will not be defeated. But the gratuitousness of a blow from an unexpected quarter… It is for moments like these that we have the Psalms; their rage, their grief, their remonstration with God who gave us all things and to whom all things return. And this is why we have Holy Week, to remind ourselves that we are not alone.
And this on the eve of Benedict XVI’s ninety-second birthday, for which I had meant to write a celebratory tribute. A strange mixture of blessing and sorrow life is indeed.
‘La France pleure sa cathédrale’ on Padreblog: https://www.padreblog.fr/la-france-pleure-sa-cathedrale
The problem with signing up to this business of the Christian faith is that it is accompanied by risks, such as the risk of cultivating a heart sensitive to all that is beautiful. And the risk of loving: as well as loving people, loving the beautiful things in which they have expressed the deepest truths and which generations have preserved. If you believe in such a thing as absolute beauty, then you cannot just shrug off the loss when beauty is destroyed. It means unavoidable pain.
Pain and rage, because, in this age of destruction, this is yet another loss we cannot afford to sustain. Why our Church, again? That is not to wish destruction on anybody else, but we are on the ropes as it is, we on the ground trying to defend the faith we love. Now we are confronted with a horribly symbolic sight, the incarnation of our fears: the material, as well as the spiritual, fabric of our Christian heritage going up in catastrophic flames, beyond our power to save.
Why France, whose sorrow never ends? And why must this beautiful building be ruined, while every week a smug, ugly addition is topped out in our cities? Have we not had enough destruction? Why do sinners’ ways prosper? as Gerard Manley Hopkins paraphrased the prophet Jeremiah. What does one do in an age in which churches are not built but destroyed?
Millions have stood or knelt in this mighty cathedral. When I spent some time in Paris as a student, I was one of them, quite often taking advantage of the privilege of being able to come to Mass here, and otherwise I spent a lot of time under its roof. Around the 850th anniversary of the laying of the cathedral’s foundation stone, I had the unforgettable experience of running my fingers over the new bells cast in celebration, when they were displayed along the nave before being hung. Later I heard the tremendous sound they made on (I think) the first Sunday they were rung.
Worse grief is suffered all the time by people around us: the bereaved, the dying, the abandoned, the downtrodden. And I know that the French, whether believers or secular, will show their mettle now as much as ever, and they will not be defeated. But the gratuitousness of a blow from an unexpected quarter… It is for moments like these that we have the Psalms; their rage, their grief, their remonstration with God who gave us all things and to whom all things return. And this is why we have Holy Week, to remind ourselves that we are not alone.
And this on the eve of Benedict XVI’s ninety-second birthday, for which I had meant to write a celebratory tribute. A strange mixture of blessing and sorrow life is indeed.
‘La France pleure sa cathédrale’ on Padreblog: https://www.padreblog.fr/la-france-pleure-sa-cathedrale
Well said, Dominic. Knowing you as a lover of France, I found myself thinking this disaster must strike you particularly heavily, quite soon after hearing about it. And as you have devoted your life to preserving things it must be even more bitter.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly, it is just as you say. Things made and kept for the sake of love, gone forever. A jewel of France and a jewel of the Church. Thank God they have saved the main structure; it sounds as if it might easily have been otherwise.
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