IT IS A little early for a New Year resolution; but I’ve fixed on one already. In the spring, I shall visit the resurrected cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris (News, 13 December); perhaps in May, when the muguet is in blossom, the lily of the valley flowers which the French call Our Lady’s Tears.
It is many years since I visited the inside of the great French cathedral. But I remember a dark, gloomy, and even foreboding place. What a contrast to the luminous nave that we saw on television at the reopening of this great stone testament to the Almighty!
Secular commentators focused on the miracle of how the massy medieval building was restored to its ancient glory in just five years — in contrast to the decades that modern construction projects seem to take. The real miracle was that the cathedral Rector, Mgr Patrick Chauvet, vetoed the idea of an architectural competition to design a modern spire and insisted on recreating the old one. And the French government passed a law exempting the project from the usual red tape.
Others found political metaphor in the rising of this 12th-century stone phoenix from its 21st-century ashes. President Macron, his government toppled by a vote of no confidence after his disastrous decision to call an unnecessary General Election, was seen to have pulled off a political coup in inviting President-elect Trump, a man who has emerged from political purgatory. President Macron, who remains the master of the grand gesture, must hope that history will forget his political misjudgements and remember only the grand projet of this restoration. This was, he said, a triumph of the French nation, which made his country “united and proud”.
But what of the spiritual? The radiant white nave — its soaring limestone walls and pillars cleansed of the grime of centuries — summons the pristine wonder that must have struck medieval folk with awe. In addition, today, the eye catches the great semi-circle of bronze that is the newly commissioned altar. Beyond it is the great gold cross that survived the fire and surmounts the newly dedicated tabernacle. To the right stands the 14th-century statue of the Virgin of the Pillar, which, providentially, survived when the main altar was destroyed, as the flèche and oak roof beams supporting the lead roof collapsed in the fire. Together, these aids to veneration from across the centuries seem to make tangible the notion of the communion of saints.
Today — as the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Laurent Ulrich, suggested — that communion includes those of all faiths and none. Notre-Dame is reborn not just for France, not just for the Church, but for the world. “Whatever your relationship to Notre-Dame,” he said, “whether you are baptised, or seeking baptism, or not certain what you believe, know that you are welcome — welcome to linger, be still, and drink in all that is given here.”
The plant that the French call muguet was, in England, in pre-modern times, called glovewort; for it was used to create a salve for sore hands. The world is in need of a salve for sore souls. In Notre-Dame, says its Vice-Rector, Fr Olivier Scache, “however many people are around you, you can feel alone with God.”