A Common Root

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

-- 1 Corinthians 12:12

It's so odd how you can fail to realize how something has had such a big impact on your understanding of the world as it exists until you see it burning and crumbling away. For me, the significance was not so much as a monument in its own right so much as it is a touchstone for so much else. I never realized how much of the culture, and my education, paid tribute to it in one way or another until I saw it start to slip away. Everything from the Disney movie, to books I'd read as a kid on Medieval architecture, to the Medieval era philosophy I studied in college suddenly came to mind.

 I heard about the fire from someone in my family who had happened to see it on the news. I started following news updates on my phone. I was sad, but in a general, anxious way, not in a bawling my eyes out way. Even though I knew that the cathedral was a foundation for much of what we know about art, and architecture and Medieval culture in general, even though I knew it had survived the French Revolution and two World Wars, it was no different than so many other tragedies that have come before. This was just another in a long line of monuments that have been destroyed, like the Buddah statues of Bamyan or the loss of historic buildings after a hurricane or other natural disaster. I mourned the loss of history, but it seemed somewhat removed from my own life. This was painful to see, but life would ultimately trudge on, much as it always had.

That didn't change when I saw footage of the initial Parisian reaction. Images and video clips were of people standing in stunned silence, or gasping in shock as the spire began to collapse. Very sad and upsetting, and I empathized with them and tried to imagine what it would be like to witness something on that scale (the destruction of the World Trade Center came to mind). It was like watching footage of a random terror attack or of a natural disaster. There was nothing I could do to change it, so I felt sorry and tried to move on with my day.

But then, something happened, something different. A beam of cold, clear light that pierced the hazy smoke of 'just another tragedy' and cut me to the quick.

My husband sent me an amateur video captured on a cell phone of a few people kneeling by the Seine river facing the Cathedral, and, rosaries in hand, singing hymns to Mary (the patron and namesake of Notre Dame) as they watched the church burn.

When I saw that, I saw myself in them. This was something I understood, something that transcended our differences and the geographical space between us. With the sight of the rosaries, something I have hanging in my own home, and the sound of the hymns, I had a sudden realization.  These were my people, and that was my Mother's house burning too.  My eyes filled with tears. This was no longer just an abstract tragedy happening to someone else. This was my family.

A few hours later, I saw more news coverage of the crowd. The few initial singers had been joined by a few more, than a few more, until the entire riverbank was crowded, filled with Parisians singing songs to Mary and praying late into the night as firefighters fought to contain the blaze. In this post-Christian age, this was a sight that I never thought I'd witness in my lifetime.

 I started crying again.

It seems so ripe for symbolism that this happened on the first day of Holy Week, a time of remembrance of God's salvation and what brought us the Church, to a landmark beloved to Catholics the world over in a country that is known to be losing its connection to God (as is much of Europe). France's churches have been standing empty, her people mostly removed from this part of their heritage and soul.

Yet, when Notre Dame caught fire and its spire fell, Paris remembered her roots. The sight that had moved me had moved others too, and they joined together in something that runs deep in the heart of France's beginnings-- her faith. There's an immense amount of beauty, and even a sliver of hope, in that act of remembering, tragic as the circumstances of it are.

That witness of remembrance helps us remember and rediscover our common root too. As I write this, nearly a billion dollars have been donated to a fund to rebuild Notre Dame from people all over the world. Something about nearly losing one of the most powerful symbols of man's search for God through beauty has reminded all of us of our common need for that search and for symbols of it. Just for a moment, we were all reminded that we are one body and one family. When faced with losing a symbol that has been largely ignored and taken for granted over the past few decades, we've remembered what it symbolized and scrambled to save it. The near death of the symbol has led to at least a partial resurrection of the thing it was meant to be a symbol of.

And that gives me more hope for the healing of our Church and for our world than anything else has in a long, long time. 

Note: This is a revised and expanded version of a "quick take" I wrote in a previous post.