Notre Dame and the Light of Advent

thoughts on miracles and wonders

I will never forget the moment on the Monday of Holy Week 2019 when, while teaching at a liberal arts college, I walked by a colleague’s office as she watched in horror as flames engulfed the ancient and magnificent church of Notre Dame de Paris. To me, it was ominous, as if predicting dire things to come. I wasn’t wrong. By the end of the year, the Covid pandemic was already in full-swing (more students were out with mysterious “flu-like symptoms” that fall semester than at any time over my thirty years in teaching—so don’t tell me Covid didn’t arrive until 2020). When I was writing the introduction to my book Sophia in Exile in 2021, the image was still haunting me, as you can see here:

“I had no idea how prophetic an event the tragic fire at Notre-Dame de Paris on 15 April 2019 would become. In time, it has proved a fitting icon for a Church in distress, suffering from the weight of its own corruption, not least the ongoing sex scandals that fill us with shame and anger, evidence as they are of an ecclesial structure inured if not indifferent to the sufferings of victims, further complicated the manner in which some of its most powerful leaders have continued to shield their own from scrutiny. These are symptoms of a deeper pathology. The hierarchy’s inept and milquetoasty response to the global pandemic that began in early 2020 only further betrays how indifference has become a cardinal virtue. How many millions died without receiving the last Sacraments? How many more left the Church permanently because it was too hard for the hierarchy to live out the Gospel and too easy to play the political sycophant? Did Christ wait until lepers were no longer contagious to heal them?”

But there was more than that. I also had to experience the tragedy of my wife getting endometrial cancer due to vaccine shedding after a recently-vaccinated family member visited when not feeling well. Then I had to watch almost helplessly as some of my children suffered trauma from the relentless lockdowns, social distancing, isolation, and stress inflicted by the rulers in high places. The horrors we all have been subject to—without even mentioning the widespread censorship enacted by governments across the West, the persecution and incarceration of common people for things as innocuous as Facebook posts, and the perpetual ginning up of war and war propaganda from the same bad actors—have us all somewhere along the spectrum of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Given all this, I was a little surprised yesterday as video images from the reopening of Notre Dame started to float across social media. The Archbishop of Paris addressing Notre Dame’s pipe organ with the words, “Awaken, you sacred instrument” struck me to amazement. Likewise, I was moved to tears by Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich’s performance of Bach’s “Air on a G String.” Just think of it: Notre Dame and Bach—two stirring monuments of what used to be called Western Culture. (You can watch it here on X, as it is unavailable as of yet elsewhere, at least in the US). There were many other moving performances, including Marion Cotillard and Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of Victor Hugo’s poem “Le Pont.” And then there was the Notre Dame Workers’ Choir singing Faure’s “Cantique de Jean Racine,” caught here in rehearsal. To see the leaders of the countries that used to comprise the Christian West, though I have little faith in any of them, was nevertheless a powerful image. Maybe the West, maybe Christendom isn’t completely dead after all.

That this all occurred on the Vigil of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception was not lost on me, and I suspect the leaders of French Catholicism picked this day intentionally (they couldn’t do it on the feast itself, which falls on a Sunday this year). The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary (nine months before the Nativity of the Virgin for those interested in biology) was declared a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Pius IX in 1854. Four years later at Lourdes, the Virgin affirmed this dogma to a fourteen-year-old peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous, who, though venerated as a French saint, did not start learning French until she was about thirteen, as her native language was Occitan (the language of the Troubadours).

Here’s a clip from the classic film The Song of Bernadette with the luminous Jennifer Jones.

Bernadette saw the Virgin (“Notre Dame” to you and me) in what was a grotto in a waste area at Lourdes. But it’s not a waste area anymore. Rather, it’s a shrine, a site of healing and miracles. Lourdes is in the extreme south of Frances, in the Pyrenees. In his magnificent The Black Virgin: A Marian Mystery, Jean Hani tells the story of another Marian miracle connected to the region:

“At Sarrance in the valley of Aspe (Eastern Pyrenees) it is recounted that, in times past, a bull would swim across the mountain stream each day to go and kneel before ‘a stone representing the Virgin,’ which the people called ‘Our Lady of the Stone,’ and which ensured the fertility of the fields.”

France is mysterious that way. Or used to be. Maybe it will be again?

Whatever the case, yesterday’s events in Paris gave me an unanticipated glimmer of hope in these dark times, a hope confirmed by an acquaintance on X who goes by the handle Ryan70times7 and who—just now!—tagged me in this post:

For those who observe… 
Last night Jupiter was in opposition [to the Sun]. 
“Of wrath ended 
And woes mended, of winter passed 
And guilt forgiven, and good fortune Jove is master;” 
(CS Lewis, “The Planets”) 

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.

A reminder: I am doing an online course, Shakespeare, Magic, and Religion which starts at the beginning of January. I still have some spots available, and it would be great to have you along for the ride.