Before the Fire: A memorable Afternoon inside the Notre Dame Cathedral
A personal reflection on an unforgettable visit to Notre-Dame Cathedral before the 2019 fire. Discover how beauty, reverence, sacred music, and the solemnity of the Catholic Mass became one more step on on one man's journey towards the beating heart of the Christian faith.
About nine years ago, while travelling through Europe, I deliberately spent a night in Paris because my Schengen visa was about to expire. I wanted it officially recorded that I had entered France before the visa lapsed.
I checked into the Hilton at Charles de Gaulle Airport, a beautiful hotel that I still remember fondly, and then took the train to Les Halles. From there, guided only by my GPS, I began walking towards Notre-Dame Cathedral. This was before the devastating fire.
Along the way, I passed through Châtelet and the area around the Louvre, where I met a tall, elderly Senegalese street vendor and bought my very first selfie stick from him.
Funny the little things we remember.
Eventually, I arrived at Notre-Dame Cathedral.
Twenty Minutes That Changed Everything
My plan was simple.
Take out the selfie stick.
Record two or three minutes.
Then leave.
Keep it as a memory.
Record two or three minutes.
Then leave.
Instead, I found myself standing there for twenty uninterrupted minutes.
The resulting video, nearly one gigabyte in size may be seen here: https://youtu.be/K-F5cQFrO6I?si=N4ZH0KTCrn_u4f5F
Now here's the real story: As I wandered through the cathedral, making my way around the curved passage behind the high altar, the great organ suddenly came alive.
Power itself.
Those enormous pipes sent waves of sound rolling through the cathedral.
The entire building seemed to breathe.
Every stone vibrated.
Mass had just begun.
Although I could not understand a single word of the homily, delivered in French, and although I was not even Catholic at the time, I simply could not leave.
I was transfixed.
The music.
The solemn procession.
The plaintive voices.
The silence between the notes.
Something extraordinary was happening.
Without warning, tears began running down my face.
I did not even try to stop them.
A Glimpse of Heaven
What overwhelmed me was not the architecture.
It was the people.
There were so few of them.
An organist.
Perhaps three ladies in the choir.
A younger priest.
An older priest.
Six or seven people altogether.
Yet together they created something indescribably beautiful.
For twenty minutes they opened a window into heaven.
It struck me that I was witnessing ordinary men and women who had dedicated their lives to one purpose:
To present the Gospel as beautifully as human beings possibly could.
No celebrity.
No performance.
Only worship.
A Church That Still Carries the Memory of Calvary
One thought kept returning to my mind.
The Catholic Church still carries the memory of Calvary.
I cannot fully explain why that impression came so strongly.
Everything seemed to say: "We have not forgotten, Lord!"
The reverence.
The prayers.
The silence.
The entire liturgy seemed to carry the weight of the Passion.
When Mass ended and the priests processed quietly out of the cathedral, I experienced something completely unexpected.
Loneliness.
I wished they had stayed.
I wished I could simply follow them, wherever they were going.
For a brief moment I had experienced a community centred entirely upon Christ, and I did not want it to end.
The Power of Holy Fear
That day taught me something I have struggled to express ever since.
This is the power of fearing God.
Not terror.
Reverence.
It is that reverence that makes people strive to give God their very best.
It makes musicians practise for years.
It makes craftsmen build cathedrals.
It makes choirs rehearse until every note becomes an offering.
It makes believers treat strangers as brothers and sisters because they believe they are standing before Christ Himself.
When we truly fear God, we stop asking how little we can obey.
Instead, we ask how faithfully we can obey.
We do not search for loopholes.
We do not search for caveats.
We do not search for verses that dilute the plain meaning of Christ's words.
Far too often, I have watched people take clear commands from Jesus and attempt to neutralise them with isolated passages from the Old Testament.
Instead of allowing Christ to interpret Scripture, they allow Scripture to explain away Christ.
That has always troubled me.
Looking Back
That visit took place on 26 August 2017.
Looking back, I now realise that those twenty minutes were one more step on the road that eventually led me into the Catholic Church.
Another influence had been quietly shaping me.
For about five years before then, beginning around 2012, I had been listening regularly to EWTN.
Again and again I found myself thinking:
"These people are Christians."
Not the caricature I had been taught.
Not idolaters.
Not pagans.
Christians.
That simple realisation began dismantling years of prejudice.
The Humility of Learning
Something else deeply impressed me.
The humility of Catholic priests.
From childhood, one of the first Catholic priests I knew, Father Ben Bello, of blessed memory, held a doctorate in theology.
Perhaps because of him, I unconsciously assumed that every priest standing at the altar had spent years immersed in serious theological study.
Whether that assumption was always correct is beside the point.
What struck me was this.
Here were men who had devoted years to studying Scripture, theology, history and philosophy under some of the finest scholars in the world.
Then they stood before ordinary people and spoke with remarkable simplicity.
Not to impress.
Not to display learning.
But to communicate Christ.
That humility moved me.
Sadly, I have often witnessed the opposite elsewhere.
Men with very little theological formation, sometimes armed with questionable degrees from questionable institutions, speak with astonishing certainty, as though they personally authored the Bible.
The contrast is striking.
Knowledge ought to produce humility.
Not arrogance.
The Beauty of Holiness
Looking back, I realise I was never converted by arguments alone.
Beauty also evangelises.
Music evangelises.
Reverence evangelises.
Humility evangelises.
Truth presented beautifully has a way of bypassing the intellect and speaking directly to the soul.
For twenty minutes inside Notre-Dame Cathedral, before the fire changed its appearance forever, I caught a glimpse of that beauty.
And although I did not know it then, God was already leading me to where He had always intended me to be.
There were things I would have to unlearn.
There were things I would have to relearn.
And there were things I would have to learn for the very first time.
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls."
Matthew 11:29 (KJV)
Looking back now, I realise that Notre-Dame did not convert me that afternoon.
It simply showed me the direction in which Christ had already begun to lead.
#MyFrancisEssays
#OldManInTheMolue
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