Of souvenirs and the sacred
I’ll remember it in the sunlight.
It was 16 years ago, and had we not lingered over coffee and croissants we would have made it there in time for Palm Sunday Mass. As it were, we took the Metro to the St-Michel Notre Dame station to catch a first glimpse of the cathedral bathed in the springtime sun.
We joined the crowd held back outside the great doors, left open that morning to let the fresh air in and the deep rolling notes of the great organ and the choir’s soaring chant sweep into the street. We worked out way past a uniformed class of schoolgirls and through the throng – most, like us, touristy-types, on hand to see what we’d heard about, moved by curiosity and cultural obligation to the portal of that sacred space on that sacred morning in flip-flops and sun hats, anxious for the final procession to depart the altar to make room for another check off on our bucket lists.
Going in, I picked up a palm from a small table at the back of the nave and carried it with me back to Winona as a free souvenir. It may still be tucked away in some forgotten box of memorabilia, but after so many years, I doubt it and wish I could hold it again. It would spark memories … and how we wish we could remember more when the thing we remember is no more.
On the Monday of this Holy Week, Notre Dame was in flames.
Friends and family have observed that the surest way to get me to spend time in church is to take me on vacation. True enough. From St. Peter’s in Rome to Temple Square in Utah I’ve tested the patience of my traveling companions as I linger and linger and linger as they look past the stained glass and reliquaries, entertaining thoughts of much livelier pursuits in the beerhalls and bistros just down the street. I’ll lay no claim to any sudden divine inspiration, no sporadic outpouring of routinely suppressed piety on those visits, but I will lay claim to experiencing a deep and resonant sense of the truly sacred – acknowledged not with head bowed, but with neck craned.
These are truly sacred places. For their adherents they are sacred to God, as they believe God to be. But for those who don’t share that belief, these are places no less sacred, no less expressive of a power far greater than each and any of us -- the power of each other. The power of us all.
It was an offhand comment I overheard years ago, made by an American tourist admiring the frieze above the doorway of the cathedral in Cologne. “Y’know,” he said, “it’s really something what people can do when they don’t have to watch TV.”
Over the years I’ve adopted it as sort of a mantra a reminder of what we truly can do, but usually don’t.
The people who built Notre Dame did that. With little more than wood, muscle and will they caused a great cathedral to rise up from a muddy island in the Seine. True, to imagine the soaring vault and intricate carvings took individuals of extraordinary ability and talent, but it took more than genius to level the ground, mix the mortar, and haul the stones. Thousands of men and women bent their backs and gave their sweat to create a lasting wonder – a triumph of the extraordinary accomplishment of ordinary people. A testament to what human beings can do – not alone, but together.
No one man or woman could stand in front of Notre Dame and claim, “I built this.” No one of us can build great things all alone. No great things, or even small things, are accomplished without others. It’s only when we come together, acknowledge our individual weakness and combine to employ our collective strength, imagination and wisdom do great things happen.
It’s undeniably true, though we are sometimes loathe to admit it, from birth to death, we are an interdependent people. Which means, if we are very lucky, somewhere in between we may help to build a cathedral … and join with the sacred.