DO YOU have memories of Notre-Dame? It is Paris’s most visited site and, as the Royal British Legion Paris discovers annually during its Armistice ceremonies on 11 November, the endless stream of 12 million visitors a year can feel overwhelming.
On a fine day, you can stand outside, caught up in the intricate stories of the carved portals. Inside, the great windows are stunning, with the south rose restored by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, and the west a crowded web of symbols. There are the altar, displaying that peculiar French passion for asymmetry, and the 1966 windows by Jacques Le Chevallier. If you are lucky, someone is practising on the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ — or perhaps you find yourself joining in one of the seven daily acts of worship. There is so much history that it is often easier to head outside again to a calmer mathematical “point zero”: the small marker placed in front of the cathedral, from which all distances are measured in France.
As Chaplain of St George’s, Paris, I had the huge privilege of being at the heart of Paris, participating in the first two ceremonies of the reopening, having sat in front of my television in 2019 and watched and waited with the world, horrified as the flèche, the arrow pointing up to heaven, crashed down into the roof of the cathedral.
The restored Notre-Dame seemed filled with light, just as the Abbé Suger dreamt of in his rebuilding of the Basilica of St-Denis to the north of Paris. Its genius is to appear at once both monumental but also welcoming, as if you have come into your own parish church to pray. The side chapels have been cleaned and restored, making the accumulated art and devotion of the centuries much more accessible and comprehensible.
One of the most moving parts of Sunday was the consecration of the new altar. The Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Laurent Ulrich — who demonstrated a fine singing voice as he presided among the bishops and clergy of France — placed deep in the altar relics of five saints: three women and two men. He took off his vestments, and, putting on a plain apron, poured the oil of chrism over the whole altar. We watched while the choir sang and the oil spread over the top of the altar, darkening every square inch.
AlamyThe procession of representatives of the parishes and congregations of the archdiocese of Paris, carrying banners that identified each one, moves through the congregation in Notre-Dame, on Sunday
Those five holy women and men, each profoundly connected to Paris, represent the way in which, through our baptism, we, in Christ, become a sweet perfume to both believers and unbelievers (2 Corinthians 2.14-15). Last month, one of the 5000 who have restored Notre-Dame, Azzedine Hedna, a scaffolder, died at home suddenly, aged 64. He could have retired at 62, but, passionate about what Notre-Dame represented to France, he wanted to finish the project.
Celebrations continued all week: on Monday, the cathedral celebrated the Immaculate Conception, with a mass for the priests and deacons of the diocese of Paris. Each day, a different group were invited to celebrate: religious men and women, and consecrated virgins in mission in Paris; the patrons and donors; the charitable associations and those they assist in Paris; the employees and volunteers of the Diocesan House, diocesan services, and the Notre-Dame Workshop; schoolchildren and the faithful; and the Paris firefighters, artisans, and those who worked on the reopening project.
Today, there is to be a procession to return the cathedral’s Crown of Thorns relics — the crown of thorns, a fragment of the wood of the cross, and a nail from the Passion — to a new reliquary designed by the artist Sylvain Dubuisson. In this, the crown is “the focus of a halo of quadrangular cabochons with a gold background, radiating the motif of the Cross, at the centre of a wooden rack set with bronze thorns”. The wood is of cedar, to recall the humility of Christ.
NOTRE-DAME, its fire, and its subsequent restoration have occupied acres of space in French magazines, newspapers, and TV coverage over the past five years. Its loss has felt like a death in the family. The determination to rebuild has been one of the few things that the French have consistently shared with their President through the gilets jaunes riots, the uproar over pension reform, Covid-19, extreme right-wing popularism, the 2024 Olympics, and the current “hung parliament” in the Assemblée Nationale.
Commentators have compared the loss of Notre-Dame to the loss of a mother: when what has been left unsaid or is now unsayable constricts and confines the human spirit, because the recipient of confidences, the holder of memory, the source of life, is no longer there to play her part. Without Notre-Dame, where can we go to unburden ourselves?
The rebuilding began with all the élan that the French State brings to major civil-engineering projects. But, this time, the focus was on the nearly 400,000 individual donors (most of whom gave less than €100), the 60 woodsmen who cut down nearly 20km of wood, and the more than 20 different trades each bringing their skill to share with the whole, so that the whole might be something more perfect.
AlamyFrom left: the organists Olivier Latry, Vincent Dubois, Thibault Fajoles, and Thierry Escaich, who played for the sung mass at Notre-Dame, on Sunday
The historian Dominique Iogna-Prat writes of Gothic as a 19th-century “democratic” style through which Viollet-le-Duc translated into stone a social ideal: the happy inclusion of the many in one, the individual seen as part of the whole. This may be why there was a real sense of a coming-back-to-life last weekend, as the organ roared forth, and presidents and princes crowded into Notre-Dame to be part of history. The cathedral becomes again a space where “the art of being French” — an image that President Macron has used since his election in 2017 — can be remembered and remade.
As a member of the worldwide Anglican Sodality of Mary, Mother of Priests, I am as happy as a skylark to see Notre-Dame de Paris urging us again to “do what he tells you” (John 2.5). Roman Catholicism in France has been rocked by unfolding stories of abuse, physical, sexual, and spiritual. In French, the word often used is fragilisé, but out of that fragility God is doing amazing things.
Over the past ten years, the number of adults baptised has more than doubled, 36 per cent being between 25 and 36 years old, and 38 per cent coming from the working classes. The number of ordinations is slowly growing. There is no crowing, because it is the unshowy stuff of ordinary church life. France continues to be a very secular state.
The restoration and reopening of Notre-Dame, both secular and spiritual, is a wonderful aroma, enchanting and re-enchanting Parisians, the French, and all those who love Paris. Notre Dame de Paris, priez pour nous!
The Revd Mark Osborne is the Chaplain of St George’s, Paris.