Between the Dog and the Wolf
The re-opening of the Cathedral of Notre Dame this weekend reminded me of an experience I had there over a decade ago – and has stayed with me ever since. I was in Paris to give a lecture on my book about the twentieth-century martyrs. (The sequel, on the 21st-century martyrs, will be published in May for the 2025 Jubilee). I stopped into Notre Dame for evening prayer. There was just a small group of us – not even fifteen. Afterwards, the priest remarked that all the scaffolding had, finally, just been taken down. (There had been internal work being done for what must have been years.) He said, enjoy seeing the whole church again, but don’t linger too long. The guards and other workers had to lock up and get home.
I must have been the sole non-Parisian because everyone else just vanished. And, marvelously, I had Notre Dame de Paris all to myself for a few minutes. It felt like being engulfed, not so much by the beauties of the building, which are countless, to be sure. But you can mostly see those even when the church is full of tourists. Wh
at struck me, without thinking about it, was the length and breadth and height of Notre Dame, and the sheer scope of the Faith in France, with its centuries of great geniuses and saints – and also, alas, since the French Revolution, its many martyrs and apostates.
