One Stone Left Upon Another
After Our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we are told that the first place he went was to the Temple, where he prophesied, “There will not be one stone upon another that will not be torn down.” (Matthew 24:2) The timing is impeccable.
Today, April 15th, Liturgically the Monday of Holy Week, and the day after Palm Sunday, we witnessed probably the most tragic loss to our common Western Heritage since the burning of the Library of Alexandria: Notre Dame de Paris, the iconic cathedral which for centuries graced the skies of Paris, has been largely consumed by flames. In a matter of hours, eight centuries of art, faith and culture were largely erased.
Native Parisians and visitors alike stood aghast on the river Seine. Some wept and prayed, as the ashes and cinders rained across the city, singing some onlooker’s hair. Others stared in mute disbelief, recording the hideous sight on their smartphones. Older Parisians, it is said, came out, even on wheelchairs, to witness the spectacle. As France 24’s live coverage unfolded after sunset, one could clearly hear the singing of hymns in the evening air. The stone exterior of Notre Dame flickered like the glass of a votive candle, as the last embers of the conflagration were subdued by the Parisian Firefighters.
I had just finished my lunch when I heard the news, and it did not register initially that this fire was quite serious. As more images and then live video became available, I admit that I was plunged into mourning. After St. Peter’s in Rome, Notre Dame is probably the emblem of Christendom and the ‘Age of Faith’, and most certainly the most high profile symbol of French Catholicism that has ever existed. Thanks be to God, the chaplain of the Parisian Firefighters saved both the Blessed Sacrament and several of the famous relics of Notre Dame. Future generations will be indebted to his faith and courage.
The fire of Notre Dame, falling as it does in the midst of such an intense time in the Church’s life, seems to me to be a providential sign. For months and years now we have endured news not only of the progressive collapse of the faith in Europe, but now the increasing frequency of Church vandalism throughout France and other European countries. At the same time, the depredations of a godless secularism and a violent Islamism have grown more muscular and assertive as the West’s spiritual heritage has been abandoned. The West has been burning through its heritage for years now.
Cathedrals and other great monuments of Christianity mark the skylines of European towns and cities, and we tend to get used to them. After hundreds of years, they seem to be a permanent fixture, as if they were not built at great human and financial cost, with the foremost genius and inspiration of our fallen race. And yet, even these great edifices can fall, through disaster and neglect.
For generations now, the French, like many Westerners, have been living on borrowed time. With alarming alacrity, we are sawing away the last branches of the tree that undergird the tree house of Western Civilization. We are pouring salt on the earth which has nourished us, and that fertile soil is the Christian Faith. The West may pay lip service to the values and metaphysical vision which forms the basis of our culture, but the fact remains: without faith, the edifice cannot stand. Physical houses of worship decay and fall long after their spiritual stones have rotted away.
The Temple and the whole of the city of Jerusalem were destined to perish after Christ because they “did not recognize the time of their visitation.” Likewise, the Prophets before the Babylonian Exile had warned the Priests and People who believed that Jerusalem was impregnable because it housed the Temple of the Lord.
It should give all Christians of good faith pause to think that, on this Monday of Holy Week in 2019, the same day Our Lord in his earthly life prophesied the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, Our Lord has permitted the destruction of one of our preeminent temples. It appears to me, if I may read a sign of the times, that Our Gracious Lord is giving us a ‘shot across the bow.’
St. John reminds us that many times that when Christ often spoke of the Temple, he spoke of his body. We know that Our Lord has absolute sovereignty over the forces of evil and chaos, and so can bring about a rebirth from utter ruin. It was heartening to see Parisians gather to pray the Rosary, and to intone the ‘Ave Maria’, as if the Seine were the “Rivers of Babylon”, where they sat and wept, remembering Zion. It was precisely by the Rivers of Babylon, in exile, that the Jews were purified and recovered their faith in the One True God.
Perhaps this is why, even amid the wreckage, the Cross remains, with its eerie “mystic glow.”
May France, and through her, the world, be given eyes to interpret this spiritual sign, so that we will not lose this opportunity to repent, and know afresh the mercy of God.
