Our Lady this Easter

Our Lady This Easter

12 reflections on Notre Dame,

Christendom and living faith

by Troy Cady

I. Palm Sunday and Ash Wednesday

Normally, the fronds from each year’s Palm Sunday branches are kept until just before the following year’s Ash Wednesday. Traditionally, on Shrove Tuesday each year the palm leaves from the previous year are burned via a special technique that uses as little oxygen as possible, causing the fire to burn very slowly. Burning the leaves in a smoldering fashion like this produces a fine black ash that is then mixed with oil. On Ash Wednesday the next day, worshippers are admonished to remember their own limitations as the officiant applies an ashen cross on their forehead or hand.

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

I imagine this tradition took on a deeper meaning for all those whose hearts dropped when they saw Notre Dame cathedral going up in flames the day after Palm Sunday this year.

We have since heard about the saving of the crown of thorns, but I wonder where this year’s palm leaves were when the fire blazed. I’ve heard nothing of the leaves. I wonder if they were lost, mixed not with oil, but with the ashes of the great cathedral herself. A sobering reminder, indeed: we and whatever we make…are limited.

Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

  

II. Jesus and the Temple

As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him,

“Look, Teacher! What massive stones!

What magnificent buildings!”

“Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus.

“Not one stone here will be left on another;

every one will be thrown down.”

In Mark’s Gospel, this conversation takes place on a Tuesday. Two days prior, Jesus had entered Jerusalem after crowds hailed him as king, spreading branches before him and shouting “Hosanna.”  Then, Mark tells us that on the following day (Monday) Jesus “entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.”

On Tuesday, Mark says that Jesus returned to the temple, where he spent part of the day teaching and addressing questions that were intended to trip him up.

One question fired at him was this: “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

In their study of the Torah, the religious scholars of Jesus’ day had observed that there were a total of 613 commandments they needed to keep—and all of them were important. But Jesus boiled it all down to just one thing: love. The commands to love God and love neighbor are the most important of them all.

Shortly after this, Jesus sat down in a certain place, where he watched all kinds of people giving money to support the ministry of the temple. He noticed several rich people giving large amounts of money and then he noticed a poor widow who put in two tiny copper coins…all she had.

Jesus noticed the love of the widow for God and he applauded it, despite his assessment of the temple ministry the previous day—and despite what he was about to say next.

As they left the temple courts that day, the disciples were impressed by what they had just witnessed: there were all kinds of people giving their wealth (even to the point of sacrifice) to support the temple. Surely, Jesus was the one they were waiting for, the one who would liberate them from Roman oppression, the one who would re-establish the temple as the true center of their life. This temple was their pride and joy; it had been destroyed and rebuilt. It was hundreds of years old, and it represented their very identity as a nation.

“What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” they proclaimed.

But on their way out of the city that day, as the disciples extolled the wonders of the temple, Jesus told them it would all come to naught.

And he wasn’t troubled by it in the least.

But the disciples were likely troubled by it.

What was he really saying to them? In one breath, he seemed to applaud the generosity of the people and in another…he seemed to be advocating the temple’s destruction.

Photo by Bennett Tobias via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

III. Notre Dame: More than a Museum?

It’s Tuesday evening of Holy Week in Paris as I write this, and I am already picking up a hopeful tone through the news reports. The fire is out. The damage could have been much worse. Precious art was saved and Macron has assured the people that Notre Dame will be restored. Philanthropists have joined the chorus. Many have already pledged thousands and some will give millions towards the reconstruction effort.

Like the disciples of Jesus’ day, I must confess I am experiencing deep incongruities in my spirit about all this. I don’t know what to think or feel.

On the one hand, I mourn the damage that has been done to the cathedral. Clearly, it has been a place of deep spiritual encounter for countless people, despite the fact that millions of people only know it as a tourist destination.

On the other hand, I’ve always felt saddened that most of the cathedrals across Europe have come to represent a profound futility, despite the important historical memories and cultural identities they preserve.

I can hear this tension expressed already in the responses from people in every corner. Some wonder if the cathedral’s history and art are worth more than the lives that could be helped should the monetary gifts be spent elsewhere. Others wonder how giving so much to restore the cathedral could not be worth it. One friend of mine asserts that the only reason some philanthropists are giving so much is because it is a perfect advertising ploy, a nice public relations boost.

Whatever the reasons various people may have in favor of restoring the cathedral, maybe history and art are enough in this instance. After all, I’d be absolutely gutted if the same thing happened to El Prado in Madrid or the Art Institute in Chicago—really, any of the major museums around the world. I’d eagerly donate towards those restorations, should they get damaged by fire one day.

Yet, Notre Dame seems different to me, somehow. After all, there’s good reason you will always see a certain sign upon entry into any of the world’s major cathedrals. The sign states some variation of the following: “This is not a museum; it’s a church—please treat the space accordingly.”

Something inexplicable changes in us when we enter cathedrals like these because they are spaces whose primary intent is directed not only to raise our awareness of the divine but actually to try to put us in contact with it. These are spaces that awaken us to the reality that there is something bigger than us “out there.” This “divine presence” (or whatever you name it) is something that’s closer than you think and it can change us from the inside-out, if we will just attune our hearts to it.  

Notre Dame, from what I gather, was one of those places for many, many people, century after century. Its heritage represents more than just any random building furnished to satisfy an architect’s fascination, an artist’s love of beauty, or a historian’s pursuit to understand a culture’s evolution. It’s a space whose primary purpose is to put us in contact with something that can transcend all these categories. Maybe that is why it is a place that humbles us like no other place.

This, to me, is what Notre Dame represents beyond the engineering, art and history. I believe that is why the fire on Monday affected so many people on such a deep, deep level.

But, as magnificent as Notre Dame is, I must say this: one doesn’t need a cathedral like Notre Dame to have one’s spiritual affections awakened. And, visiting a cathedral like Notre Dame does not guarantee one’s spiritual affections will be awakened, either. There’s nothing especially intrinsic to the building itself that delivers on its own invitation.

I’ve been to many of Europe’s cathedrals myself and can say first-hand that, if cathedrals were built intentionally as works of art, they are understood better not as representational art but rather as performance art. They’re designed for interaction, engagement—which is to say, they were designed to be filled with heartfelt worship.

Performance art is truly unique in that it only exists in a dialectic form: it requires call and response, initiative and feedback. Tourism can only accomplish this to a small degree, if at all. Worship is the word we employ to name this dialectic when it comes to cathedral art. Just as some say a bomb fulfills its purpose when it explodes, so a cathedral fulfills its purpose when it sets off a chain reaction within a group of people who fully and intentionally inhabit its praises. Worship is a dynamite that, by some miracle, re-creates the very beauty we are prone to destroy.

As I have observed, this is the kind of life that’s largely missing from most of Europe’s cathedrals—a dynamic and deeply re-creative life. I liken the absence of this kind of life to the living statues you often see in city centers across Europe: you know there’s a living person underneath that “object” standing so still, but they have willed themselves into such a lifeless state that they now appear to you as but a shell. Sure, they’re fascinating, but you have to drop some money to get them to move again. And when they do, it looks kind of mechanical, false. Still, they’re good for a little temporary amusement, but there’s really no substance there anymore. Which is to say, there’s no genuine relationship and certainly no transcendence—just large-scale impotence.

I am confident making this analogy because my experience and the statistics support it. Most surveys estimate that only 7-12 percent of France’s population attends church services on any given Sunday, despite the fact that most French people (about 90 percent) will identify as Roman Catholic. In Spain, if you are talking about religion with someone, it is common to hear them identify as a “non-practicing Catholic.” Ironically, in the same breath they will tell you they don’t think there is a God and that the world no longer needs religion.

Cultural analysts refer to this trend as “the end of Christendom.” Christendom may be defined as that phenomenon whereby Christianity became an “institution.”  And by “institution” I mean something larger than just an organization or a building; rather, I mean to indicate that it was enmeshed so completely with the culture that it became impossible to differentiate the culture from the religion (to the detriment of both).

Though I am not one to caricature the medieval period entirely as the Dark Ages, it is true that, during this period in Europe’s history, Christianity went from becoming a grassroots movement in the first three hundred years C.E. to becoming the primary force of cultural determination for more than a millennium. European Christians were so convinced of the superiority of their way of life that they felt compelled to impose it on non-Western civilizations in the form of the Crusades and eventually in the process of colonization. Through centuries of colonial expansion, Europeans effectively tried to export their way of life, which was deeply tied to their religion. The kingdom Jesus talked about in the Bible became associated with the global kingdoms many European countries were building in their own image. In this way, Christianity had become Christendom.

It has been said that if you want to change the world all you need to do is tell a different story. And that is precisely what happened in Europe. People like Copernicus, Luther, Kant, Nietzsche and Darwin (to name just a few) challenged the narrative the Church had been telling for centuries. But I believe that the event that did the most damage to the church was that terrible time when a holocaust (in the name of Jesus, no less) swept across the continent and everyone wondered where the powerful church was to stop it. They did nothing; they stood by and let it happen. Hell, the horror happened because of the damn Church! It should haunt us always that all this was done in the name of Christ.

Why would anyone want to believe any of it anymore? Besides, we’ve seen the atrocities that were committed through the process of colonization. Non-European countries were exploited, enslaved, and made to twist themselves into cultural clothing that did not fit them. And the Church was part of that decimation, too—right along with the well-documented “guns, germs and steel.”

It is with good reason, then, that we live in a post-colonial world. We have identified the atrocities of the colonial experiment and we have said, “Enough of that. It’s horrific.”

And, as Christendom was tied to colonialism, we also live in a post-Christendom world. Thus, Europe’s cathedrals have largely become historical artifacts (at best) and curiosities for passing visitors (at worst). What was once a living, breathing movement has become little more than a museum in need of serious repair.

Don’t get me wrong: I feel (along with many others) that Notre Dame is certainly worth repairing—but I also think it is important for us to really understand just what it is we are repairing, and why we are doing it. We should have no illusions that most people anymore who visit the space actually believe through and through that the God to whom the space bears witness resembles what the space itself is trying to say about God. That era has passed.

That’s why, on Monday, the thought crossed my mind: “There goes a concrete symbol of Christendom, up in smoke.” Like the disciples upon hearing of the destruction of the temple, I lamented this—but I also wondered if Jesus did, too. The tension, the mystery of it, is what gripped my heart.

Photo by Daniel D'Andreti via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

IV. Sacred Places

Let’s talk about sacred places now: among other characteristics, sacred places are certainly spaces of deep emotion.

As Notre Dame cathedral burned on Monday, I wondered whether the entire city of Paris had become a sacred place. Having lived in Europe for twelve years myself, I could well-imagine the atmosphere. Sacred and reverent are the words that come to mind.

When I heard the news on Monday, I imagined that countless people clamored to gather as close to the cathedral as they could, utterly crestfallen by what was happening to such magnificence. But the streets near the cathedral could only hold so many people. So, hearts gathered across the city and the country—indeed, all around the world—to be present and bear witness to the flames that were devouring ancient beauty herself.

Many wept and sang. Some fell to their knees and others prayed, hoping the damage could be minimized and the cathedral herself would be saved.

Sacred places are spaces of deep emotion, whether inside a great cathedral or out. Sometimes a cathedral is made of more than the walls that form it. Sometimes a cathedral is able to make its way into our hearts.

Photo by Hannah Reding via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

V. The Idea of the Holy

“When there's something you don't understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don't go to school and sit down and say, ‘I know what you're getting ready to teach me.’ You sit there and you learn. You open your mind. You absorb. But you have to be quiet, you have to he still, to do all this.”

-John Coltrane

On Monday, I asked my friends on Facebook what significance they attached to the destruction of the cathedral. I was curious to learn why this building seemed to mean so much to so many people. And now that there is such an enthusiastic push to rebuild, I wonder this even more. 

For my part, I can say that every time I walk into a space like Notre Dame, I am overcome almost instantly with a sense of “the numinous,” which is a term Rudolf Otto popularized in his book The Idea of the Holy. It’s a word that’s derived from the Latin word numen, which conveys the idea of God (or a god, or a spirit) “in-place”, so to speak. To say that something is “numinous” is to have your consciousness aroused, awakened to the dynamic that “God is present, here…in this place at this very time.”

Otto describes this “feeling” of the “numinous” in terms of the mysterium tremendum. You are filled with a sense of awe by the experience of something that is Wholly Other, inexplicable. There’s a certain “urgent energy” that causes you to oscillate between trembling and fascination.

The numinous, he says, is a Creature-feeling. It is that sense that you are in the presence of something bigger than yourself, before which you might be captivated or just struck silent—you can never tell how you will respond…you might even feel “out of your own self.” The numinous is the ground from which amazement arises and overwhelming wonder emanates. It is the ground of genuine humility, and all true worship springs from it.

In the Torah, this experience of the “numinous” is exhibited through stories like those of Abraham, Jacob and Moses. It was this sense of the numinous that moved Abram from his home to seek out a new home where he would become a whole new person. Jacob experienced it in the middle of nowhere when he had a dream and realized “God is in this place.” He called it “Beth-El,” the house of God. Later, he was so close to God that he literally wrestled with him and had his name changed to Isra-El, “the one who wrestles with God.”

Moses also encountered the numinous when God called him to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt. Moses would never have guessed that God would appear to him in the wilderness through something as common as a bush. After Moses performed a job he’d been doing for about 40 years, God suddenly showed up and Moses was overcome: “Take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

There, in the place Moses least expected, he was overcome with the powerful “Creature-feeling” that Otto describes. Moses felt unequal to the presence of God in his midst and he also felt unequal to what God was calling him to do. This was the same “Creature-feeling” that his ancestors Abraham and Jacob felt. All of them were unequal to the God who was with them and to the calling extended to them. But what could they do in the face of such “Overpoweringness,” as Otto puts it? All they could do was trust that God knew what he was doing—and follow.

To be sure, God’s “Overpoweringness” is not so much a phenomenon whereby God “forces” you to do what he wants. It’s just that, when you have a profound experience of God, you feel as though you have no choice. It’s like falling in love. You can’t help it. You’re “overpowered”—in a good way. God’s “Overpoweringness” is thus more fully understood as a liberation.

What strikes me about all these “holy places” in the Bible is that none of them are found on the inside of a building. They are all out and about in the midst of where we live our day-to-day lives.

This is true even of Jesus and the disciples. His baptism was in the river, his battle with the devil was in the desert, and it was in a boat on a lake in the God-forsaken north that Peter first realized he was in the presence of something awe-full, someone irresistible. It was on the mountain they saw him transfigured. They were in an upper room for the meal we still commemorate today, he was on a hill when he forgave and he first appeared to Mary Magdalene in a garden when he rose again.

Photo by Kalisa Veer via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

VI. Where to Find a Sanctuary

“Contemplation is not confined to designated and institutional sacred spaces. God breaks into nightclubs and Billie Holidays sultry torch songs; God tap dances with Bill Robinson and Savion Glover. And when Coltrane blew his horn, the angels paused to consider…The otherness of spiritual abiding is integral to human interiority. On occasion we turn our attention to this abiding presence and are startled. But it was always there.”

-Barbara A. Holmes

Ultimately, the Scriptures proclaim it is by faith that the holy of holies can be located in our very hearts. This is why a lowly believer like Brother Lawrence found sanctuary in a kitchen, cooking food and cleaning dirty dishes. He realized that, though many of his monastic colleagues had the privilege of praying in the chapel and meditating in their studies for the lion-share of their working hours, his kitchen could become a holy place in its own right as he “practiced the presence of God” in that space.

See, Brother Lawrence realized you don’t need a cathedral to “practice” God’s presence. God is present everywhere, accessible anywhere. All we need to do is practice welcoming his presence into our hearts.

In a word, all we need to do is practice the art of loving, wherever we are situated and whenever we are awake. Brother Lawrence discovered that anything can be done for love of God—even peeling potatoes. Kitchens, loading docks and alleyways can become cathedrals. All it takes is a commitment to slow down enough to notice the Presence, a heart that looks with eyes of faith, the imagination of a child who knows how to wonder.

If a cathedral holds a special power in making us aware of God, it is only because it is a place that helps us slow down and listen enough to notice.  Sacred places are places of deep listening. A cathedral can help us do that, but we can also listen deeply in all kinds of places. A cathedral truly serves its purpose when it helps us listen everywhere else.  

Photo by Gregory Hayes via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

VII. My Sanctuaries

I have the privilege of serving in a sanctuary on Sundays that has a number of lovely stained glass windows. Many of them are in need of repair, but this does not diminish their beauty to me in the slightest degree.

It is no exaggeration to say that taking time to meditate on some of these windows while praying has helped me connect with God. That said, I have also had the same kind of encounters in my front yard with my neighbors or in my living room with a lit candle or at the workbench in my garage while carving and sanding various wood figures. I’ve connected with God while gardening or writing poetry, biking a trail or reading a book on my front porch, praying with someone over the phone or spending a little quiet time by the lake.

Once, I was speaking with a friend of mine about the work she does to help families discern important end-of-life questions. As she shared, I remarked to her that it seemed to me the hospital rooms where those decisions are being made certainly strike me as holy places. I admire what she does (and what she helps others do) so much that I mean it when I say she is helping others honor that which is sacred in that place where a curtain may divide one space from another, but no curtain can separate a single soul from God.

These experiences of God in everyday life do not diminish the significance of any cathedral-encounters with God I may have but they do indicate to me that if my sanctuary with God is not a portable place I carry with me wherever I go, my experience of God in the fixed-place sanctuary would be (or become) greatly impoverished.

Photo by Daniele D'Andreti via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

VIII. The Tabernacle and the Temple

Before the temple, there was the tabernacle. I find it fascinating that some churches today, with in-place brick-and-mortar locations, have the word “tabernacle” in their name. I find this interesting because, in Scripture, the tabernacle was literally an on-the-go kind of place. It’s defining characteristic was that it was NOT positioned permanently in any fixed location. If it was assembled in a certain area for any stretch of time it was always with the understanding that there would come a time when God would prompt them to pack up camp and move on to another place.

It wasn’t until the time of Solomon that the tabernacle was replaced with the temple. But even then Solomon remembered at the dedication of the temple that God could never be confined to the temple.

This is why the apostle John uses the word “tabernacle” again in reference to Jesus. He says that when the Father sent the Son it was for the purpose of “tabernacling” among us. In other words, though the temple was still there in Jesus’ day, God wanted his life to flourish among his people such that they would no longer feel compelled to return to the temple year after year to meet with God. He wanted his presence to be experienced as up-close and personal, in the unexpected places of the world, among those we regard as God-forsaken.

He wants to turn us into his little tabernacles, mobile places of worship even in the wilderness places we sometimes encounter in this world. He wanted the living art of worship to flourish in a community who believes God is always making something new in us, among us, all around us, all the time, in every place.

Photo by Mark Joubert via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

IX. The “Altared” Cross

This may come as a surprise to you, but my primary job as a pastor is not a matter of convincing as many people as I can to come to a certain address on Sunday morning where I serve week after week.

I am experienced enough in ministry to know by now that a sanctuary can be completely filled every Sunday morning of the year, while every Friday through Saturday of that year many of the people who filled that sanctuary go on to lead lives that betray what is proclaimed on those Sundays.

In my role as a pastor, the question is not how to get people to come to the building on Sunday. The question is how to help the people who come to that building live beyond it, and how to help people who don’t care anything at all about what goes on in the building on Sunday to know that…

God

Just

Loves

Everyone.

Yes, I’ve seen enough in ministry to know that if you aren’t carrying the way of Jesus with you in your heart Monday through Saturday, it doesn’t matter what kind of show you make on Sunday.

A group of people may own and maintain a cathedral, but that does not mean they have become a tabernacle-people. When we lead a tabernacle life, the pillar of fire and smoke emanating from a cathedral site becomes a pillar of fire in disguise, embodied in the life of God’s kids.

On Tuesday, I saw a picture of the cross above the altar at Notre Dame that took my breath away. Supposedly, it was taken while the cathedral was burning and it was the one luminescent item in the frame. Apparently, the cross was reflecting the light of the fire while it was surrounded by the blacks and greys of terrible destruction.

The picture seemed to serve as a kind of parable that, despite such destruction, the light of the cross would always shine forth. But the parable is incomplete if the light of the cross does not shine forth in the lives of a people who live by it. If the cross-on-fire is only above the altar at Notre Dame, the fire of the cross in the course of real life will surely die.

This cross is not a crusader’s cross. It cannot be a way of coercion or social engineering. Christians have no business creating our own sorts of cultural caliphates. Yet, this is what many Christians today are effectively trying to do.

When the cross is in your heart, you shine with the light of servanthood, forgiveness and grace. The beauty of the cross is found in the eyes of love we see there, the self-giving nature of God. The cross, like the burning bush, does not consume: it creates. It does this perpetually, always re-creating. On the way of the cross there is no space to hoard. If wealth accumulates, it is given away, shared with those who are less fortunate. People on the way of the cross are rich in poverty.

If the cross-on-fire is only enshrined over a set altar, it is only a “living statue” at best. The living cross leaps off the altar and into our hearts. We become the altar, we become the tabernacle, the locus for the pillar of fire and smoke, living day-to-day according to the pattern of the cross, according to the example of the One who gave his very life on it.

A cathedral in the shape of a cross is a nice metaphor for us. It needs to be lived out, however, otherwise it’s just another relic, however grand it may be.

Photo by Thomas Millot via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

X. Will the Fire Bring People Back to Church?

This is my primary concern as a pastor. I am less concerned with maintaining our building and more concerned with helping people experience and bear witness to the moment-by-moment creative presence of Jesus beyond our building.

Some Christians I know have remarked that perhaps God will use the fire at Notre Dame as a way to draw people back to church. The thinking is: having seen what could have been lost, maybe people will appreciate it more and show that appreciation by going to church again.

I doubt it. What most people want to save is the art, architecture and history. But what they are happy to see burn are all the antiquated teachings and customs that no longer make sense in today’s world. Who wants the corruption that comes with it all? Nobody. Who wants the psychological harm, the divisiveness and the exclusivity associated with it? Nobody. Good riddance!

This is why I find it unlikely the fire will draw people back to church. It’s the end of Christendom, whether today’s Christians like it or not. The cathedral may be worth preserving, but it is worth doing so despite the attachment to religion, not because of it.

That word (religion) carries an ambiguous kind of power. The word in English is derived from Latin, and it connotes the idea of “binding” or “tying one thing to another.” Depending on what you are “tied to”, the experience is either life-giving or deadening. If I tie myself to a bomb, I’ll explode. When I bound myself to the love of my life in marriage, I came alive.

Religion intends to help people bind themselves to one another and to God because they know that we can only find life in loving community, the kind of family we choose because of our shared humanity. In the context of this kind of “religious” community we are able to reflect on society in a cohesive fashion, honoring the common threads that “bind” us all together, no matter our specific religion.

The question is not, therefore, whether we can ever be completely rid of religion. Everyone has a religion, a way of trying to make sense of it all, an attempt to construct a cohesive narrative, a search for certain “binding” principles and phenomena. In this sense, even those who regard themselves as irreligious have a religion. We all have our ways of “tying reality together.”

The question is not whether religion is inevitable. The question is what kind of religion will we practice? There’s good religion and there’s not-so-good religion—even “Bad Religion,” forgive the musical group pun.

When religion sours, the tie that would bind us in love becomes a means of subjugation and slavery. It sucks the life out of you. It sucks the life out of the world.

The word ligature comes to mind, because the word religion is related to it. A ligature can be used to mend a bleeding heart or it can be used to strangle someone. A ligature in musical notation is an indicator of flow and continuity; in music, the only thing beauty requires is a binding stroke of gentleness. The ligature of toxic religion, however, creates only confusion and noise, the sound of fury, the strength of sinister power.

Frodo’s ring was a kind of ligature. In the right hands, it was the bond of deep fellowship, composed of beautiful diversity and self-sacrifice. But by the spirit of Sauron, it could tear the world apart, even as it bound everyone and everything. Tolkien’s epic is a potent parable of the dual potentials of beauty and terror that are intrinsic to religion.

If a burning cathedral seems terrible to us, how much more should we be terrified by the way we use the ties of love we’ve severed with our own neighbors—for the purpose of choking the life out of one another?

Photo by Stephanie LeBlanc via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

XI. The Religion of Loving Your Neighbor

It must be remembered that Notre Dame was built during the time of the Crusades—which means it was likely funded by the plunder of those wars. I point this out not by way of saying the cathedral should not be restored but rather to remind us that we are all heirs today of those deep, ancient enmities.

More than a place of worship undergoing the threat of fire, the spiritual fabric of our common life together is being burnt to ash because Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and even secular humanists cannot find a way to share the one world we all have. This is the tragedy that should be lamented most. We continue to live according to the rule of mere self-preservation and, consequently, conquest. Deep down, we feel that if we could only get rid of “those other people” all would be well.

Within a five minute walk from my house there is an orthodox synagogue and, in another direction, a modest-sized mosque. I have to wonder: if those spaces were to undergo destruction by fire, would we mourn for what has been lost as we mourn for Notre Dame? Would Christian philanthropists donate millions to restore those spaces?

To be sure, the places of worship in my neighborhood are not as grand or old as Notre Dame, but they are no less precious to the people who worship there week-by-week. These people are my neighbors—and Jesus tells me to love my neighbor. Am I not called to care about and look after their well-being, though I do not share their particular faith? If I am to call myself a true Christian, I have to be faithful to the calling of Jesus to love those who are unlike me—to love even those who might wish that I and my religion were not around anymore.

The way of Jesus calls me to love my neighbor, period. I don’t get to choose who that is. They will likely be different than me and, perhaps, hard for me to love because of our differences. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are my neighbor and I am called to love them.

On March 26, April 2 and April 4 three churches belonging to black congregants in Louisiana were intentionally set ablaze. And, I wonder, where is the generosity for our black brothers and sisters? Is not their heritage our heritage, too? Do we not live in this place together? Are we not invited by our common Maker to go beyond knowing them with a tourist’s knowledge—to worship with them side-by-side? They may not have such beautiful, old stained glass in their sanctuaries, but together may we not create a mosaic of color that far outshines the brilliance of any window above any altar we could ever hope to see in this life?

Photo by Robin Garnier via Unsplash. Creative Commons.

XII. Our Lady this Easter

The cathedral in Paris is “Our Lady.” Though this is a reference to Mary, the mother of Jesus, I also find it fascinating that in Scripture the Church is referred to as the Bride of Christ.

It’s Maundy Thursday as I write this final section of my reflections. It’s the day we remember Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, taking on the role of the lowest servant—and he told his disciples to do likewise.

Will we?

We call this “Maundy” Thursday because of the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples when this happened. The word “Maundy” comes from the word “commandment.” On this day, the same day Jesus had his last meal with his friends, he reminded them of what he said just two days earlier: love, just love.

And he defined what he meant by “love” with these words: “Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends.”

The very next day, Jesus did one better: he laid down his life for his enemies. The world has truly never seen a greater love than this. It is why I have chosen to bind myself to him and his way. His love done messed me up good.  

All week, I’ve been wondering about the Notre Dame parish, wondering where they would worship on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.

And all week, I’ve been wondering about Our Lady—not just the cathedral in Paris, but the Church everywhere, the people of God, the Bride of Christ.

All week I’ve been wondering: where will Our Lady celebrate the resurrection this year? Surely, she can’t be in the building. She’ll have to be outside.

I pray to God she’ll be found outside.

Such is my deep, deep prayer for Our Lady this Easter, and always.

Amen.