Sacred Memory and Meaning at Notre Dame

Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam: 

et exsultabunt ossa humiliata.

Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness:

that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.

Peter Severson, Director of Lutheran Advocacy Ministry-Colorado, shares a reflection in response to the fire at Notre Dame.

When I was a kid, I was really into these puzzles that were three-dimensional. Over time, I collected a bunch of them, representing monumental structures from around the world: the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Big Ben, even a rare one of the Grand Mosque of Mecca. I also had one of Notre-Dame. At the time, I had never been to any of these places, and yet I developed a connection to them, even a feeling of ownership, through the small act of reconstructing them in puzzle form.

Later, across a decade of young adulthood, I spent formative years singing with two choirs, each of which resided in its own monumental chapel space. The Princeton University Chapel is, as I became practiced at telling visitors, the third-largest university chapel in the world. Its soaring stone arches still hold the resonance of harmonies I joined as an undergraduate in the chapel choir. At the University of Chicago, Rockefeller Chapel is a prism of light whose clerestory of geometric stained glass culminates in a dramatic swirl of fiery red and yellow high above the altar. It remained my spiritual and musical home in Chicago even after I finished my degree and moved away from Hyde Park.

Spaces of sacred memory and meaning constitute a large share of humanity’s global cultural heritage. This is why the conflagration of Notre-Dame resonates beyond Paris, beyond France, beyond even the Western world. We feel horror and sorrow, just as we might feel if the same fate befell the Taj Mahal or the Grand Mosque. It reminds us of our death, of our finitude. But even among the cinders and char, God’s promise remains, and humans can be reminded of our own resilience. We are offered a gift that surpasses even the great stirring we might feel in the presence of a world-famous landmark: the opportunity to build community and meaning with one another.

No solitary person built Notre-Dame, nor will a solitary person re-build it. The opportunity to re-construct a space of shared meaning is a hard project that will, in this case, likely take many years. But like a puzzle, it need only proceed piece by piece, at its own pace. And with each deliberate step, it may be a chance for healing and resilience to spring up again for the community that undertakes it together. In a time when so many forces are working to separate us from one another and from any greater sense of shared meaning, the people of Paris will have the chance to reforge a piece of cultural heritage, to make new meaning in the wake of terrible destruction. This may be the gift that can rise from the ashes of Notre-Dame on Easter morning.

I am fortunate to belong to the choir of yet another great cathedral today, that of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Denver. Tonight, as we rehearsed the stirring sounds of Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere for the Tenebrae service this Wednesday, I heard anew these words of the 51st Psalm, from which its text is derived:

Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam: 

et exsultabunt ossa humiliata.

Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness:

that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.