Le feu à Notre Dame
- ciara regan
- Apr 15, 2019
- 2 min read
My phone buzzed during my geology lecture and I looked down. My mother sent me a Google link with the words “Aaack.” What did that mean? It probably was not important, especially knowing her and her love for sending me links to videos of kittens and sloths.
So when I opened my phone and clicked the link, my jaw dropped. The USA Today headline read “Famed Notre Dame Cathedral ablaze in Paris.”
I was there just six months ago! I lit a candle for a family member, my mother and I knelt in the pews. The cathedral was so tangible to me, the memory still so vivid. How could this be happening?
I’d grown up watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The image of the cathedral ablaze in the movie flashed into my mind, this time no longer a cartoon, but a real life nightmare.
The pictures from Le Monde and The New York Times looked almost apocalyptic as a thousand years of history burned, bruising the evening sky across Paris. I cringed as I posted one to my Instagram story.
I think the saddest part of this is the importance of Notre Dame to France. The Cathedral hosts around 30,000 tourists per day, and nearly twice as many visitors than the Eiffel Tower annually. It truly is the center of Paris, as the medieval city was built surrounding the cathedral. As Paris grew, it grew around the historical town.
Many Catholics visit P
aris simply for Notre Dame, a pilgrimage for the religious. Beyond its existence as a tourist destination, the cathedral is a house of worship. From the ornate stained glass to alters designated to specific saints, the interior of Notre Dame is a sacred center of religion. As it burns, so does an integral aspect of the history of Catholicism.
Notre Dame was there during the rise of Protestantism, and it stayed there. It stood during the Vichy government in Paris. Hell, it was there during the French Revolution. This building has been around and stood tall during so much history. And now, in 2019, it burns for an unknown reason.
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