I majored in Historical Theology and Church History while in college. When I was in my senior year, I embarked on a two-week study tour centered on church history. We traveled to Turkey where we visited churches and Christian sites. I stood in the amphitheater in Ephesus where St. Paul proclaimed the Gospel in Acts Chapter 19. I stood in the ruins of the church where the Nicene Creed that we say each Sunday was formulated. I said a silent prayer at the Hagia Sophia, that 6th c. trophy ingeniously erected for the glory of God.
My class and I then traveled to Rome, the city of Caesars and popes. Then on to Paris. I was excited about one thing above all else. There is of course, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysee, and the Sorbonne, but I was holding my breath for one moment. I wanted to see the 13th c. rose window of the south transept of Notre Dame de Paris. I wanted to close my eyes, walk into the nave of the cathedral, turn around and open them to take in the beauty of this portrayal of Christ triumphant, reigning over Heaven, surrounded by all his witnesses on earth.
I had read of this massive, intricate mixture of colors and shapes all forming a singular circle with Christ at the center. I had read how for its creators the rose window was not just art but a symbol of perfection: the circle being a shape with no beginning and no end, intended to draw our sanctified imagination into contemplating the perfection of God. This paradigmatic medieval symbol of God’s transcendence could also be a vehicle for contemplating our finite humanity and the immanence of God. What better place to pray?
It seems like ages ago. We were all transfixed with tear-filled eyes as a fire raged through the cathedral. All of its history, all of its beauty, all of its reverence, worship, glory, pointing our eyes upward to God, disappearing as we gazed on. Worshipers were filmed in the Paris streets watching the blaze do its worst while singing hymns of lament and we added our voices to theirs.
I was transported back to my 23-year-old self, racing through the Latin Quarter toward the Cathedral to see what I had come to see. I crossed the Pont au Double, over the River Seine, and into the square. My jaw dropped.
There was the cathedral, but instead of the Rose Window: scaffolding. All of that money for travel, all of that anticipation, all of the expectation; for nothing. To this day, I know the exact bench in the square that I sank down into in my disappointment. “What luck!,” I said out loud. A few tourists turned to me, not sure if they should answer.
Then a whisper came from an elderly man on the bench next to me, “Don’t be selfish.” He took to his feet and shuffled away. What did he mean by “Don’t be selfish!?” That’s when it occurred to me. For hundreds of years people—peasants and kings—had said the same prayers that I had hoped to say in the splintered light of that window, and now with this scaffolding, these repairs and restorations, there might be another hundred years of faithful prayers said.
That’s when it happened. The clouds shifted to the north and
the sun emerged and was reflected off of the window behind the scaffolding.
My eyes caught glinting blues and greens, shimmers of purple and red. I raced into the cathedral and saw what I could’ve seen all along. The light illumined the window through the scaffolding the whole time.
