Une Minute avec Marie
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It was December 31, the day before the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, when my family and I visited the newly restored Notre Dame de Paris. The iconic cathedral had only reopened a few weeks earlier to much fanfare, as world leaders gathered to see and be seen at the reopening. This grand ceremony occupied my thoughts as we walked in, but a little voice brought me back to the reason we were really there.
“Look,” it said, “It’s Our Lady!”
The voice belonged to my seven-year-old son, who was bringing my attention to the Pietà statue behind the altar. Notre Dame, after all, means “Our Lady.” I had last seen the eighteenth-century Nicolas Coustou sculpture in photographs from the aftermath of the 2019 fire, when it was surrounded by charred debris but otherwise unscathed. Now, even on a gray winter morning, it was surrounded by bright splendor and crowds of admirers.
The piece portrays Mary sitting with her only son draped across her knees as he did as an infant. But now he is a grown man. Now he is dead. She looks up, her face etched with sorrow, her arms outstretched, inviting the viewer to contemplate her son.
Visitors from all over the world strained for a better view of her, smartphones poised for a shot they could post to show their followers back home. Others milled around the cathedral investigating the side chapels and decor. My son preferred to sit and take it all in. We chose a couple of chairs in the nave that were evidently still set up from the reopening ceremonies. An ambassador or a head of state might have sat in these seats a couple of weeks ago, but now they provided a place of contemplation for an anonymous mother and son. He drew my attention to something I would have otherwise missed: on the ceiling, a blue medallion depicting Mary holding the infant Jesus.
Together with my only son, I gazed up at Mary with her only son. I don’t mean to draw any other parallels between us. Mary probably would have kept her cool better than I did when, about ten minutes later, the ends of my daughter’s hair caught on fire while she lit a votive candle in front of the Crown of Thorns reliquary (she’s fine). But I did wonder how many other people were there for online engagement and how many were there, like my kids, for Our Lady.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time Notre Dame has been manipulated for secular purposes. Selfies in the sanctuary wouldn’t even be the worst example. That distinction goes to Maximilian Robespierre in 1793, when he converted Notre Dame into an atheistic “Temple of Reason.” Revolutionaries replaced religious iconography with depictions of Enlightenment figures, and held blasphemous rites in the cathedral. From the viewpoint of believers, this is arguably worse than a fire.
But Robespierre is long gone, and Notre Dame is still here, drawing humanity to herself, and through her, to Christ. Why is it that the powerful and influential gathered within her walls on the feast of the Immaculate Conception this past December? Who else but the Mother of God, whose Magnificat prayer proclaimed a God who has scattered the proud in their conceit and cast down the mighty from their thrones, could inspire improbable images like the photo of the future head of the Church of England clutching a Magnificat booklet, chatting amiably with Donald Trump? A young Jewish girl from Nazareth, to whom the message of an angel declared that “nothing shall be impossible for God,” united the leaders from our troubled world to momentarily put their differences to one side and celebrate something joyful. They were gathered, in the words of French President Emmanuel Macron, “ensemble pour Notre Dame” (together for Our Lady).
Maggie Phillips, January 17, 2025