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One thing lovely occurred late final 12 months. As 2024 wound down, the world celebrated the rebuilding of wonderful Notre Dame de Paris, which a mere 5 and a half years earlier than was engulfed in horrifying flames. On the reopening ceremony in Paris, her bells rang for the primary time for the reason that hearth.
The pleasing peal known as to my thoughts a poem that raises up one thing no much less lovely than the French Gothic monument: her builders. This reminiscence in flip led to an epiphany, which is becoming because the Epiphany, or Christian celebration of the revelation of God as human in Jesus Christ, quick approaches.
“Cathedral Builders,” written by Welsh poet John Ormond and revealed within the journal “Poetry Wales” in 1965, lyrically reminds us of a quite simple fact with profound penalties. It’s typically strange individuals who create essentially the most extraordinary magnificence, significantly when the enterprise is grand in scope.
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Ormond exalts the sanctifying work of numerous craftsmen whose identities are identified solely to historical past, however whose toil constructed the great cathedrals of medieval Europe. Most of them knew they wouldn’t dwell to see the ultimate fruits of their large multi-generational endeavor. They climbed their ladders anyway.
With hovering but easy language befitting the ethereal work of earthy males, Ormond lionizes unheralded laborers who “hoisted hewn rock into heaven” by day after which “got here all the way down to their suppers and small beer” within the night. So understood, a cathedral is not any extra elegant than her humblest builder. Every is an icon to the opposite.
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I considered “Cathedral Builders” as I mirrored upon the two,000 or so employees it took to rebuild Notre Dame inside French President Emmanuel Macron’s bold five-year deadline. Not like their medieval counterparts, the overwhelming majority of those artisans lived to see their loving mission accomplished.
But like these ancestors, they created lasting magnificence by pledging their lives to one thing outdoors of and larger than themselves. Amidst still-burning embers in 2019, life imitated artwork when these cathedral builders as soon as once more selected to make artwork of their lives. Notre Dame is their masterpiece.
That alternative, I imagine, is strictly of the ennobling sort of second-century theologian St. Irenaeus had in thoughts when he stated “the glory of God is man absolutely alive.” Aesthetic achievement apart, is there a lesson for the remainder of us, those that lack the expertise to make clerestories soar? I feel so.
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Most of us aren’t known as to construct cathedrals of stone, however all are known as to construct cathedrals of our lives. Some acts can be hovering – the spire atop the cathedral – as an example, a soldier sacrificing his life in fight to avoid wasting his brother-in-arms. Different acts can be easy – the mortar on a lowly footpath showing like a smile to a passing stranger on the road.
Clergymen and clergy arrive to attend an inaugural Mass, with the consecration of the excessive altar, on the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, five-and-a-half years after a fireplace ravaged the Gothic masterpiece, as a part of ceremonies to mark the Cathedral’s reopening after its restoration, in Paris, France, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024. (Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool Photograph by way of AP)
However nice and small, all are acts of affection, of prepared the great of the opposite and stone by figurative stone, they certainly will construct a cathedral over one’s lifetime. It might not be tangible or seen to man like Notre Dame de Paris, however it’s no much less actual, and no much less pretty. Moreover, invisible to man just isn’t invisible.
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Therein lies the fantastic thing about “Cathedral Builders,” and what’s most inspirational about Notre Dame’s exemplary builders. By reminding a weary world to see each the small within the nice and the nice within the small, they supply a blueprint for not solely a cathedral well-made, however one thing much more necessary: a life well-lived.
That’s my epiphany because the Epiphany approaches. I’m grateful for poet John Ormond, for the valiant laborers of Notre Dame de Paris and all who attempt to construct cathedrals of their lives. They remind us that there’s magnificence in each the hovering and the easy.
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