Watching the burning of this magnificent cathedral last night, it appeared to me to be a grim metaphor for the end of Christendom. Just as we have abandoned our Christian heritage, so it has abandoned us, leaving only dross fit for nothing but to be consumed with fire. Ironically, nowhere is this more apparent than in mainline denominations.
Here are a few of the photos I took of my visit to Notre Dame in 2008:
Your forecast is premature. The photograph depicts the vaulting in the Nave. It’s solid stone and it’s responsible for saving Notre Dame. Yesterday’s fire was restricted to the wood roof, attic and crossing spire. It was 19th Century. The stained glass windows, the pipe organ and other contents are intact. The vaulting was penetrated in at least two places with the collapse portions of the vaulting. I suspect the fire yesterday was expected to burn itself out and leave the Cathedral largely intact. Within hours of the fires start, at least 2 hundred million Euros had already been pledged by two individuals for the reconstruction of the Cathedral. For 4 horrible hours yesterday I thought N.D. was a complete and total loss. About 8 pm yesterday I saw a photograph that strongly indicated the building had survived.
What a relief. This morning I’m having trouble containing my happiness in the knowledge that the building is almost certainly saved. A loss is realized, however, the spire contained a relic..slivers of wood attested to be portions of the true Cross. The timbers of the attic were felled over 800 years ago and involved trees that must have been 400 years old. They would have taken root around the time of Charlemagne….tragic but it appears they were the vehicle by which an initial fire spread so quickly there was no hope of saving the attic.
The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of Christ.
Lets not get too excited about this. This is just a Christian church after all. Hardly more valuable than a bowling alley or a shoe factory. Not bad construction though by all accounts.
The pictures now coming out may give you hope, oddly enough. Amidst the debris and darkness the cross still shines.
https://tinyurl.com/yxnflrbg
Though representing unreformed Christianity, this is a church saturated in prayer. In August of 1983, when it was, as usual in Paris at that time of year, killingly hot, it was tolerable to sit quietly up against one of the great pillars in the nave. There I gave myself afresh, not to Our Lady, but to Her Son, for the next stage of my life.
April 15,1521,
“All Europe was waiting for the decision of the University of Paris”
(D’Aubigne records of Crevier, p.448); whereupon the Sorbonne rejected the Lutheran doctrine of The Sola because Infallible Authority of The WORD of GOD. Persecution followed. Nantes a reprieve Revoked. Then Le Desert 1685-1787, the Reformed bitter and bloody exile lasting a full century. Then by 1789, the inevitable godless fruit of rejecting The WORD of GOD: Revolution, with Our Lady of Paris commissioned to the Jacobins. The Jacobins have ruled since (save for one failed Empire and one failed brief royal interregnum);in 2013, France’s Socialist regime legalized gay marriage; then on May 18, 2015, The French Protestant Church followed apostate suit, also legalizing the adoption of children by gay couples. Now, with the election of a Liberation Theologian Pontifex Maximus, a Roman Magisterium is in Cultural Marxist lockstep with it all. Infidels are both within and without:’Christian’ ones.
The Crown of thorns was saved; the Rose windows; the pipe organ; the very stone
structure. But what of “the living stones”?
+ Exodus 12:3-7 and + I John 1:7b proclaim it is Sola
The Blood of The Lamb that was Slain that Alone Saves.
+ “…The Blood of JESUS Christ cleanseth us from all sin.” Amen.