Monday, April 15, 2019

Prayers for Our Lady of Paris

Tonight, one of the members of my Monday night beer and Bible study group wondered aloud if it would naturally occur to United Methodists to remember Notre Dame, appropriate for us to pray for the people in Paris--and Catholic Christians around the world-- who are horror-struck and heartsick about the cathedral fire today...

He, like a couple of others in our group, self-identifies as Catholic, but attend our church every Sunday, just about. To a person they such important parts of our congregation.

Of course, it was appropriate. But I am glad he brought it up because, scattered as we are when we first gather, I am not sure it would have naturally occurred to us to mention it. That said, I think we all would have thought of it later...

So we prayed for all who are affected, and know that even as UMs we are affected in as much as we weep with all who weep and rejoice with all who rejoice. In as much as many of us have visited that great cathedral. In as much as when any place of worship is destroyed, it connects us to the Temple, the Jews, our Christian past and the deep spiritual impulses of all people to build to the glory of God and the spiritual (and practical ) truth that what is built with human hands cannot endure. Such weeping tarries for the night and leads us to hope for the Home that is eternal in the heavens.

Which led me to think about this being Holy Week: and the irony or tragedy or tragic irony or ironic tragedy of one of Christianity's most important and iconic cathedrals burning on the day we remember, liturgically, the cleansing of the Temple. In the week when we remember the death (and resurrection) of Jesus.

And the ironic conversion of the French government this "death" may occasion. If unofficially but historically and condescendingly, France is so secular and so anti-religious that, as I understand it, support for the cathedral has been virtually. Today, the French government has pledged to rebuild Notre Dame--and perhaps a part of the determination comes from seeing rank-and-file citizens weeping, wailing, gnashing their teeth as their holy place died. And not just in Paris.

Which is to say, I wonder if this death also gives way to a kind of resurrection? If this tragedy gives rise to a renewed awareness of what alone may last? It was when Jesus died, according to Mark, when the Centurion said, "Surely this man was the Son of God." Could this horrible incident in its own way proclaim the gospel: how for Jesus, and Notre Dame, and each of us and the world, Empire crushes Savior, despair consumes faith, nihilism swallows life... but by God's grace, the power of hope and the Resurrection of Jesus, death itself is swallowed-up in victory and soon, and very soon, death will be no more.

Resurrection comes, in spite of and no thanks to secularity, but on account of the prayers of the people (Philippians 1:19) to awaken even the cultural despisers of religion to the suffering wonder of faith and the beauty, even in death itself, of enduring faithfulness.

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