Rebuilding Notre Dame …Within Ourselves

“Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars.” Proverbs 9:1

Perhaps we know someone for whom Notre Dame de Paris signifies a huge cathedral, its roof all ablaze against a mid-April night sky in the year 2019. This person may be, through no fault of their own, one for whom the identity of its namesake, Our Lady, is, is like King Childebert’s and Bishop Germaine’s first Notre Dame de Paris, a forgotten memory of 558 A.D. – established and destroyed before their time. For most of us (except, of course, saints like Pope John Paul II for whom Our Lady was his all, his “Totus Tuus”) Our Lady’s Month of May can be a time to rebuild devotion to her: either by beginning, like medieval masons, from the foundation; or, like modern-day Parisians, making plans to restore the roof of our entire spiritual edifice.

Who is this Lady? If we do not know the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady, we can begin by imagining ourselves a poor French street urchin, un gamin, romping around the western portal of the Blessed Virgin, gazing at all the colorful figures carved in stone like a great picture book, to introduce us to Christ’s mother and ours. Her lovely figure, holding the Christ-Child, stands between two doors, but there, under her feet, we spy…a serpent! What does this mean? Listen to the stones tell you these words from the first book of the Bible: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and hers. Her seed will crush your head and you shall lie in wait for her heel.” (Gen. 3:15) God is speaking to our first parents, Adam and Eve. They ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of life. They are punished by God for disobeying his command and kicked out of the beautiful garden. They must now work by the sweat of their brow, die, and – for women – have pain when they give birth to their children. But, God is love and mercy. He promises to send a woman who will give birth to a Savior. That woman’s name? Mary. Our Lady. And her Son? Jesus. God’s Son and hers. And the serpent? The devil. Jesus will be born of the Immaculate Virgin Mary and will crush the head of the devil by dying on the Cross. Jesus saves.

Above the head of the Virgin, we look up to see three wonderful scenes that continue this true story. In the scene just over her head are some men who lived hundreds of years before her birth and foretold her coming: her noble ancestors, three kings; and three prophets. Listen to one king, Solomon, speak to us about Mary: “Who shall find a valiant woman?” Or again, listen to the Prophet Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and his name shall be Emmanuel.” (Is. 7:14) Or the Prophet Jeremiah saying: “The Lord hath created a new thing upon the earth, a woman shall encompass a man.” (Jer. 31:22) These figures carved in stone on this 800 year old cathedral – the kings wearing crowns and the prophets holding their scrolls – are teaching us that God’s promises are fulfilled in Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus. It was she, born of the noble house of King David, who said “Yes” to the Angel Gabriel when he appeared to her and asked her, whom he called “Full of Grace“, to become pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit and to “encompass” the God-man by becoming his Virgin Mother. She was the valiant woman who gave birth to Jesus, Emmanuel or God-with-us, in a stable in Bethlehem, and she who stood by him throughout his entire life and most heroically, at his death on the Cross.

The second level above Mary’s statue has a scene portraying what is known as Our Lady’s “dormition” and her assumption into heaven. Some years after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus into heaven, Mary died. But God did not allow her body to decay. Instead she was “assumed” into heaven. This second scene shows the Blessed Virgin Mary laid out on a sheet, surrounded by the apostles or friends of Jesus, as two angels, one at her feet, and one at her head, lift her up into heaven.

The third and uppermost level above the Virgin’s statue has sculptures illustrating another scene in this story of Mary’s life. Here we find Our Lady seated next to her Son, Jesus, on a throne. Jesus is handing her a scepter as an angel puts a crown on her head. She reigns now with Him as Queen of Heaven.

But Our Lady is not only the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, she is our mother, too. This happened when Jesus spoke to her and his best friend, John, when he was dying on the Cross. He said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son.” And to John, he said, “Behold your mother.” (Jn. 19:26-27) What Jesus meant was that from then on, we, all of us, are her children; and, she is our mother. This means that she will always help us. Always. We see Our Lady’s children carved in stone on the legs of both doors. All around her are people doing all the things people do. It shows the work of each season in the immutable life of men. They live, they work, they die. Mary is right in the midst of them. She is their mother. She is their helper. She watches over them throughout their entire life and especially at their death. If you never learned the story of Our Lady before, now you know. A cathedral named after her, Notre Dame de Paris, has been waiting 800 years to tell you that story. It was built to give honor to her, Our Lady, Mother of God and our mother, too. We can honor her with a short prayer called the “Hail Mary”. We can say it every day of our life, whether we have known about Mary all of our lives or whether we have just become familiar with her. Here is how it goes: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.”