Posted on 04/16/2019 4:47:05 PM PDT by lightman
One of Christendom’s greatest and oldest sanctuaries has suffered great damage but largely survived. According to whom you read, its devastation is a metaphor for European Christianity’s collapse or for its rebirth through fire.
The mass horror over Notre Dame’s fire, and the immediate resolve for the cathedral’s full restoration, signify that France’s connection to Catholicism is not so remote as often imagined, True, it was a national political and cultural symbol. But it was chiefly an active church where the Eucharist is celebrated daily and whose architecture honors saints, Apostles and prophets. Neither France nor Europe nor the West can be understood politically or culturally apart from those saints, Apostles, and prophets.
For over two centuries France has avowed a strict separation between religion and state. Yet Notre Dame, named for mother of Jesus, still loomed over Paris, its bells commemorating the nation’s central events, such as the 1944 liberation and the 1918 armistice. In 2016 the cathedral hosted a funeral mass for Father Jacques Hamel, an elderly priest murdered by an Islamist, which four French presidents attended, and to which the Archbishop of Paris preached.
Nearly every notable French person with countless other Europeans of the last millennium has been a witness to Notre Dame. Thomas Aquinas saw its construction. Joan of Arc spied it from afar as she besieged Paris. John Calvin presumably worshipped there. So did Louis 14th, Cardinal Richelieu, Moliere, Descartes, Victor Hugo and Charles de Gaulle. Voltaire, Robespierre and Sartre scoffed at its faith but could not ignore its power. Napoleon crowned himself there. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson beheld it. So too did even Hitler, who thought he had conquered it but was instead defeated by it.
A leftist Native American speaker popular in some USA Evangelical circles harrumphed that Notre Dame was an icon of European colonialism and intrinsically corrupt Christendom. All civilizations are corrupt in some way but he’s right to identify the cathedral as symbol of Christian civilization. Notre Dame is not just a church nor just an historical tourist destination nor just a symbol of French culture. It embodies the biblical aspiration to construct a comprehensive society aspiring to give glory to its Creator.
French revolutionaries and secularists have long touted the rights of man. But such rights and claims descend directly from the biblical story that Notre Dame emblemizes. The cathedral’s soaring architecture represents the sacred cosmology of creation, fall, redemption and eschatological completion. Humans are sacred only because of their central role in this divine narrative.
Many French and Europeans may no longer consciously identify with the faith of Notre Dame. But they are indelibly creatures of it and cannot escape it. Maybe the great fire marks their continued denial of this spiritual and historical reality. Or maybe the stunned reaction to it will generate a recovery of memory, gratitude and faith.
He'd make a good Catholic. Already is, in a sense, God bless him.
Christendom got itself into trouble when it mixed itself up with secular government prior (WELL prior) to the return of Christ.
The Constantinian deal worked, or seemed to work, as long as it lasted with Constantine. People were willing to give lip service to Christ, if not more, and there was peace and halcyon times for Christians. Constantine delivered a quid pro quo for the blessing, if he wasn’t a believer outright. The problem here was that as much of a breather as it was, it shouldn’t have been a permanent dwelling place for Christendom. Corruption DID enter the church this way, and that American Indian would be right if that’s his angle on things. And yet on account of His promise, Jesus kept this badly afflicted church alive.
Anyhow, God does say that fields bearing thorns and thistles will end up being burned — that doesn’t mean condemned to hell, it means in the fashion that agriculture would clear land.
Catholic with small c is the “universal church” that is today affirmed by most modern evangelical followings. Jesus made a promise and will never go back on it no matter how wild and crazy things get in the pews, so to speak. At the same time, things go on in one branch of this church that are hard for those in another branch to swallow. Maybe denominational splits were the only way that Jesus had to deal with churches of believers who were still carnal and willful.
I believe in these latter parts of the last days, we will see love again and see Christians draw back together across denominational lines, until it becomes clear that Jesus really is the name above all names.
For such a redeemed structure to be burning from within, the part that reaches to God collapsed, and this in a part of the world where He is ever less welcome?
This seems like prophetic statement, both about the judgment to come “soon” for the evil now within His Church, per modern prophecies, and about His Judgment to come later for heaven and earth per Scripture.
Manmade steeples cannot substitute for the heart’s reach towards God. This could be symbolic of that.
I believe in these latter parts of the last days, we will see love again and see Christians draw back together across denominational lines, until it becomes clear that Jesus really is the name above all names.
Isa 24:13 Throughout the earth the story is the same—only a remnant is left, like the stray olives left on the tree or the few grapes left on the vine after harvest.
We are already seeing the liberal v. conservative fracturing of denominations, with the conservative groups, particularly, forming alliances.
One example is the North American Lutheran Church (breakaway from the ELCA) sharing the Seminary facilities and faculty of the Anglican Church of North America (breakaway from The Episcopal Church.
For all the evil that the Nazis did they actually respected most of the old churches.
Even though publicly the government will say it was an accident, we all know that there has been ongoing harassment and vandalism of the churches in France. I wonder who could be doing all this damage. The fact that nobody will come out and say it is disgusting.
Synagogues...uh....not so much.
I would even say I have more in common with Orthodox Jews than with liberal Catholics. At least the Orthodox Jews and I, bless His Name and love His Word and are sincerely looking for the coming of the Messiah. They--- they think --- for the First Coming, I for the Second.
I share your thoughts about the Orthodox Jews. I believe that Christians have neglected the God of the Old Testament in their attempt to keep total focus on Jesus our Redeemer. They forget that they are the same God and the God of Sinai revealed himself in every page of the Old Testament.
The region where I have lived for 28 yrs is rural and there are uncountable numbers of small country churches. The United Meth. have the most and now are facing the difficulty of finding pastors.
I have shepherded 7 UM churches in this one county over 27 years and most of them have been so small they can’t “afford” to pay for a full time pastor. Therefore with my M.Div I am still trying to keep the doors open for folks who are clinging to their “church” where Dad & Mom attended.
I’m still pastoring for 2 churches and I’m 85 years old. My final and 4th “retirement” will be the end of June. There is doubt the one of them will be closed. The other one will stay open as long as one family stays alive. They are dying off and most of the little country churches that at one time served the same spiritual purpose that the Notre Dame. They were the center of the community. Very sad.
I will lay my body down beside my husband in the cemetery at the church where I served for 7 years and wait for the Lord to come. I’m excited to be so close to seeing the Lord Jesus Christ.
Sorry I forgot the paragraph code.
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