Notre Dame kept Christmas going even during two world wars — a beacon of hope amid the bloodshed. Yet, an accidental fire in peacetime finally stopped the cathedral from celebrating Midnight Mass this year, for the first time in over two centuries.
As the lights stay dim in the once-invincible 855-year-old Paris landmark, officials are trying hard to focus on the immediate task of keeping burnt-out Notre Dame’s spirit alive in exile through service, song and prayer.
It has decamped its rector, famed statue, liturgy and Christmas celebrations to a new temporary home pending the restoration works, just under a mile away, at another Gothic church in Paris called Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.
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And there it will remain, as works slowly progress to rebuild the cathedral after the April 15 fire destroyed its lead roof and spire and was moments away from engulfing its two stone towers. “This is the first time since the French Revolution that there will be no midnight Mass (at Notre Dame),” cathedral rector Patrick Chauvet said.
There was even a Christmas service amid the carnage of World War I, Chauvet noted, “because the canons were there and the canons had to celebrate somewhere”. During World War II, “there was no problem”, he said, adding that only once was it closed for Christmas to his knowledge: After 1789, when the anti-Catholic French revolutionaries turned the monument into “a temple of reason”.
Christmas-in-exile at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois this year will be a history-making moment. “We have the opportunity to celebrate the Mass outside the walls, so to speak… but with some indicators that Notre Dame is connected to us,” Chauvet said.
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Those indicators include a wooden liturgical platform that has been constructed in the Saint-Germain church to resemble Notre Dame’s own. A service will be led at midnight on December 24 by Chauvet to a crowd of faithful, including many who would normally worship in the cathedral, accompanied by song from some of Notre Dame’s now-itinerant choir.
The cathedral’s iconic Gothic sculpture “The Virgin of Paris”, from which some say Notre Dame owes its name, is also on display in the new godly annex. The 14th-century masterpiece, which measures around two metres (six feet) and depicts Mary and baby Jesus, has come to embody the officials’ message of hope following the fire, after it was spared from destruction by a “miracle”.
“It’s a miraculous virgin. Why? Because at the time of the fire, the vault of the cathedral completely crashed. There were stones everywhere, but she was spared. She could have naturally received the vault on her head and have been completely crushed,” Chauvet said.
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He recalled the moment on the night of the fire when he discovered it was saved, as he was holding hands with French President Emmanuel Macron on the cathedral’s forecourt.Cathedral officials carefully chose Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois as the new temporary home because of its proximity to Notre Dame, just next to the Louvre, allowing ease of movement for clerics who lived near the cathedral. Also, because of its prestigious history.
It was once a royal church that boasted among its faithful French kings, in the days when they lived in the nearby Louvre Palace. The kings, Chauvet explained, would simply cross the esplanade to come and attend Mass.