The cathedral built to direct humanity’s eyes toward heaven and eternity is re-opening its doors.
The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris will reopen on Dec. 8, 2024, the traditional day for honoring the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is a fitting day since the cathedral is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary (“Notre Dame” means “Our Lady” in French). This magnificent Gothic structure—one of the most famous churches in the world—is about to emerge like a butterfly from its chrysalis of reconstruction following a devastating fire in 2019.
Notre-Dame is linked to the soul of France, standing as a symbol of her religious and political life through the centuries. It marks the heart of France both literally and figuratively: A plaque outside the cathedral indicates that it’s the point from which all roads in France begin.
A Marker of World History
Built to direct humanity’s eyes toward heaven and eternity through its surging spires, buttresses, and glittering stained-glass, the massive structure has continued to soar into the sky century after century, unmoved by the sea-changes of the world and often forming the backdrop of key events in French and world history.
According to “The Age of Chivalry,” a book put out by National Geographic, Notre-Dame was the site where the Third Crusade was first preached; the place where Henry VI became King of France; the church where King Philip IV rode his horse to the altar to offer thanks for a military victory; the home for Jesus’s Crown of Thorns, brought back by St. Louis from Jerusalem in 1239; the symbol that the French revolutionaries tried to transform into a temple of reason in the 18th century; the structure in which Napoleon crowned himself emperor; and the church whose bells rang out over Paris in 1944 to mark the city’s liberation during World War II.
The building’s story begins in the 4th century when a warlike Frankish King, Clovis, converted to Christianity. Paris became the capital of the kingdom of the Franks, one of the first Christian European kingdoms. In the 6th century, Paris’s first cathedral, Saint-Etienne, was erected. As the centuries rolled by, Paris grew in size and cultural stature, becoming a hub of intellectual and artistic activity. It boasted one of the first and most famous of European universities, the University of Paris.
