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Something beautiful happened late last year. As 2024 drew to a close, the world celebrated the rebuilding of the glorious Notre Dame de Paris, which just five and a half years earlier was engulfed in horrific flames. At the reopening ceremony in Paris, its bells rang for the first time since the fire.
The pleasant ringing reminded me of a poem that presents something no less beautiful than the French Gothic monument: its builders. This memory, in turn, led to an epiphany, which is appropriated as Epiphany, or christian celebration of the revelation of God as human in Jesus Christ, is rapidly approaching.
“Cathedral Builders”, written by the Welsh poet John Ormond and published in the magazine “Poetry Wales” in 1965, lyrically reminds us of a very simple truth with profound consequences. It is often ordinary people who create the most extraordinary beauty, especially when the company has grandiose reach.
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Ormond exalts the sanctifying work of countless artisans whose identities are known only in history, but whose work built the Great cathedrals of medieval Europe.. Most of them knew that they would not live to see the final fruits of their enormous multigenerational effort. They went upstairs anyway.
Using lofty but simple language, typical of the ethereal work of earthly men, Ormond praises the anonymous workers who “raised hewn rock to the sky” during the day and then “came down to dinner and beer” at night. Understood in this way, a cathedral is no more sublime than its most humble builder. Each one is an icon for the other.
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I thought of “Cathedral Builders” as I reflected on the approximately 2,000 workers it took to rebuild Notre Dame within French President Emmanuel Macron ambitious five-year deadline. Unlike their medieval counterparts, the vast majority of these artisans lived to see their loving mission accomplished.
However, like these ancestors, they created lasting beauty by committing their lives to something external and greater than themselves. Amid still-burning embers in 2019, life imitated art as these cathedral builders once again chose to make art of their lives. Notre Dame is his masterpiece.
I think that choice is exactly the ennobling kind that the second-century theologian St. Irenaeus had in mind when he said that “the glory of God is the fully alive man.” Aesthetic achievements aside, are there any lessons for the rest of us, those who lack the talent to make clerestories rise? I think so.
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Most of us are not called to build cathedrals of stone, but we are all called to build cathedrals of our lives. Some acts will be elevated (the spire of the cathedral), for example, a soldier sacrificing his life in combat to save his brother in arms. Other acts will be simple: the mortar on a humble path will appear like a smile to a stranger passing by on the street.
Priests and clerics arrive to attend an inaugural mass, with the consecration of the high altar, at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, five and a half years after a fire devastated the Gothic masterpiece, as part of ceremonies to commemorate The Reopening of the cathedral after its restoration, in Paris, France, on Sunday, December 8, 2024. (Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool Photo via AP)
But big and small, they are all acts of love, of wanting the good of the other and stone by figurative stone, they will surely build a cathedral throughout life. It may not be as tangible or visible to man as Notre Dame de Paris, but it is no less real or less beautiful. Furthermore, what is invisible to man is not invisible.
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Therein lies the beauty of “Cathedral Builders” and the most inspiring thing about The exemplary builders of Notre Dame. By reminding a weary world to see both the small in the big and the big in the small, they provide a model not only for a well-built cathedral, but for something much more important: a life well lived.
That is my epiphany as Epiphany approaches. I am grateful for the poet John Ormond, for the brave workers of Notre Dame de Paris, and for all who strive to build the cathedrals of their lives. They remind us that there is beauty in both the high and the simple.
