Restored Notre Dame celebrates first Mass

Eric Tschaen / Abaca Press / AlamyThe Tablet

“Let us not hesitate always to repeat the psalm we’ve just heard – What marvels the Lord worked for us! Indeed we were glad.”

A stormy weekend dampened but did not delay the formal reopening of the restored Notre Dame de Paris on 7 and 8 December in ceremonies worthy of one of the most famous buildings in the world.

On a wet Sunday, Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris led the first public Mass in the cathedral since its near fatal blaze five years ago. The 170 invited French and foreign bishops, almost all in the same colourful vestments designed for the occasion, concelebrated.

The long entry procession included representatives of the archdiocese’s 106 parishes, each carrying specially made banners. The stone walls were unusually bright and the grand organ whispered and thundered as before.

“This morning, the pain of 15 April 2019 is erased, in a way,” Archbishop Ulrich said. “Let us not hesitate always to repeat the psalm we’ve just heard – What marvels the Lord worked for us! Indeed we were glad.”

The previous evening almost 50 foreign dignitaries, including US President-elect Donald Trump, First Lady Jill Biden, the UK’s Prince William and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, had sat in the front rows with 2,500 other guests for the cathedral’s formal reopening.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron, who held a three-way meeting with Trump and Zelenskyy earlier, thanked the workers and artists who kept to his ambitious five-year deadline. This was “the happy metaphor of what a nation is and what the world should be … Our cathedral tells us how much meaning, transcendence, helps us to live in this world.”

He added “vive Notre Dame” to the motto “vive la Republique, vive la France” he uses to end his political speeches.

Transformed Notre Dame revealed after five year reconstruction

Out of the flames, into the light – Notre-Dame restored

Macron was originally due to speak outside the cathedral, in accordance with France’s strict separation of Church and State, but this was moved inside because of the rain and wind lashing the monument. A planned concert was recorded on Friday and televised a day later.

Reportedly piqued by his exclusion from the liturgy, he made his own visit a week earlier with live television cameras, allowing him rather than Archbishop Ulrich to present the beautifully restored interior to the French.

The Sunday service saw Ulrich lay five relics into the altar before consecrating it with holy chrism and burning incense at the centre and four corners. Deacons wiped away the oil and arranged an altar cloth, candles and cross, signaling the start of the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Leaders of France’s Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim faiths also attended the opening service.

Pope Francis did not, making new cardinals in Rome on Saturday and closing a conference on popular religion in the Mediterranean area on the French island of Corsica on Sunday.

In a message read out in Notre Dame, the pontiff urged Archbishop Ulrich to “welcome generously and freely” all visitors, putting himself against a government suggestion that tourists might be charged entry.

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