Sunday edition

Springtime in Paris! Cherry blossoms and tulips, daffodils and hyacinths, and the chestnut trees just putting out their leaves: it’s all happening at once. It is a riot of colour and fragrance, and here we are in the midst of it, David and I and Flat Matt.

We are here in no small part thanks to St. Matthew’s: that shoebox with the world on its cover that you gave us turned out to be far more than a shoebox as it held a gift from the people of St Matt’s that put us on a plane to France! In this busy, beautiful city, I am thinking of all of you at St Matt's with love and thanks.

What follows in this ‘Sunday edition’ are some of Flat Matt’s adventures, mainly Matthean, but with a little ordinary life thrown in too.

Notre Dame de Paris! This remarkable church was Flat Matt’s first stop, after we arrived at our apartment fresh (or not so fresh!) off the plane to discover the water was turned off for two days. Our home is, however, a very cozy home steps from the Métro and winding Parisian streets full of school kids on their way to school and café-goers and people basking in the sun in the Jardins du Luxembourg, not to mention a medieval church or two.

Having discovered all the best (or not!) local public toilets, we arrived at Notre Dame as the setting sun turned the old church golden. We walked in through the West Façade with its three magnificent portals full of sculptures. 

The sculptures tell a story: Over our head as we entered by the right-hand portal, Joachim and Anna were enjoying baby Mary (they are Mary`s parents; it is the church of Notre Dame, Our Lady, and so her life is intertwined with the life of Jesus throughout the church). 

As they are married, over to the side, a little lute-playing man frolics nearby. 

At the very centre of the façade, Mary and the baby Jesus rise high above all the rest, even the 28 kings of Judah --from Matthew's gospel -- thus setting kings and would-be kings straight as to the limits of their power.

Inside the church we stopped in our tracks: gone was the dank, dark old church we remembered. In its place clean white stone soars in slender perfect columns, past the clerestory sparkling with stained glass, all the way, it seems, to heaven. 

Chandeliers light the space and wall sconces gleam on the walls. Mary and Jesus greet you as you enter, high on a column at one side, and a deep, wide brass bowl with a worked top reflecting 1000 points of light beckons you in. The bowl surely recalls at once a baptismal font and the great bronze bowls of Solomon`s temple in Jerusalem of old. 

Ahead, quite far ahead down the long nave, Mary and the child in a starry sky again look down on you from a boss on the ceiling at the centre of the transept while gargoyle faces stand guard on either side.

The transept glows with the deep blues and greens and reds of the enormous rose windows at either side; the north window, with Mary enthroned holding Christ the King at its centre, dates from 1250.

The long nave aisle draws your eye to this transept, and the altar and cross beyond it, where in the midst of all this light and colour, with another great bronze bowl for an altar table, the Eucharist is celebrated.

Everything tells a story, the story of the faith, from the friezes of the façade to the stained glass windows to the chapels around the sides of the church. On the left (north) side, each chapel is dedicated to one of the great Old Testament figures of our faith: Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah. On the other side, the saints of the church, especially of France, especially St Louis, the 13^th century King Louis IX, revered throughout France, who fed the poor, cared for lepers, established a just system of arbitration, built hospitals and La Sainte Chapelle and founded the Collège de la Sorbonne, now Sorbonne University. His life is celebrated in St George`s Chapel, where in a set of stained glass windows he charges to battle in blue armor atop a green-clad horse. 

His window is next to St Stephen preaching the gospel and being martyred for his faith, and St George slaying the fiery dragon: history, Bible and legendary saints all together, together telling the power of the faith to conquer the world`s dragons. In this same chapel, right under the statue of St George and the fire-breathing dragon, there is a cross covered in melted lead from Notre Dame's ceiling, and a fireman`s helmet, in thanksgiving for the firefighters who at risk of their lives helped save this church in the fire of 2019.

The faith is alive! The biblical stories are still by the grace of God being worked out in the life of the faithful. Again and again the chapels and the windows make this point. In Noah`s chapel Flat Matt found his namesake, for there at the centre of the chapel is a gleaming wooden baptismal font held up by the figures of the four evangelists, Matthew in pride of place.

 

Above, on the chapel wall, white sea creatures swim in the blue sea and doves descend in two Matisse tapestries: Old Testament and New Testament come together as the waters of the flood merge into the water of baptism and Noah`s dove figures forth the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus – and through him on us – in baptism, announcing the greening of the world and of our hearts.

In the Abraham chapel that follows, the Oak of Mamre in another tapestry stands tall on the walls. At the Oak of Mamre Abraham hosted the three messengers of God who told him that he and Sarah would have a child, the child in whom God had told Abraham he would become a great nation; the child in whom, God also had said in Gen 12, he would be a blessing to all nations. On the opposite wall, St Paul is knocked off his horse by the light of Christ and becomes the great apostle to the nations. At the centre of the chapel, a missionary baptizes a young man from the south seas. All nations! To the ends of the earth the good news Christ offers goes out.

On the other side, a chapel stands opposite the Abraham chapel. It is dedicated to St Paul Chen, a young French missionary who at age 23, in the late 1800s, was executed in China for proclaiming the gospel. Now the church in China, even though it must often worship in secret, is one of the fastest growing churches in the world. In its stones, Notre Dame sings the ancient promises of God and their power. And on Sunday morning at the Mass, the priest speaking in French and English and Italian welcomed all the people from all the lands who had gathered to praise God together in that place. Thus God`s promise first spoken to Abraham continues to speak, even to me, even today!

And one last word of hope. I stood looking at the story of Jesus` life carved in 14<sup>th</sup> century wood around the choir. Shepherds (from Luke`s gospel) and magi (from Matthew's gospel) happily stand side by side 

and Herod orders the slaughter of the children with a devil on his back 

As I looked, I heard a small voice beside me asking why there was a boy in a tree watching Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. 

It was a little girl with her Dad and Grandma. None of them knew why there was a boy in a tree, and so I asked whether I could help. We talked about how the children sang Jesus`praises as he rode into the city on that day – this day we now celebrate, Palm Sunday, and how the people cut branches and threw them down for Jesus to ride on. That boy in the tree is cutting the tree branches and throwing them down. We talked about the devil on King Herod`s back, and the poor children who died, and the one Wise Man who looks right out at you as you stand looking up, as if to say, `Stay awake!` We talked about the angels and the shepherds and the tender face of Mary. As we were leaving each other, the Grandma asked me where I taught, and when she found out I was from Canada, she took my hand. `Can you forgive us?` she said. I didn`t know what she meant – and then I realized: they were American. We spoke words of friendship and left each other with lighter hearts, there beneath the cross in an old cathedral miles away from both our lands.

As we enter this great week of Christ`s reconciling cross and resurrection, we can think on God`s promises, to Abraham, to Noah, to Mary and in Jesus Christ, his great and lasting word of  hope to us and to our world. You are in our hearts and prayers this week.