Charles Peguy
Excerpt from The Mystery of the Second Virtue
(…)
You have to go up
To the one who is the most imposing.
Because she is also the most maternal.
To the one who is infinitely white.
Because she is also the mother of the Good Shepherd,
of the Man who hoped.
(And he was right to hope, since he succeeded in bringing back the sheep).
To her who is infinitely celestial.
Because it is also infinitely earthly.
To her who is infinitely eternal.
Because it is also infinitely temporal.
To the one who is infinitely above us.
Because she is also infinitely among us.
To her who is the mother and queen of angels.
Because she is also the mother and queen of men.
Queen of both, land regent.
(…)
To the one who is Mary.
Because she is full of grace.
To her who is full of grace
Because she is with us.
To the one who is with us.
Because the Lord is with her.
To the one who intercedes.
Because she is blessed among all women.
And that Jesus, the fruit of her womb, is blessed.
To her who is full of grace.
Because she is full of grace.
She who is infinitely queen
Because she is the most humble of creatures.
Because she was a poor woman, a miserable woman, a poor Jew from
Judaea.
To the one who is infinitely far away
Because it is infinitely close.
To the one who is the highest princess
Because she is the most humble woman.
To the one who is closest to God
Because she is closest to men.
To her who is infinitely saved
Because in turn it saves infinitely.
To the one who is most pleasing to God.
To her who is full of grace
Because it is also full of efficiency
NOW.
And because she is full of grace and full of effectiveness
And at the hour of our death so be it.
(…)
The conversion of Paul Claudel
Works in prose (1913) – December 25, 1886, Notre-Dame de Paris
“I attended high mass with mediocre pleasure. Then, having nothing better to do, I returned to vespers. (…) I myself was standing in the crowd, near the second pillar at the entrance to the choir on the right side of the sacristy. And it was then that the event that dominated my entire life occurred. In an instant my heart was touched and I believed. I believed, with such a force of adhesion, with such an uprising of my whole being, with such a powerful conviction, with such a certainty leaving no room for any kind of doubt that, since then, all the books, all the reasoning, all the chances of a troubled life, have not been able to shake my faith, nor, to tell the truth, touch it. I suddenly had the heartbreaking feeling of innocence, of the eternal childhood of God, a revelation
ineffable. »
The Virgin at Noon by Paul Claudel
It’s noon. I see the church open. You have to go in. Mother of Jesus Christ, I do not come to pray. I have nothing to offer and nothing to ask. I only come, Mother, to look at you. Looking at you, crying with happiness, knowing that I am your son and that you are here. Just for a moment while everything stops. Noon ! To be with you, Mary, in this place where you are. Say nothing, but only sing Because our hearts are too full, Like the blackbird who follows his idea In these kinds of sudden couplets. Because you are beautiful, because you are immaculate, The woman in Grace finally restored, The creature in its first honor And in its final blossoming, Such as it came from God in the morning From its original splendor. Ineffably intact because you are The Mother of Jesus Christ, Who is the truth in your arms, and the only hope And the only fruit. Because you are there
woman, The Eden of ancient forgotten tenderness, Whose gaze suddenly finds the heart and brings out the accumulated tears, Because it is midday, Because it is today, Because you are there forever, Simply because you are Mary, Simply because you exist, Mother of Jesus Christ, be thanked!
Dominique Ponneau
The grace of a cathedral page 318
Notre-Dame de Paris,
Strasbourg, the blue cloud, 2012
Beautiful statue of Notre-Dame; statue symbol of Notre-Dame de Paris; symbol more famous than any other, except that of the Pietà at the back of the choir. This Notre-Dame, grandiose and graceful, stands upright, to the right, at the threshold of the choir. Our Lady of the Pietà is seated, on the axial ogive at the bottom, under the golden cross, crowned with the white lightning of the Holy Spirit, forever tearing away the darkness. The sorrowful Lady holds her dead Son on her knees and, with her outstretched arms, calls the silence of Heaven to witness. The Lady of Reception holds this same Son on her arm. But he is a child Son. The Lady of Reception is the Mother of a small child. Later, when he is thirty years old, he will rest, dead, peaceful, on his maternal pain. Today, at the entrance to the choir, he is still the joyful, almost facetious child of his young Mother. From the entrance to the back of the choir, between these two statues of Notre-Dame, extend not only the times of the centuries, but those of the intimate and the ultimate, those of origins and accomplishment. The endless duration of the mystery, in which the fleeting life of our lives promised to eternity unfolds. Our Lady of the Threshold is the one to whom we humbly come here to pray. The one who seems to have been here since the beginning and must remain there forever. However, she was not always there. It emerged from the chisel of a sculptor around the middle of the 14th century, intended,
with many other companions, at the small Saint-Aignan church, in the canons’ cloister, then located on the north side of the cathedral. Saved from the anti-Christian savagery of the time of the Terror, it was placed at the entrance to Notre-Dame, at the portal of the Virgin, replacing another statue destroyed in these same times of delirium. Finally, it was installed in this place, where, formerly, at the entrance to the choir, an altar was dedicated to Our Lady. Thus Our Lady of the Threshold traveled, over the centuries, from threshold to threshold, until coming, at the threshold of the choir, to constitute the bow of the sanctuary, the stern of which is the image of the dead God, victor forever from death.
Our Lady of the threshold, Our Lady of the bow of the vessel of our conversion, is an elegant and serious Mother; a Mother with a long dress, a long mantle, punctuated with long graceful folds, like the waves of a calm, moving sea; a powerful Mother, whose swaying does not alter but discreetly suggests majesty; a virginal and royal Mother who, in her right hand, holds the flower of the Kingdom of lilies and whose beautiful face with abundant hair as soft as waves is surrounded by a crown. The child of Our Lady plays without ceremony with the top of his Mother’s veil. But this game evokes a mystery, that of the husband’s love. This Child, who is still only a child, is already the Bridegroom; and the young mother, who carries him on her arm, is the Mother Church who, in this Child, carries the Bridegroom of the Church: her Son and her God. The sphere that this Child carries is the fruit of love, once again virginal, of Paradise, and which symbolizes the cosmos reconciled under its scepter… Also the beautiful face of the Mother and that of her Son-Husband have not no expression, immersed as they are in infinity. Should we think about all this when we come to pray to Notre-Dame de Paris, at the foot of her image? Just look at her. To entrust him with what we want. To entrust to Her what is good to entrust to Her. Who knows? Like on a Christmas afternoon, when,
not far from her, to the singing of the Magnificat, Claudel, suddenly and forever, is converted, perhaps each of us will be converted, perhaps without fanfare, without even being aware of it. Perhaps then, in front of her grave beauty and that of her Son, each one will begin, or will begin again, their crossing from the Lady of the Threshold to the Lady of the Port, of the ultimate port, whose eternal light will tear apart at night.
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