Paris
PACKED PARIS - feeling blessed!
Paris is a rude awakening after my rural wanderings, but my apartment though tiny, is just across the river from Notre Dame. The crowds are intense so I decide to head for the 8am Saturday morning opening of the cathedral. But already, the queue snakes all the way around the square – hundreds of people. From last night I know there is a special Mass entrance so I head for that and walk straight in!! Everyone is bunched up until it fully opens but I’m ‘guided’ to wait on the left. Choristers are practicing filling the space with sacred chants so I'm happy - then I’m in – almost first!! I wander the pilgrim’s route slowly. Colours here are muted – both art and the stained glass windows.
There are so many relics (more on that later).
The choristers are still practicing and a sense of expectation is building. White robed Priests emerge from the Sacristy alongside where I happen to be studying some icons. I decide to wait and see what happens. Young priests are preparing the silver frankinsence boat and lighting the thuriber (insence burner) close by. I draw near watching, although there are still hundreds of tours passing by. The organ begins. Wow, can I be so lucky??
Now there are four mitred Bishops and about twenty to thirty priests greeting each other as they begin to form a queue – Bishops at the back. We are all paused and cordoned off but I am somehow at the very front! Tall, pillared candles are carried forward, the silver cross is raised and the clergy form up and move off in the entrance procession.
Our barrier is lifted and we are allowed forward, following closely in the wake of the priests. It feels very weird and I imagine I am walking through a haze of holiness!! We are then urged to proceed down the side nave towards the exit but I pause beside a pillar where there is a bench and sit down quietly. I find I am directly opposite the Bishop and his party. I’m certain I will be moved along like everyone else but I sit quietly beside my pillar with a ringside view and am ignored as hundreds of people are hustled past me. It’s all quite wonderful sitting there in Notre Dame witnessing and absorbing ! None of the ‘ushers’ even glance at me. Perhaps I am invisible?