Entering this space is meant to be transcendent, bringing you closer to God, who on all other occasions according to Timothy 6:16, “lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.” The experience is what some call a taste of the “beatific vision” — in Christian theology the moment at which one at last encounters God in heaven, seeing Him face to face, a personal reception — the payoff of salvation so to speak, through intellectual and spiritual epiphany.
I did not experience the beatific vision on the many trips I took to Notre Dame. Rather, I returned over and over to be in the presence of an unfathomable existence, to witness a miracle in a tangible way — the kind of awe-inspiring grandeur reminiscent of feeling saved.
The extent of what has been lost is abstruse. Notre Dame is a space where Napoleon had once been coronated, that with its rose windows, portals, transepts, or the 18th-century 8,000 pipe Great Organ, commands you — whether or not you answer — to believe. I did not answer, but I could stand in that holy place, skimming the edge of a familiar, faraway joy.
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