It is hard to describe the loss of Notre Dame. When the poet Rainer Maria Rilke lived in Paris, each evening on his way home, he stopped as he crossed the Siene on the Île de la Cité to watch the sun set over Notre Dame. The darkening ancient towers silent against the new, awakening, electric […]
“[T]he cathedral provokes a contemptuous world.”[1] That’s a line from a little poem by Rilke; it’s something Rodin had said. Rilke, the poet, for a time worked for Rodin, the sculptor, until they had a falling out as artists often do.
For Saint Augustine, that great doctor of the Church and light of theology and civilization, his journey to the faith, his conversion to Christianity, his path to baptism was very painful.