Two Highlights After a Long Day

We are still adjusting to our new time zone, and although we did not have much planned for the day, it has been long. Two highlights worth mentioning include attending Mass at a Melikite Church and visiting the catacombs of Paris.

We stumbled upon the church on our first day in Paris and thought that it would be worth coming back to. Since they only offer weekday Masses on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we decided to make time for it today. The Melikite Church is in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, though it belongs to the cultural heritage of the Eastern Orthodox, using the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The Divine Liturgy, which is their name for Mass, was again in French, and so we understood very little of the prayers. I’m not sure if we would have understood more had it been in Greek. Neverthless, we tried to follow along as best we could by making the gestures of a parishioner in front of us  and murmuring some prayers in English when we recognized the Creed, Our Father, or other prayers common to our own liturgy. We could not understand much, yet the liturgy had a special chatacteristic that was both intensly human and divine. It seemed to bring religous truths to a human and tangible level while yet showing the radical transendence of God and our dependence on him. In all, it was a beautiful experience and we’ll worth the hour long walk from the Eiffel Tower. You know what they say: “when in Paris attend a Divine Liturgy that originated in the East.”

Our second note worthy stop were the Parisian Catacombs. The catacombs are the final resting place of about 6 million sets of Bones from various graveyards throughout Paris. The bones were transferred there at a time when the graveyards were filling up too fast and various old mining systems were found to be collapsing throughout the city. Following one such tunnel, it took a good 10 or 15 minutes before we finally arrived at the Ossuarium. After seeing a number of plaques in French, I began to hope for a few in Latin so that I might put my education to use (we take some latin for seminary and I am also a classics double major). I quickly got my wish and no sooner did I stop to pause and read when a man asked whether we spoken english. “Yes.” “And french?” To which we replied, “No, but we do speak a little latin!” The remainder of the time was spent translating various latin plaques and saying some prayers for the dead. It was an eerie experience with walls of bones to our left and right, but it certainly made me think of the significance of life and inevitability of death. 

Together, these two events from today served to remind me how close God is to us and how strongly we ought to seek him.

-Michael