Finding A Spiritual Home

Saturday, July 25, 2015

     In my effort to be a good neighbor, I've given up cycling for the summer, hoping I'll be able to resume in the Fall.  I've also started going to the vigil Mass at l'Eglise de Saint Vincent in Carassonne, so I don't have to sit outside Notre Dame du Cros with Beau for most of the rite celebrated there Sundays at 6:00 p.m.

     This is all possible because my neighbor, Chantal, is willing to take Beau for a few hours Saturdays and Sundays.  I pay her a modest sum and in return, Beau gets to play with her dog, Baboon, a black bear-like ten-year old of indeterminate ancestry.  Baboon loves Beau, and the feeling is mutual, so everyone is happy.

     Driving to Carcassonne for a few hours on Saturday is just the break I need.  Saint Vincent was built between the 14th and 15th centuries, so it is not as old as 12th century Saint Nazaire, but it, too, is Gothic.  Saint Vincent's organ has a sonority that reflects its later construction: the instrument can "sing" the high notes of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, but it can also delve into its lowest registers and fill the lofty vaults of the church, over 150' high.

     There is a free organ concert in Saint Vincent every Saturday at 11:00 a.m.  There is another free organ concert at Saint Nazaire at 6:00 p.m. on Sundays.  The vigil Mass and the Sunday concert are becoming part of my weekend routine.  When I was in college, I learned that the vaulting ceilings in Gothic churches were constructed to help lead the faithful to contemplation of God's immanence and majesty.  That was only a cliche to me, visiting neo-Gothic churches around New York.  Here in the Languedoc, with its forty-eight abbeys and convents; and an equally impressive number of medieval churches, it all becomes much more real to me.

      Case in point: I never fail to be impressed by the plaque commemorating the preaching of Saint Dominic at Saint Nazaire during Lent in 1213, eight hundred and two years ago.  His subject was the error of Catharism, and he preached in the fourth year of the twenty-year Albigensian Crusade (1209-1221).    Anyone interested in the subject would do well to read Jonathan Sumption's eponymous and wonderful  book on the crusade that took its name from Albi, a town in the neighboring Tarn departement, another hotbed of Catharism.

      History is alive in the Languedoc and celebrated.  The French are often held to be too caught up with memorials and history, but there are few places where a very old past comes to life as vividly as it does in Carcassonne.  I would be disingenuous to deny that I go to Saint Nazaire and Saint Vincent as much for the spur my imagination gets inside their walls, as for the Communion that heals my soul, and the music that lifts my heart.