By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

PARIS, France – The moon glows high and full in a cloudy sky above the Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Below, the prayerful, the penitent and the merely curious enter its doors. They are among the 12 million people per year who seek solace or stimulus in this massive Gothic structure, built more than 800 years ago as a tribute to God.

Because it is the Christmas season, the stream of visitors is steady. Some kneel and make the sign of the cross. Others bow their heads in silent prayer. Others simply stop and stare, stunned by contemplation of something so large, so beautiful, so enduring.

I always have to be reminded of the hold faith has on the French soul.

Because Paris, in particular, is so worldly, so stylish, so chic, it is easy to overlook the powerful and abiding presence of religion here.

Many years ago, when I first traveled to France, I hiked my way up the hilly, twisty lanes in Montmartre to the Sacre-Coeur Basilica as the day faded. When the sun dropped low in the western sky, the white of the cathedral walls seemed to shimmer in the dimming light.

I lingered then and there, trying to will the moment and light to linger with me. But night fell, and I was left with a potent memory that I had sensed something sublime, a touch of the otherworldly as I stood on this very real earth.

On that same trip, I traveled to Chartres to see the famous cathedral. Constructed, like Notre-Dame, over decades in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, it is a marvel of art and architecture, a sight of surpassing beauty.

I followed a tour guide, a retired academic in late middle age wearing a frayed blue suit, through the church. He walked the small group of us up to each of the famed stained-glass windows. He explained that the windows weren’t simply pieces of exquisite art, but teaching tools designed to instruct on questions and stories of faith.

In an age in which few were literate, the windows could inform the faithful in ways that words could not.

The windows, beautiful though they are, are not what has drawn pilgrims for centuries to Chartres.

Somewhere in the cathedral’s catacombs lies the Sancta Carmisa, supposedly the tunic worn by the Virgin Mary when she gave birth to Christ.

Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, the faithful came to Chartres, eager, sometimes, desperate for the Virgin Mother’s intercession.

Even when I was still a young and somewhat callow man, the thought of so many souls aching for a whisper from the divine, moved me. Inside that gorgeous cathedral, with the celebrated centuries-old stained-glass windows staring down at me, I bowed my head and offered a prayer for all who had come to this place hoping for God’s blessings.

The memory stirs me still.

I watch as the mass of humanity moves in and out of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Many come, it is true, just to gawk.

But many others come because a church – any church, this church – is a place of refuge in a troubled world. It is where we go when the light of our lives seems to dim, and we seek the warmth of something greater than ourselves.

This is a turbulent time, one filled with confusion, pain and fear.

This church, though, has seen many such times through the ages, and offered refuge along the way to souls too numerous to count.

It does so still.

A street band behind me begins to play holiday tunes. I listen and smile.

I look up at the night sky, the clouds and the full moon that seems both so close and so distant at the same time, and I watch the people move into the old church that seems almost as eternal as the sky and moon.

Something within me whispers of peace.

My head bows.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.