The Divine Call in the Bells of Notre-Dame
How the bells of Notre-Dame echo humanity’s longing for beauty with insights from St. Basil the Great on our innate desire for the divine
PARIS, FRANCE – The bells rang from Notre-Dame Cathedral for the first time in five years after a devastating fire that gutted the church in 2019. Before the fire, the cathedral was under renovation to restore the spire. Authorities have still not discovered the cause of the fire, though they speculate a stray cigarette or an electrical malfunction likely caused it.
The fire destroyed the wooden roof. A video recording shows the dramatic moment the spire collapsed into the inferno. The fire severely damaged the cathedral’s upper walls. Authorities rescued priceless works of art as the fire blazed on above, and while they recovered most pieces, some had extensive smoke damage. Renovations began immediately, and Notre-Dame is now expected to reopen next month, in December of 2024.
The building of Notre-Dame began in the 12th century and was not completed until the 14th century. Over this period, architectural practice shifted significantly. Though the cathedral is a clear example of French Gothic architecture, with its flying buttresses and rose windows, elements of the earlier Romanesque style are visible near the base of its walls, revealing a gradual shift to its characteristic Gothic style as one looks upward. As Victor Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame writes, “Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of the ages.”
Notre-Dame stands as one of many testaments to man’s inescapable search for beauty. The image of God yearns for the transcendent. Monuments such as Notre Dame point us towards the transcendent. The man who so corrupts himself as to not yearn for beauty is a most miserable person and, ironically, through their misery, reveals their deep need for the beautiful.
During the French Revolution, as revolutionaries aimed to erase all traces of religion in favor of the cult of reason, they could not bring themselves to demolish Notre-Dame. The cathedral endured severe desecration, with the state's seizure of its precious metals and the theft or destruction of major works of art. Yet, Notre-Dame, in its magnificent beauty, proved too precious to wreck. Instead, the revolutionaries repurposed it as their short-lived "Temple of Reason."
Our search for beauty springs from a deep, innate yearning for God. Creating beauty is a moral good because it fulfills the pursuit of beauty and, therefore, the pursuit of God. Conversely, the destruction of beauty without just cause is a moral evil, as it undermines this search for beauty and, in turn, the search for God. The fire at Notre-Dame was a tragedy precisely because it destroyed something profoundly beautiful.
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Beauty is one of the three transcendentals, those virtues that all humans inherently desire, yet transcend the physical world and find their ultimate being in God. These three are truth, goodness, and beauty. These cannot be divorced—what is truly beautiful must also, by necessity, be good and true, and vice versa. We are naturally drawn to beauty for its own sake but also because, within beauty, we find a measure of goodness and truth.
The notion that humanity longs for these transcendentals—truth, goodness, and beauty—has deep roots in orthodox Christianity and even earlier in Greek philosophy. Theologians such as Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas recognized that this philosophy, drawn from observing God’s creation, aligns clearly with Scripture. St. Basil of Caesarea, often referred to as St. Basil the Great, is one such theologian.
Basil, a Church Father in the fourth century, recognizes this pursuit of beauty within the human soul. For Basil, as with many other Patristic theologians, this insatiable desire for beauty was woven into human nature at creation, arising naturally from being made in the image of God. Only God Himself can quench our relentless thirst for what is beautiful, good, and true,
Accordingly, having received a commandment to love God, we have the power to love, which was placed in us as a foundation simultaneously with our first fashioning. And the proof of this does not come from outside us, but anyone can perceive it by himself and in himself.
For by nature we are desirous of beautiful things, though most certainly different things appear beautiful to different people. We have affection for what is close and akin to us without being taught, and we are willingly filled with all good will toward our benefactors.
What, then, is more wondrous than divine beauty? What thought is more pleasant than that of the magnificence of God? What kind of yearning of the soul is so piercing and unbearable as that brought forth by God in the soul purified from all evil, and which from an authentic and true disposition says, “I am wounded by love” [Song 2:5]?
The lightning flashes of the divine beauty are absolutely unutterable and ineffable; speech cannot convey them; the ear cannot receive them. The morning star’s rays, and the moon’s brightness, and the sun’s light, all these are unworthy to be mentioned in comparison to that glory, and are found greatly wanting as analogies to the true light…
So then, human beings by nature are desirous of beautiful things; but the good is in the proper sense beautiful and beloved. Now, God is the good, and all things long after good; hence all things long after God.1
The bells of Notre-Dame ring out once more, and their sound reverberates not only across Paris but also within the depths of the human soul. After years of silence, the bells remind us of our unquenchable longing for beauty—a beauty that calls us toward something greater than ourselves, to God Himself. This desire for God is woven into our very nature.
The ringing bells are more than a celebration of restoration—they call us to remember that, though sin and pain mar our souls, beauty still points us toward the divine and stirs our deepest longing to be pure. In true beauty, we can glimpse the divine harmony that the world was meant to reflect, which only God can fully satisfy. Beauty is not a mere trifle—it is a path that leads to God.
Basil of Caesarea, On the Human Condition, ed. by John Behr and Augustine Casiday, trans. by Nonna Verna Harrison, Popular Patristics Series, Number 30, (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), 113–114.