Votre Dame, the great frustration

Notre Dame of Paris has just been reopened with great pomp and ceremony. Two episodes that took place there freeze my enthusiasm as I pass in front of its towers.

The first took place in 1593: the son of the heroic Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret, Henry IV, had besieged Paris and was preparing to conquer it when he was offered an agreed solution: he would be recognised as king if he renounced his Protestant faith; he did so by celebrating mass in Notre Dame and said: "Paris is well worth a mass".

That sentence has been used to justify so many inconsistencies and betrayals of one's own identity in exchange for miserable claudications disguised as pragmatism. Europe would be different today if Henry had remained true to his faith.

The second has to do with Beethoven. In 1802, while Napoleon was moving across Europe, Beethoven composed his 3rd Symphony, the Eroica.

It is considered by some to be his best. It was breathtaking; it is worth listening to; it won't leave anyone unmoved.

Its first movement shakes you with resounding breaks, moving forward in a consistently triumphant tone.

The second movement I'm sure you've heard many times. It is a funeral march; I think he introduces it because there is nothing that better expresses the assessment of our life, its greatness and misery.

We have all thought about what our funeral will be like, who will be there and what their thoughts and feelings will be.

Our funeral is the best opportunity to make a complete summary of our life, and we hope that others will understand this and understand what was at the heart of our identity, why we live the way we do; that is why we evangelicals always dream that by understanding this, someone will be converted.

For Beethoven, the funeral puts the life of the human being integrally in the sight of others and is the opportunity to bring him closer to transcendence and heroism.

This second movement is great and profoundly beautiful; it is a different kind of beauty, settling into stillness, like that of the third movement of the ninth, and so concatenating phrases that go deeper and deeper into the soul.

It advances towards a final march more solemn than victorious; it seems predetermined and escapes the control of man; it is an unavoidable path that once again reminds us of the message of his 5th Symphony: destiny knocks at the door of man.

The third movement returns to the vibrant rhythm with bursts of light and optimism, and draws us into a glorious finale. And now I dare to say a heresy: for me, the symphony would be perfect if it ended here, but this is an enormous daring.

In any case, it seems that Beethoven was not satisfied with that ending, and prepares a huge new ending; I would suggest that he feels he has more to describe the heroic destiny he has imagined, but does not quite grasp it in its fullness.

That brings us back to Notre Dame. Beethoven had identified his model of greatness in one person, someone who was just overthrowing the Old Regime throughout Europe to bring the light of Freedom: Napoleon.

That is why Beethoven dedicated this symphony to him and put his name at the beginning of the music score.

Napoleon, who until then had identified himself with the role of the Roman consuls, decided to assume the position of emperor and, in a ceremony at Votre Dame attended by the Pope, crowned himself.

That caused Beethoven deep disappointment: "He is nothing but a common mortal! Now, too, he will trample on all the rights of man, he will give himself up to his ambition alone; now he will consider himself superior to all men, he will become a tyrant".

"Is there anything of which one can say, Look, is this something new? It was in the ages that were before us", says Eccl 1.10.

Just now, over two hundred years later, listening to this 3rd Symphony, I realise that the version is directed by Herbert von Karajan, and again the greatness of his performance darkens as I recall its Nazi background.

Beethoven was so angry that he crossed Napoleon's name off the title page of his "Eroica" symphony so hard that he tore up the paper. He later replaced it with this dedication: "To celebrate the memory of a great man".

It was an immense frustration, the same that so many people suffer repeatedly: they rightly perceive that the human being is called to greatness, but when they try to make it a reality, it slips through their fingers like water (Eccl 1.17, 2.1).

Beethoven's second dedication talks about a great unknown man, it is the same dedication to the greatness frustrated by the emptiness that Paul found in Athens: "To the unknown god".

But we believers will be miserable if we smile with hidden satisfaction at this frustration, because the desire for greatness and heroism is rightly placed in the hearts of all human beings: God "has set eternity in their hearts" (Eccl 3.11).

Ultimate greatness, which Beethoven tries to sum up in this symphony, eludes us, and when we think we have it, our misery comes to light, like Napoleon's at Notre Dame.

But thanks to God who came down to dwell among us, thanks to Jesus who recovered for us our full humanity with His heroic greatness: "He made us alive with Him... and having disarmed powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross" (Col 2.13, 15).

Beethoven felt how his own conquest of the heights of music was dramatically cut short by a progressive deafness that was already emerging when he composed the Eroica.

Human beings are created for greatness, but our greatness does not consist in seeing ourselves as free from weaknesses and trials, but in overcoming them, knowing that in all of them "we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Rom 8.37).

If we seek ultimate glory in the human being, we will travel all the paths of Ecclesiastes' frustration.

J.S. Bach discovered the secret of true human glory when he found the referent of it in Jesus, the person who created us, loved us, became human, suffered for us and set us free.

Bach never had to cross out, frustrated, the dedication he always put on his works: "Glory to God alone".

X. Manuel Suárez, secretary general of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance.

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[title]One more year[/title]

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