The Need For Holiness in a Secular World

A photo snapped live of Notre-Dame de Paris burning on Monday evening

I cannot imagine how many millions of people worldwide watched the fire unfolding at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Between straight journalism coverage, and the live-streaming from hundreds of smartphones around the city, we sat transfixed, wondering whether a piece of our physical cultural heritage would survive the night. Coverage of the al-Aqsa Mosque fire was more sporadic, but probably because the mosque is harder for outsiders to see.

Most interesting for me, the coverage crossed religious bounds. The most direct reportage of Notre-Dame, not surprisingly, came from France and Britain, the closest large countries. These are countries where the plurality religion is now “no religion.” Yet one needn’t have any specific faith to recognize that the possible destruction of these two iconic sanctuaries cuts into something shared in our culture: something valuable, historic, even—dare I say—holy.

The retreat of religion from modern life has made holiness a loaded concept. I contend, though, that it shouldn’t. Rudolf Otto writes, in The Idea of the Holy, that in its oldest form, calling something holy doesn’t mean calling it “godly” or “pure.” Calling something holy means calling it “separate” or “set apart.” Holy places, holy experiences, holy times are those which we divide from our mundane continuity and recognize as unique.

This may mean having special direct connection to divinity, but that’s only one kind of holiness. We’ll perhaps see this most directly in the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. Whether the aged former king in Oedipus at Colonus or the exiled master warrior in Philoctetes, both these characters are punished for stepping on “holy ground.” This isn’t ground ritually consecrated, like a church sanctuary; in these plays, the holy ground isn’t even marked.

But it’s set apart from ordinary use, and humans aren’t supposed to walk there.

We all have experience with the holy, or anyway a longing for holiness, even without any particular faith. Some people find holiness in churches, mosques, and temples. Others find holiness in the people who congregate in churches, mosques, and temples.Still others find it in the Louvre, the National Mall in Washington, or their local veterans’ memorial. More would find holiness in the Olympic National Park (supposedly the quietest place in America), hiking from coast to coast, or in a boat on the ocean.

The al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. (Because of Jerusalem's urban design,
few good photos apparently exist of Monday's brief fire in action.)

What transcendent meaning we ascribe to holiness almost doesn’t matter. Holiness isn’t about getting close to God; it’s about a place carved out in life. A place where we are guests, visitors, a place where we’re invited in but never permanent residents. Both Notre-Dame and al-Aqsa have stood, inviolate, for nearly a millennium, surviving wars, occupations, tyrants, and atheists. They are different from our ordinary lives. Even without God, that makes them holy.

In both cases, modern life rushes right up to the perimeters of their sanctuaries. Nearly every photograph or live-stream of Notre-Dame burning is shot between high-rises, Second Empire apartment blocks, and other new-ish development. The sightlines around al-Aqsa are so crowded that I couldn’t even find a good picture of the fire. But in both cases, modernity crowds around the edges of the holy development, and stops.

Because these places are separate.

We watched these landmarks of holiness burn, fearful that we might be watching a dimunition of potential holiness in modern life. Even if we aren’t Christian or Muslim ourselves, we recognize we have diminishing opportunities to experience holiness. Keeping afloat means dedicating longer hours to work. Childrearing expectations have changed, and we’re required to hover over our kids constantly. Very little in life is set apart.

We have fewer places we go simply to be in that place. We have fewer times reserved to exist entirely in that moment, surrounded by people also entirely in that moment. As we discovered at Standing Rock in 2016, those who only value life by its dollar signs are rushing to run pipelines and strip-mines through the few sacred spaces remaining. Modernity cannot stomach something truly set aside.

Thankfully both Notre-Dame and al-Aqsa survived their fires. The spaces remain set apart from modern activities. The surge of mourning we witnessed on Monday and Tuesday, which crossed lines of religion and irreligion, reflects humanity’s desire to step outside ourselves and exist someplace, sometime, outside space and time. Fortunately, such places will continue to exist, at least for a while.

Hopefully, as we reckon with the feelings we felt this week, we’ll also muster gumption enough to create holiness. Because it isn’t enough to mourn when the holy burns.