In which we kiss the Crown of Thorns

The idea of a relic, or religious object, such as a bone from a saint, or a sliver of wood from the cross, is a very important one to Catholics. They preserve such relics carefully for veneration and as a tangible reminder of the faith. One of the most significant of these relics, is the Crown of Thorns, which is housed at the Cathédrale de Notre Dame in Paris. Normally the crown is kept hidden away, but on the first Friday of every month there is a veneration service for the crown, and this year, for the first time, we were able to go to it.

The service was at 3:00, and we arrived shortly before it began, due in large part to some disorganization and poor planning on our part (apparently, we were not supposed to wash that pair of Blaise's pants, since the other pair was the one that was actually visibly dirty), and so we ended up slipping into the back third of the church just as the organ began to play for the procession.  We sat and stood through some singing and scripture passages, and prayers, and then the priest announced that anyone who wished to would be able to come up for personal veneration. We sat and waited, unsure of precisely what was going on, and what we were supposed to do. There were crowds of people up at the front of the alter, and men with long white capes with a stylized red cross on the sides patrolling the aisles. The kids squirmed. People stood up and left the church, and others came and took their places. And we waited. A woman came around with papers about the crown of thorns, which she gave to each of us, in French. (We were offered English, but Blaise insisted that we could all read French.). More people came and left and asked questions of the men in white cloaks, and the kids squirmed and whined some more. And still we waited.

After nearly an hour of this waiting, I at last began to understand the behavior of the people up at the front of the cathedral. They had begun with the people sitting in the wings off to the sides of the alter, and had brought them up by row to venerate the crown. And then, after that, had begun the slow process of allowing those in the main section of the nave to go up, row by row, to the front of the alter to venerate the crown. When they had reached about the midpoint of the nave, it was at last clear what was going on, and we could see the rows of people getting up, one at a time, and moving to the center aisle to go forward. By this point there were only a dozen rows of people ahead of us, and then seven, and then three, and then, at last, it was our turn, and we rose respectfully and joined the column of the faithful inching their way toward the front of the church.

Slowly we crept toward the front of the church, where a man (a Knight, in fact) held the crown (encased in a glass circlet) on a satin pillow and turned from side to side to allow the two lines of people to venerate the crown in turn, while two men on either side wiped the glass after each person. We arrived, finally, at the very front and, in imitation of those preceding us, crossed ourselves, kissed the crown, and bowed, resting our foreheads briefly on the glass, then moved to the side to walk back up the aisle and out of the cathedral and back to our apartment.