by Phoebe Farag Mikhail

As I sat down to write about the launch day of my new book, Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church, my mind couldn’t shake the images of the burning Cathedral of Notre Dame. How can one speak of joy while the world mourns such a devastating loss? And so today as I celebrate my book’s launch into the world, I also mourn with those who mourn, comforted only by the cross that shines brightly still, in the midst of the flames.

A place of beauty, a place of prayer, a place where God and His people have met countless times in the celebration of the Eucharist—this could be said about almost any church building. When a church building is destroyed, it is devastating. While it is nonetheless a building, it is also a place of love, memories, hope—and effort. Many church buildings were built or purchased by the worshippers inside, or the generations before them. They represent the time, toil, labor – they represent, in many ways, life.

Before the burning of the Cathedral, three historically black churches in the U.S. were burned within the span of ten days. Although not as old as Notre Dame, these Louisiana churches had existed for over a century, bought and paid for by the African American community with their struggles and tears during difficult times in U.S. history. The New York Times quotes one of the parishioners sharing her sadness about this loss:

“Seeing the church in the condition it is now,” Ms. Harris, 57, said of the tan brick sanctuary where her parents raised their 12 children and where they celebrated dozens of weddings, funerals and Bible studies, “it’s almost like losing a family member.”

Similarly, Tasoula Hadjitoufi, author of The Icon Hunter and director of Walk of Truth, an organization devoted to ending the theft and trafficking of religious and cultural artifacts, spoke of how the search for the holy icons stolen during war from the very churches she worshipped in as a child was, in a way, a search for her own identity and the identity of her community. Of these relics she said, in an interview with me last year, “They hold the community together because they hold shared memories.”

The Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris represented this for many people as well. When the medieval Europeans built cathedrals, they built them over lifetimes, sometimes generations. They offered their best materials, their finest workmanship, and their highest art. They housed in them the relics of saints whose prayers parishioners request. The most visited monument in Europe, Notre Dame offered the entire world its treasures –even those of us who have never visited France to see it have seen its images in photographs of friends, in artwork, in literature.

The entire world mourns it now as it burns, the spire that once pointed to the heavens crumbling in the flames. We are not mourning burning wood and charred stone. We are mourning everything it represents, the beauty it holds that might now be lost, the place of many memories and prayers.

Yet even in this sadness we have hope. Although Notre Dame’s spire has fallen, we can still raise our eyes to the heavens in prayer. Although some of its beauty might have been lost, we still have all the beauty of God’s creation around us, and He has still given us the extraordinary ability to create beauty again and again. We can gather in prayer and Holy Communion again in any place, even in a church burned to the ground, and God will be in our midst. He makes all things new (Revelations 21:5).

As Christians around the world celebrate Holy Week, we remember the suffering of Christ incarnate, and we mourn, too. We mourn at the injustice, at the terrible torture, at His willing sacrifice for us. We mourn for our own sins, because He did this for us. We mourn with nature as it quaked with grief when the Son of God died on the cross.

Yet our mourning is not despair. During the Litany of the Ninth Hour in the Liturgy of the Hours of the Coptic Orthodox Church, we pray:

When the mother saw the Lamb, the Shepherd and Savior of the world hanging on the cross, she wept and said: “The world rejoices at the acceptance of salvation, but my heart burns when I look at your crucifixion which You endured for the sake of all; O’ My Son and My God.”

During Holy Week our hearts burn with her. Our hearts burn for the sufferings our Lord endured for us and for our salvation. Our hearts burn for the pain in this world, for the churches burned, for the homes and the streets bombed out because of war, for the unwilling victims of war, hatred, and terror; for those suffering from poverty, disease, and starvation. Our hearts burn for our own sins, our own selfishness, our own anger, our own laziness, our own lusts.

Yet, while our hearts burn, we do not despair, but in fact, we rejoice. We rejoice because through Christ’s death, He conquered death, the greatest enemy of joy. We rejoice because His incarnation and His suffering for us not only offered us redemption, but transformed our own suffering. We rejoice because not only did He pour Himself out for us, but He gave us the ability to pour ourselves out for one another.

We rejoice because we know that after His death came His Resurrection—and the door of eternal life opened to all of us. The Cross itself is our spire pointing upwards—upwards towards heaven, upwards towards eternal life through it and in Him, because of His death and Resurrection.

More than this, we are offered ways to experience this joy of the Resurrection every day through our own love and self-sacrifice for others. “If,” as I write in the book, “the joy of the Resurrection could only have happened because of Christ’s sacrificial love for us on the cross, then we will only experience joy through love and self-sacrifice.” I hope that when you read my book, you will learn about practical ways to experience that joy. Read it during Holy Week, or save it for the joyous season of the Resurrection – God offers us His joy at all times, even the dark times. We need only to receive it.

My book about joy begins with this story—the story of Christ’s Resurrection celebrated inside a church full of people looking for the “Resurrection of the dead and the life of the coming age,” in the words of the Orthodox Creed. They are people facing everyday struggles and even heart-breaking struggles. But together, in our church building, we celebrate as one the joy that comes from the Resurrection, and we are filled with hope.

Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church can be purchased through my affiliate link on Amazon or wherever fine books are sold. Bulk purchases for bookstores, book clubs, church bookstores, and gift shops can be made through Paraclete Press. Listen to an interview about my book on Coptic Dad & Mom to learn more about it here.