Hemingway once famously remarked that "Paris is a movable feast". Perhaps it was true enough for Hemingway in the 20's as he was constantly moving from place to place in order to avoid paying his rent. Nevertheless, it is true. Last week our little group of pilgrims hit Paris. I have always paraphrased Hemingway a bit and insisted that Paris, unlike say Rome or London, is an acquired taste. Like a mystery, it doesn’t open itself readily, but once it does ...

Paris is also a monument city and thanks to Baron Haussmann, a pedestrians city.  Parisians love to walk around and so we began our tour with a walk from our hostel in the 16th down to the cathedral. Here is the corner where the Jansenist crisis erupted. This building, now in a children's hospital complex was where the whole mess started. This is where the archbishop brought armed troops to remove the nuns. Now it is quiet.

Next is the Benedictine monastery founded by Queen Anne of Austria to commemorate the birth of her son and where the queens of France had their hearts entombed. In this unmarked house, Blaise Pascal lived. In this medieval Church pilgrims used to flock on their way to Santiago and the Abbe de Saint Cyran lies peacefully after raising so much hell in the City of Lights.
Next is the Pantheon, designed as the mother house of the Augustinian nuns but converted to the national burial place after the Revolution.

Then the little Church of St. Etienne du Mont an the tomb of St. Genevieve, the protector of the city who herself needed protection when the revolutionaries threw her relics out into the street.

We then passed along the convoluted streets of the Latin Quarter to the Place Maubert, now a bustling urban intersection, but 1000 years ago teachers stood here on haystacks and started a teaching method that evolved into the university that gave the Latin quarter its named.

Further down we catch our first glimpse of Notre Dame de Paris rising like an upside down ship out of the island in the middle of the Seine. I always think the best way to approach a great church for the first time is for Mass. That is the meaning of the Church, in spite of any artistic or historic merits it might have. We spent a bit of time searching the neighborhood for hidden treasures, the house of Fulbert, the apse of the Church and then we entered the strains of the great organ, one of the world's foremost. Then, Mass and Notre Dame was experienced as it was meant to be. There would be time for explanations later. At the end of the day the deacons were tired and so were the priests (though we didn't want that to be known).

The next day also began with a walk. We saw the tomb of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Louise and St Catherine Laboure on the Rue du Bac.

We then walked up to St. Germain des Pres for the Benedictine martyrs and of course, Jean Mabillon, the martyr to scholarship and among the best of what the order has offered the world.

Next was the old Hotel Cluny, built over the ruins of the Roman city's public baths. The abbots used this for their Parisian residence. Now it houses a perfect museum of medieval art and artifacts. It also has a beautiful flamboyant gothic chapel where a princess of England secretly married Charles Brandon.

That was a day and a half. Other highlights included the Louvre for a viewing of only 20 works of art. We went up to Montmartre and saw the Basilica of the Sacred Heart where they have had perpetual adoration for over 100 years. We went to the museums, tombs (including St. Denis and the empty tombs of all of the kings and queens) churches and the tower everyone knows. We also prayed.  Paris was most decidedly a movable feast (just ask our legs and feet).

Of course I was thinking about weekly readings. Perhaps it would be worthy to take up old Hemingway again. I have recently been reading a great deal on book conservation and rare books. I bowed my head to a doorway we passed, completely unmarked like so much of Paris. It was the Library of Port Royal. The monarchy ruthlessly pursued the Jansenist priests, nuns and solitaires. The monastery in the country was razed. The Parisian house became the children's hospital we saw on the first day. King Louis tried to destroy the whole community, including its memory. But he couldn't bring himself to destroy the books. The library remained intact and lies today behind an unmarked door in coy Paris. What a symbol.

Photo: Br. Macario, OSB

It’s the landing that I love the most when I travel. I love getting my stuff together and bracing myself for that initial assault by the plane on the runway and then, the endless taxing, the opening of the doors and the emerging into a new world. Everything is often changed in the course of a flight, the temperature, the language, the culture, everything. Last week the deacons and I, as well as few clerical hangers on, landed in London. London, of course, is one of the best places to land. We were picked up by a bus driver and made our way slowly into the most exciting city on earth. London is a very unique and interesting place. It is a thoroughly modern city, strangely that titan of conservatism, Queen Victoria, saw to that. It is completely modern and yet ancient. Here you can see a glass skyscraper sharing a lot with Roman ruins. Here you have all of the hustle and bustle of the modern center of capitalism combined with rickety old brick buildings and pearlies. London is also a show off city. Unlike its French counterpart, Paris, which is a city of mystery, London is a city that enjoys company, shouts its virtues, in other words, it is an extrovert city. It is out there. This week we have walked its streets, ridden in the tube and in cabs, ravaged its museums, eaten fish and chips, listened attentively as grown people in the most outrageous costumes gave us tours of 1000 year old palaces, and had a grand time of it. Education can be fun and if it is going to be fun, London is the place to do it. Paris requires more introspection and Rome more prayer, but London only requires you to show up and watch the craziness unfold.

Our first full day was Saturday, December 28. We began the day with a very quiet Mass at the cathedral. There were many tourists but also many “regulars” who come every day and have appeared year after year during my visits. One of these is the globe lady, a woman who shows up every day carrying a large globe with a plaster statue of Jesus on it. She walks up for communion, holds the globe up and walks away. It is her daily consecration, odd as we might find it. After Mass we headed out to the National Portrait Gallery. Here we walked through the history of England by looking at faces, perky, long, swarthy, common all of them playing a distinctive role in the drama of English history. Then, after lunch we headed to the Tower of London, where the history portrayed in the portraits had actually unfolded for 1000 years. We saw the place of imprisonment of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher. We saw where the select executions took place. We saw the chapel where thousands of bones are interred willy-nilly including those of queens of England. We saw the crown jewels, the tower, armor and the ravens. It was a day of real Englishness and the troops were exhausted by day’s end. On Sunday we began the day with Mass at the Brompton Oratory, founded by John Henry Newman and Fr. Faber. In keeping with the Catholic revival the church is very Italian and un-English. The Mass was beautiful and filled with poignant moments. After Mass we headed over to the Museum of London, a fascinating collection of artifacts illustrating the history of the city. The museum is built over the old Roman walls. We also peaked at St. Giles church where John Milton is buried. Later that afternoon we went to St. Paul’s for evensong in the best Anglican tradition.

Monday took us to Westminster Abbey and the center of English history, home as it is to coronations, marriages and funerals. The whole church is filled with tombs of kings, writers and others who just happened to get caught there. My favorite tomb is that of playwright Ben Jonson. It is a simple stone that says: O rare Ben Jonson. I think it’s supposed to be orare, though Jonson would have certainly saw himself as rare enough. That afternoon we went to the National Gallery where we saw some amazing paintings, just a few. The tour focused on visions of the Catholic Church in western art. In England, that has a positive and a negative side. A number of folks took advantage of a theatrical evening and some others saw movies or just walked the streets of London, always an adventure in itself. Tuesday morning brought us to the Victoria and Albert Museum, that most Victorian of institutions representing as it does the domestic arts and the practical arts. There are wonderful galleries which show the development of taste and culture in England. My favorite piece is a little miniature of Anne of Cleves commissioned from Holbein by Henry VIII. He married her on the merits of the portrait. Holbein took a great deal of pictorial license. In the afternoon we strolled around Hyde Park and made our way to Kensington Palace, the most accessible of the royal residences. That night, New Year’s Eve, there were fireworks along the Thames. I went to bed early.

2014 dawned right on New Year’s Day, for some brighter than for others. This morning we took an early train to Hampton Court where we toured the palace of Cardinal Wolsey which was confiscated by Henry VIII. It continues to be a royal residence. Situated on the Thames it has been the sight of many important events and remains one of the best preserved examples of Tudor architecture in the country. It was a great day for bangers and mash, a little beer and some great conversation with our deacons, who are enjoying the trip very much and aren’t (too) cranky.

As I said, London is a visitor’s city. London is also a reader’s city. Writers write about London. It is said that the only character in Charles Dickens’ novels was London. London is filled with book shops, new and used and rare, a singular temptation for bibliomaniacs like me.  The world’s largest bookshops are in London and the world’s smallest and most specialized. This one sells only illustrated children’s books, this one maps of Cornwall. London is an explorer’s city and has been since the Romans first hit the place. I just finished reading a book about John Payne Collier, a famous autodidact of the nineteenth century who became an expert on books and in particular books about Shakespeare. Unfortunlately he was also a forger and created a number of fake documents that he passed off as authentic in a more naïve age. That’s the kind of thing English bibliophiles get up to. They take books very seriously. I spent the last hours in London exploring the windows of the bookshops off of Tottenham Court Road. They were all closed on New Year’s Day, thank goodness, but it was pure London.