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Text
SPEECH

FOR THE

BENEDICTION OF BELLS OF NOTRE-DAME

DE PARIS.

Quæ est ista Religio? What do you mean by this service? Exodus 12:26

Monseigneur,

What is, my brothers, the ceremony that brings us together and what is its religious meaning? How has it come about that the Church instituted a sort of baptism for the bell which she hangs at the top of her temples, and why does she recall, in the consecration of an inanimate and insensible metal, the consecration even by which she sanctifies the human creature at birth? Because–notice it–for the bell which it inaugurates in the temple as for the man to whom it opens its bosom, the Church has similar rites; ablutions which purify, prayers which bless, and anointings which consecrate. It is to teach us that, in the baptism of the bell, there are external effects which are the image of the internal and much more divine effects of baptism on our souls.

In baptism, man strips off what was defiled in his origin; by its baptism, the bell strips away what there was vulgar and terrestrial in its nature. By baptism, man receives a supernatural adoption and enters the family of God himself; by its baptism, the bell receives an adoption in its own way. It enters into the order of holy things and no longer belongs to profane uses. Through baptism, man is transformed; without ceasing to be himself he becomes a new being, he is always a man and, moreover, he is made a Christian. Through its baptism, the bell is transformed. It always remains sonorous brass and it becomes the voice of the temple and of religion. It passes from the here-below sphere to a new sphere, the sphere of the higher world to which it is henceforth linked and from which it cannot be brought down without desecrating it.

Here, my brothers, is the effect of the blessing which will consecrate these bells by the venerated hand of the first Pastor. At this moment still, all you have before your eyes is common metal fashioned by a skillful hand, and which in no way differs from the brass which man uses for his purposes. If these bells were hung from a human edifice, from city palaces, or from industrial workshops, then it would just be one more earthly voice in this world—the voice of work or the voice of pleasure and celebrations. But, when a little while ago the Church took hold of them by her blessing, when she had raised them up to herself by consecrating them to the services of the sanctuary and to public worship, everything will have changed. The bell will have become something religious, something supernatural, something divine through the holy affinities that her consecration gives her and that she will never lose. Wonderful affinities and that I must only indicate! Let me remind you of them. They will teach you the dignity, the ministry, and—if I dare say it—the mission of the bell in the Catholic temple.

I.

First, affinity with the very temple that it completes and that it completes. What is the purpose of the temple? Is it, as a blind philosophy reproaches us, to circumscribe and enclose the Divine in an enclosure erected in his name? God forbid! We know well that He who is immense does not allow Himself to be reduced to the proportions of these walls and imprisoned in a building built by mortal hands. The goal of the temple, by bringing us together in this enclosure and by surrounding us with so many symbols, is to make the Divine perceptible and as it were visible to all. The Church knows that since our fall we have been under the empire of the senses, and that God constantly escapes us, because spirit itself can only be grasped by spirit. What is she [the Church] doing? She raises monuments in the midst of our cities which she consecrates to God, where she calls us to speak of God, where she multiplies signs and figures to grasp the senses, and through them the intelligence and give the whole man farewell. The Christian temple, which I am considering here in itself and independently of the tabernacle and of the presence of Jesus Christ who consecrates it, the Christian temple has no other goal. Its proper action is to lead us by what is visible to that which is invisible and thus to make the Creator present with a presence felt by all. The bell completes, completes this action of the temple. Without the temple and outside the temple, the bell is missing everything. His voice is only a little noise which is added to the thousand noises of the crowds and of the city. But, without the bell, in turn, something is missing from the temple. It remains diminished as if mutilated. The temple then, has its voices from within to stir souls, to lift them from the earth and carry them by their emotions to heaven. It has the voice of symbols, rites, and ceremonies. It has the voice of hymns and holy hymns. Above all, it has the voice of the Apostleship and its pulpits. It is probably a lot and it is too little. With only voices from within, the temple only halfway fulfills its mission and its goal of a divine religion. It reaches, it grasps the man who comes to him. It cannot warn or seek out the man who is absent or who flees. It says everything about God to whomever is near. It says nothing and cannot say anything to anyone who is far away. The bell will make up for this impotence of the temple and increase its action. The bell is its voice from outside through which it speaks to everyone in the city. The bell is its movement by equel, all material and therefore quite motionless as it is, it will seek man through space and in the midst of crowds. Because of it [the bell], the temple rises and shoots above all human monuments its spires which carry the cross and prayer all together even into the clouds. Through it [the bell] the temple comes alive and has its aerial harmonies to respond to the harmonies of the songs of the man in its enclosure. Holy agreements! Wonderful union! Voices that pray within, voices that pray without! Within, pleading voices calling out to God; outside, sovereign voices calling man to the altars! Within, intelligent voices, homage of the Spirit to the God of spirits; outside, material voices, homage of nature to the God of nature! Within, the voice of the man who praises and adores; outside, the voice of brass which repeats and prolongs the praises and adorations of the voice of man. Thus the Bell and the temple call to each other, help each other, complement each other in a mutual relationship. Through the temple, the bell becomes associated with public religion and becomes something almost spiritual. Through the bell, the temple has a voice and a language in the city, and becomes something almost alive, Admirable harmony, from which results the grandeur, the beauty, the unrivaled influence of the Catholic temple within human societies.

II.

The bell has affinities with the temple. Through the temple, it still has affinities with God. Let us note above all that, of itself and by its nature, the bell has some vague, mysterious harmony which draws the soul from the realities of here below, which throws it into a sort of sublime reverie, which transports it to new regions, regions of the immense and the unlimited. Hearing the hammer of the blacksmiths, Pythagoras began to dream of numbers, of order, of the beautiful, of the divine. Hearing the sounds of the bell at the top of our temples, what man, if he has not broken in himself the fiber of lofty feelings, does not dream of something infinite which is not time, who is not of the earth, who is God himself? The voice of the bell resembles all the great voices of nature—the voice of forests, the voice of rivers, the voice of storms. It resounds to the soul like those voices of which the prophet said: "The voice of the Lord in his strength, the voice of the Lord is in his magnificence," Vox Domini in virtute, vox Domini in magnificentia, (Psalm 28:4). Like them, by the brilliance, by the power, by the majesty of her sounds which shake the air, which fill the space, which in a way animate the clouds, she speaks naturally to all of the grandeur, of the immensity, of the sovereignty of the Creator.

The Catholic Church knows this, my brothers, and with her deep understanding of everything that touches God and the soul, she has chosen the bell to make it the external voice of her temple and therefore as the organ of Heaven and of God in human society. Lend your ear and listen! What are these noises that come from the heights of the temple? What is this voice which descends from its spires and which spreads over the city and its crowds? It is the Christian bell that speaks to the people. And what does it speak to them if not of God and the things of God? Sometimes it bursts into cheerful accents on a cradle; it announces that God will regenerate a newborn and give him, with his grace, a father in heaven, a homeland in eternity. Sometimes she moans in funeral sounds on an opening tomb; it teaches us that the time has just ended for a human creature, and that God has called a soul to this tribunal where the destiny of souls is decided. In the morning, she sings the hymn of awakening to the Creator. She warns us to offer this extra day to the one who makes it to us. In the evening, she sings the hymn of farewell before sleep, the image of that other sleep of death. She invites us to thank for the past hours the one to whom only the hours of the next day belong. Each week she proclaims the great day of prayer. She seems to cry out to all: “Here is the day of the Lord!”, Hœc est dies quam fecit Dominus! (Psalm 117:21) “Away from the work and worries of the earth! All thought be on high! All heart be with God!” What voice unites with the bronze of the battles and calls the peoples in the temple to bring up to the God of hosts the joys of triumph and the recognition of victory? The Christian bell. Which herald walks through the city and announces to everyone that the Truth will descend into the sanctuary and speak to men through the teaching of the Apostleship? The Christian bell. What messenger from above brings us the news of the tabernacle, the news of Jesus Christ who comes to sit on the throne of his altar and who awaits the visitation, the vows, and the worship of his people? The Christian bell. Holy assemblies of prayer which bring together the faithful in the temple as in the temporal homeland of souls; mysterious feasts which retrace for us so well in your pomp the eternal feasts of Angels and elect; solemnities so dear to the faith and which, each year, revive in your memories sometimes the life of the God-Man, sometimes the life of the Virgin his mother or of the saints, his glorious servants. It is the bell which announces you to the earth, and which fills at the same time and the airs with pious noises which remind you and the hearts of the holy emotions which your thought gives birth! The bell is therefore linked by its ministry to all impressions, to all feelings, to all beliefs, and to all ideas of faith. Suspended between heaven and earth, one would say that it lifts its voice between one and the other only to bring them closer, only to unite them, only to confuse them in the holy unity of prayer and love.

III.

Through the temple, the bell has other affinities still, affinities with souls. Indeed, by that alone that it is the external voice of the temple and therefore the voice of religion and of God himself, the bell speaks to the soul. What a great word and it says many things if we know how to hear it! Men can speak well to the senses, speak to the imagination, speak to the passions, speak to the spirit; what did I say? men can speak of what concerns the soul, of God, of duty, of the future, of destiny, in a word of things of the soul. But make no mistake—they cannot speak to the soul. They make noise at its doors; if you want, they make noise in his ears; but their speech is a foreign idiom to her, and which means nothing to her, and which can therefore neither touch nor move her. The language of the soul, my brothers, is the most sublime of languages. This language, it borrows well from the air its sounds to strike the ear of the body; in speech, his words to embody his ideas; but it has nothing in common with what mortal tongues make you think or feel. This language is divine. In one word, it reveals a whole world. With a sound, it delights us to the earth. With a single impression, it transports us into infinity. This language is the proper language of the spirits. It is only God who speaks it, and with God, the Catholic Church, who learned it from the heart of Jesus Christ. Who has not heard the Church, that one has been able to hear serious, eloquent, sublime voices, the voices of poets, orators, wise men, men of genius; he did not hear the language of the soul. This one, he knows the language of the dead, he does not even suspect the language of the living.

The Church, my brothers, has made herself, in the bell that she hangs from her temples, an echo of that divine language which is her native language here below. How I pity him who, hearing the noises of the Christian bell, thinks he hears only one of those thousand earthly noises that resound in the city! Certainly, it lacks the first, the highest and the most necessary of the senses, the sense of the infinite and the divine. And how many things does the Christian bell not say to those who have received the supernatural hearing to hear and to hear? The bell has relations with all situations, with all the spiritual necessities of the soul. Every sound she throws into the air is a word, and in every word there is for you, oh soul! or a lesson or an encouragement, or a consolation, or a threat, or a hope. Are you beside yourself with the movement and the turmoil of life? The bell cries out to you: “Recall your powers and come back to yourself.” Have you lost sight of God in the thousand preoccupations of work, science, or areas? The bell cries out to you: “Think of those who do not stop thinking of you. Think of your God.” If temptation threatens you, the bell cries out to you: “Courage! God sees you.” If the pain tires and destroys your constancy, the bell cries out to you: “Hope! God bless you.” If the world withdraws and leaves you in isolation and despair, the bell cries out to you: “Console yourself! You are not alone here below. You still have your God.” If your will has yielded to the passions and betrayed by a weakness the grace and the conscience in yourself, the bell cries out to you: “Tremble! God will judge you.” If you have made a noble sacrifice and put as a portion of your being in a dedication, the bell cries out to you: “Rejoice! God will reward you.” By the ideas, by the feelings that it awakens, the Christian bell is bound by a thousand holy and mysterious affinities to our souls. Even those who have never known or who have lost their faith and with it the sense of the supernatural, cannot completely escape its action. The bell is less eloquent, it is not silent for them; it sounds in their ears like the voice of a higher power and of another world. They do not know what she announces, but they know in whose name she is speaking, in the name of Religion and in the name of God. This is enough to awaken what they believed to have been sleeping in them forever, the consciousness and instinctive dread of the future. This is the secret of their repulsion and their hatred. When they claimed to silence the brass of our temples and condemn their spires to no longer animate the air with their voices, they proclaimed by that very fact the power of the Christian bell. They would suffer this noise the more in the city if it were not for them the noise of the supreme justice which advances. Ah! They treat the bell as they treat the conscience. They are afraid of his voice and they say to him: “Shut up.” They would triumph over her silence because they would believe they had put to sleep with her the voice of remorse, the voice of God and of Eternity.

Oh, how fortunately the Catholic Church was inspired by attaching the bell to her temples and by borrowing her voice to speak to the multitudes! Who does not see, moreover, that there is a wonderful harmony between this universal language spoken by the bell and the very character of the Church? This voice which takes hold of space, how well it announces the Society which knows no more the limits of the place than those of time! This voice which dominates from so high all the noises of the city like the noises of an inferior world and at its feet, that it suits this society whose head is called "King of kings and Lord of lords," Rex regum, Dominus dominantium! (Rev. 19:16) This voice which, in a few sounds, says the same things to thousands of intelligences, makes them think of the same thought and feel the same feeling, that it is marvelously suited to a Society of which it is written "that it is is one fold under one pastor,” Unum ovile, unus Pastor! (John 10:16) Finally this voice which, by the only vibrations of the brass swung in the air, awakens so many impressions, so many memories, so many instincts, so many ideas, so many aspirations, and none of which is of the earth, how truly is the natural voice of a Church which is the universal Society of intelligences which seek God!

I was therefore right to tell you, my brothers, that the bell has a sort of spiritual, moral, and religious mission. From there, the apparatus and the pumps of the festival which brings us together. The old Basilica, a secular witness to the joys and glories of the country, seems to quiver. She is moved by offering these bells by the hand of a holy bishop and of pious representatives at the baptism of her Pontiff, as a mother, Matrem filiorum lætantem, is moved at the sight of her newborn sons. (Psalm 112:9) Four generations of Archbishops live again in the noble heirs of their blood, their faith, and their charity, and come, in some so, to impose on them with their names the very name of zeal, piety, and martyrdom. Their venerated successor, the Pontiff who continues so worthily among us the traditions of their virtues as of their authority, suspends the works and solicitations of the apostolate; he wants to bless this now sacred brass with the same hands that put the seal of the Holy Spirit on the forehead of the Christian and the eternal anointing of the priesthood on the Levites. So be blessed, pious brass who will become the voice of the first temple of the Queen City! (Jerusalem?) Suspended from these towers which have seen passing with the waves of our river, the no less hurried waves of the ancestors, may you sound the hours of holy solemnities until the most remote centuries! Yes, undoubtedly ring the feasts of royal births, ring the feasts of triumphant war and victory, ring the feasts of public recognition which thank God for the temporal prosperity of the fatherland. But above all ring, ring always and for our last posterity the feasts par excellence, the feasts of faith, true feasts of dignity, of freedom, of the felicity of peoples, because they are feasts of the soul!

For you, my brothers, may this touching ceremony not remain fruitless for your souls. May this blessing, may this consecration of an inanimate and insensitive metal remind us that a more holy blessing, that a more divine consecration is upon us. The bell receives only the appearance of baptism, [but] we have received the whole reality of it. The bell receives no special grace from the Church's anointing and prayers; we receive the very Spirit of grace, the Holy Spirit who has marked us with his ineffaceable character. If the bell cannot be returned without profanation to earthly uses, how can we return to earth, we who have been made all spiritual; or to the world, we who have been made quite divine? Believe me, let's stay at our level; to the earth that is of the earth, but to God that which is of God. Our souls resemble, in their own way, that brass that the Church is going to bless before your eyes. An elder said that every human soul makes sounds. May the sound of our souls imitate the sound of the Christian bell. Let it be the sound of prayer, the sound of holy things, the sound of heaven, of God and of eternity.

So be it!

Source

 * https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6336752r/f245