Pentecost at Notre Dame & Giverney

Today is Pentecost Sunday and Kathy and I got to attend two church services. When I was online, looking for tickets to see Notre Dame, (which you don’t actually need, it turns out), I saw this on their Web site.

Fifty days after Easter and ten days after the Ascension, Christians celebrate Pentecost. This feast commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Jesus, giving them the strength and courage to proclaim the Gospel. This outpouring of the Spirit fulfills the promise made by Jesus before His Ascension. It gives the apostles the strength to emerge from their isolation and fear, to announce the Good News to all nations.

Following this was a list of services. Kathy and I went over about 8:30 in the morning and got into the line for worshipers. There was really no waiting at all. The service was entirely in French. Some of it I could understand, like when the congregants responded Grâce à Dieu (thanks be to God), after the reading of scripture. I would have liked to understand the homily; I wonder why they don’t have the equivalent of Calvary Chapel’s translation app. I tried using Google Translate, but that didn’t really work at all.

Since we were there for a service, and not just to tour the church, we really couldn’t get up and start snapping pictures. I can tell you, though, if you’ve been inside Notre Dame before, it looks so much brighter than it did before; you have to see it to believe it. Once the service was over, a nice couple in front of the church took our picture.

When Kathy and I first visited Paris in 2007, we went out for coffee with the Pastor of Calvary Chapel Paris, Mike Dente, and his wife Becky. Now, eighteen years later, they are still faithfully shepherding the flock God has given them.

Google Maps gave us the directions and the Metro lines to take, and we got to CC Paris a little before the service started at 11:00 AM. We met Mike and Becky there along with two of their (almost adult) children. Durning the service, both of us could sing along with the songs. Since they showed both the French and English lyrics, I just sang the English ones. Becky translated the sermon in real time, so we both understood a lot more than we had in the morning. 

We wanted to go out to lunch after church, but both Mike and Becky had an important congregational meeting. So, after saying goodby, Kathy’s and I took the subway to visit the Paris department store, Lafayette Galeries. Kathy still had some fond memories of buying some perfume she liked back in 2007. Unfortunately, for our purposes, the store is considerably higher end than it seemed when we visited before.

In the past, we ate lunch at the cafe on the top of Lafayette Galeries. Today we went across the street to their food court of different kinds of “pop up” restaurants. Kathy got some Pad Thai and I had some Peking Duck. (I wonder why they don’t now calling Beijing Duck?) It was OK, but I wouldn’t go back.

Instead of tagging along with use, Matt and Hosanna went by themselves to visit Giverny, the home and studio of Claude Monet in the later part of his life. This is where he painted The Water Lilies, and you can still visit the pond and see the water lilies in the flesh, so to speak. 

To get to Giverny, you have to travel to Vernon in Normandy from the St. Lazare train station. Unfortunately, they got to the train station just a little too late for the morning train, and thus had to take a later one, which didn’t leave them much time at the house and gardens. Then, when they were leaving, there was a little drama with the bus back to the Vernon train station. Fortunately, they caught the (almost full train) in the nick of time, and got back to Paris about 8:00 PM. 

Tomorrow and Tuesday are “free days” (meaning we don’t have any timed entry tickets until our Opera Tour on Tuesday evening). We plan on visiting Montmartre, Luxembourg Gardens, the Eiffel Tower, the Left Bank and the Opera. We’ll see how that goes.