This is an Easter story, a tale of rebirth and resurrection, of a city and a neighborhood and within that neighborhood, of men’s and women’s lives. The city is Saint-Denis, a place I know well. I’ve worked there since 1991 and I’ve seen many changes, most for the better, some for the worse.
The neighborhood is called “la Plaine,” the plain, and in that neighborhood, there is one particular street, “rue de Landy,” that has been travelled for well over one thousand years.
In the beginning it was a footpath across marshes and fields of grain. La Plaine was the breadbasket of Paris. Almost parallel to the path ran the “King’s Highway,” the royal way which joined the monarch’s palace in Paris to the burial ground of French kings at the basilica of Saint Denis.
In the Middle Ages, each June, the path could not contain the flood of pilgrims, merchants and students crowding la Plaine to attend the annual “Lendit Fair,” one of the biggest in Europe at that time.
The occasion was a yearly exposition of a Holy Nail and a remnant of the Crown of Thorns preserved within the basilica of Saint Denis. That done, the bishop of Paris declared the fair open and the crowds got busy buying, selling and having a wild and raucous time.
By the late 19th century, “Lendit” had become “Landy,” the name of a bustling street, the main drag of France’s industrial revolution. The street was lined with factories, and nearby stood the Landy Gasworks, a vast storage and production facility providing the city of Paris with gas produced from coal.
The neighborhood was also home to steel plants and automobile manufacturers, to factories producing everything from toothpaste to the finest French crystal.
A century later, it was all over. By the 1980’s, “rue de Landy” had earned the sad reputation of being at the heart of France’s rustbelt in a neighborhood scarred by poverty.
I remember rue de Landy when I first started working in the town of Saint-Denis in 1991. There were many two-storey buildings with balconies running along the front and many doors opening onto the balconies, which made them look like very rundown motels. I watched mostly men coming and going from these flimsy buildings, immigrants like me at the time, except that I was much better off.
Some of these buildings did not have running water and I saw women carrying jerricans they filled at pumps in the street or at fountains in courtyards where there were rows of ground-floor toilets to make up for the lack of indoor plumbing in the one-room apartments entire families shared.
Today, except for a few pockets of rundown buildings destined for demolition, all of that has disappeared and rue de Landy is once again a main drag, this time at the heart of the second most important business park in the Paris region.
The resurrection began in the 1990’s with the construction of France’s national stadium, Stade de France. In the following years more than 20,000 new jobs and 5,000 new housing units were created in la Plaine.
In 2012, to meet the spiritual needs of the inhabitants and the more than 325,000 commuters who travel in and out of the area every day, the first stone of a new church was laid. In France, a country where it is more common for churches to be deconsecrated or torn down, this was an event.
Less than two years later, occupying a relatively small lot at a corner of rue de Landy, “Saint Paul de la Plaine” opened its doors. It is one of the most surprising and powerful symbols of rebirth the neighborhood has known. Designed by the French architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti, the church is a horizontal figure eight, symbol of eternity.
Seen from the street, it looks like a stout cylinder wrapped in bands of polished aluminum. There is no bell tower, no steeple, no cross rising high into the sky. Instead, a small but prominent stone cross emerges from the highest band of aluminum, not directly above, but slightly to the right of the entrance to the sanctuary, located within the biggest loop of the figure eight.
The inside of the sanctuary is bare, but it is not austere. The walls are white and lit from above by twelve small rectangular windows, placed just below the ceiling, shaped to resemble a drop of water suspended above worshipers’ heads. The altar, an unadorned block of Burgundy stone, sits in front of a wall of plain glass panels that mark the passage between inside and outside, between contemplation and the active life of the business park.
During mass, worshipers see busses and pedestrians hurry by outside. People in the street can see worshipers make their way to the altar to take communion. All can see the point where the two loops cross to create an eight. The smaller of the two is a free-standing aluminum and steel loop enclosing a garden.
With a tree growing at its center, the garden could symbolize paradise. It could also symbolize rebirth. As night falls, the tree is lit by colored spotlights, green or magenta, that reflect against a curved aluminum wall marking the garden’s edge. Spring has not yet settled in. The tree is bare, a reminder of the Cross, yet it is alive with the sap of new life.
Saint Paul considered himself the 13th apostle, invested with the mission of evangelizing the world. At Saint Paul de la Plaine, the twelve apostles, symbolized by the twelve points of light below the roof, “hold up” the Church. Saint Paul’s symbol is the transparent panes of glass behind the altar, an opening to the world and to the more than 75 nationalities inhabiting la Plaine-Saint Denis.
This small church, composed of a sanctuary large enough for 200 persons and a glass-walled community center next door, visible from rue de Landy, welcomes all passersby, from all walks of life. Like Saint Paul, it opens itself to the world, as a place of rest, an offering of hospitality, and an invitation to eternity.
It is a fitting symbol of the renewal of rue de Landy. It is also a fitting symbol of the rebirth of Easter, and I wish my readers a Happy Easter Day.
