Official trailer for Bishop Barron's documentary Heaven in Stone and Glass
Bishop Robert Barron presents a short trailer for a documentary exploring what Gothic cathedrals reveal about the human longing for God.
Summary
This is the official trailer for Heaven in Stone and Glass, a documentary by Bishop Robert Barron. Using the 2019 fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris as its starting point, Bishop Barron argues that the worldwide grief over that event revealed something deeper than sorrow at the loss of a historic building — it pointed to an enduring spiritual hunger that even secular Western culture cannot extinguish. The trailer presents the documentary as an exploration of how great cathedrals communicate the reality of God through their architecture, symbolism, and beauty.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Notre-Dame Fire and What It Revealed
Bishop Barron: We began with the fire at Notre-Dame, a tragedy that drew the attention of the world. We intuited that there was much more to this fascination than simply the sadness at the loss of a beautiful and venerable building. We endeavored to find out what that was.
One of the marks of our contemporary Western culture is that we are perhaps the first civilization in recorded history to be moving in the direction of a complete secularism. In practically any other culture anywhere in the world, the relationship to the divine has been paramount.
Augustine and the Restless Heart
Saint Augustine said long ago, "Lord, you have made us for yourself. Therefore, our heart is restless until it rests in thee."
And he's still right. Despite our materialism and secularism, we still long for God. We were riveted to the fire at Notre-Dame because we intuited that that great building, and others like it, speak to us still of God.
How Cathedrals Speak of God
In their luminosity and verticality, in their decorations and symbolic devices, in their harmonies and proportions, in the way that they gather all of creation in the right praise — these old buildings still speak to us of God.
And we legitimately feared that in losing Notre-Dame we would lose something infinitely precious. Indeed, something that our souls cannot live without.
A Call to Read the Cathedrals
So let us learn once again to read the cathedrals, and to cherish them.