Letter 36
To my dear friend in Christ,
The cathedral of Saint Stephen at Cahors is complete. I stood in it this morning for the first time with all its elements in place — the altar consecrated, the walls painted, the light falling through the windows in the way I had imagined it — and I felt something that I am still trying to find words for.
I have been building this church for fifteen years. There were times when I doubted it would ever be finished — when the money ran out, when the craftsmen left, when the political situation made everything uncertain. There were times when I thought the whole project was a kind of vanity, that the resources spent on the building should have gone to other things. I have had to argue with myself about it, repeatedly, over many years.
Standing in it this morning, I believed — I believe — that it was worth doing. Not because the building itself matters in the ultimate sense, but because the community that gathers in it will be formed by it, shaped by its beauty and its dignity, given a space where they can encounter the reality of what they believe in a way that changes them.
The cathedral will outlast me. The prayers offered in it will outlast me. That is, perhaps, what it means to do something that matters.
I commend you to God's mercy and to the prayers of Saint Stephen.
Desiderius, bishop of Cahors
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.