Yes, something strange happened to me at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
A few years ago, we traveled by road from Madrid to Paris.
My wife, my daughter and her husband, and my two grandchildren—a girl and a boy—were with us.
We were completely blown away by that wonderful city.
We visited the iconic landmarks:
the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe,
the Seine River, the Champs-Élysées…
and we arrived at Notre Dame Cathedral.
We were walking as a group down a street
when we noticed its beautiful facade.
From then on, my memory places me alone,
sitting in a chair in the nave.
I was surprised that, unlike most churches,
there were individual chairs instead of pews.
I admired the beauty of the interior of that French cathedral.
I remember that, upon standing up,
I felt something course through my entire body:
a sensation difficult to explain,
which I associate with an intense,
though very brief, ecstasy.
It passed, and I walked from the central nave toward one of the side aisles,
where I assumed the rest of the group was.
I saw people I didn't recognize.
I moved toward the main altar
and stopped, like the others,
in a space beforehand, with two more rows of chairs,
in front of that majestic altar.
There I observed a priest
who seemed to be officiating a baptism ceremony.
Afterward, my memory places me in the street, with the group.
And something unusual: my wife was crying inconsolably,
for no apparent reason, for quite some time.
She never explained why.
When I got home, I told my daughter
what had happened to me,
that strange feeling
that I didn't know what it was.
She was busy; she listened,
didn't think much of it and said:
"Your imagination."
Some time later I told my sister
and she replied: "The Holy Spirit."
Years passed.
One day I brought it up again with my daughter and she said:
"Dad, it really is your imagination.
Do you know why?
Because we never went inside Notre Dame.
The day we went it was closed to the public
and we stayed outside,
just admiring the exterior."
With that answer, what happened to me
becomes even harder to understand.
I can't stop thinking about it.
I've seen photos of the interior of Notre Dame and I recognize it:
the chairs instead of pews,
the side aisles, the altar.
Everything matches.
This happened years before the fire that affected the cathedral.
For me, it's inexplicable.
But I'm sure it really happened to me
and it's not a figment of my imagination.
This story is true.
It's not fiction.
