If you like Catholic churches, Paris is your city. Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Saint Chapelle, Saint Suplice- the list of architecturally inspiring and historically interesting churches seems endless. With all of these beautiful and fascinating places, it seems almost impossible to settle down and find a parish for weekly Sunday mass.
However, having a parish is essential. An important part of your faith life is community. While gorgeous gothic cathedrals are nothing short of awe-inspiring, they are packed full of tourists for weekend masses, making it difficult to have an intimate prayer experience and to create a community within the church. I definitely recommend stopping inside some of Paris’s most beautiful cathedrals for a weekday mass, but when it comes to Sunday mass, it is important to have a place where you feel like you belong. At Notre Dame, we are lucky enough to have a built-in community of people who are going through the same life experiences as us and who care about faith life in a similar way to us. But finding it in another country, well it’s a journey!
I started my own search by trying a church nearby our dorm. It is a fifteen minute walk to the Franciscan Chapel nearby. It is a beautiful church made out of beautiful red brick with tons of windows that pours in light. It is a great family parish, with lots of children, elderly, and everyone in between. There is a wonderful choir made up of parishioners young and old. It is a very welcoming and homey parish to join for mass. I brought along two other Notre Dame students studying in Paris and we all loved it. I felt especially welcome there since my mom works with Capuchins and I’ve grown up with Franciscans my whole life. There is also a delicious boulangerie next door, which makes for a perfect post mass breakfast stop before we walk back through the park. After our first mass there, we were convinced that this was the perfect parish for us and immediately adopted it as our own.
A few weeks later, I talked with a friend who had been studying in Paris all year. She talked about some of the parishes she tried and recommended an English speaking Catholic church near the Arc de Triumph called St. Joseph’s. I looked it up online and was excited to discover that it offered not just mass in English, but various forms of ministry, including young adult faith sharing, retreats, and service opportunities- also in English. The priests at the Franciscan Chapel spoke slowly, but it was still not always easy to understand or pay attention when mass was in another language. I was also happy to discover that St. Joseph’s offered evening masses. As much as I loved the atmosphere at the Franciscan Chapel, I hated waking up on Sunday mornings since they only offered one mass during the time I usually reserve for catching up on sleep. I liked the option of being able to go at different times that worked easier into my schedule. So despite thinking that I’d found my parish- I decided to try another.
St. Joseph’s was very different. The church itself was windowless with modern grey walls with red tiling. It had a unique character, with a congregation made up of an eclectic group with a strong Southeast Asian population, a good handful of American expat families and an Irish presider. The mass itself was full of comfort. As a member of the Celebration Choir at Notre Dame, the music is one of the most important parts of mass to me, and I really enjoyed getting to sing familiar songs from the usual Gather hymnal. I also really liked the opportunity to say the mass responses, hear the readings and homily, and pray in a language that was natural to me. I definitely had a richer prayer experience when I was able to engage in English.
So after these two very different mass experiences, I am still not certain which of these will be my parish in Paris. I love the bright, joyful family atmosphere of the Franciscan Chapel, but I also love the depth of prayer and fulfillment that I get from going to St Josephs. I love the mass times at St Josephs, but I also love how the Franciscan Chapel is right around the corner. Luckily, there is no rule saying you have to have only one parish, and I can continue switching between these two.
The experience of trying to find a parish is such an important one. We have it so easy at Notre Dame, with some of the richest homilists, a loving congregation of peers, and mass schedules that are built into our busy student lives. In the “real world” it takes work to find a parish that clicks. It takes a lot of thoughtful reflection to find a church that fits with what you are searching for- where you feel comfortable, loved, and challenged. In a year and a half, when I enter the real world, I will be grateful for this experience I’ve had in Paris, on the journey to finding my parish.
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