Pentecost Mass on the Chartres Pilgrimage

The annual Chartres Pilgrimage, which our founding editor Shawn Tribe wrote about earlier this week, departs from Notre-Dame de Paris on Saturday, the vigil of Pentecost, and arrives at Notre-Dame de Chartres on Pentecost Monday. Since the tens of thousands of pilgrims who attend each year are therefore in the middle of the countryside between the two cities on Pentecost Sunday, a Solemn Mass of that day is traditionally celebrated for them in a portable tent-chapel brought along for the occasion.

Here are some pictures from the Facebook page of Notre-Dame de Chrétienté, the entity that organizes the pilgrimage, reproduced with their kind permission. These offer us a perfect example of how even a liturgy celebrated in a temporary facility for a massive crowd can still be done with the beauty and dignity necessary to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I would encourage our readers to go look at the several photo albums which they have posted over there, with a very large number of beautiful photographs documenting all the major events (and a lot of the minor ones.)