Reason to rejoice.

When Notre-Dame de Paris burned in 2019, French president Emmanuel Macron pledged to have the cathedral reopened in five years. With 2,000 workers and hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from around the world, sure enough, five years later, Notre Dame opened its doors over the weekend and held its first public mass on Sunday.

Images of Notre Dame engulfed in flames were haunting. Churches devoted months of prayer to the restoration of Our Lady’s landmark — and, as Catholics celebrate the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception this week, it’s an especially fitting time to see the Gothic cathedral reopened.

“Five years after its destruction, here it stands again, ready to welcome the prayers of the faithful, to welcome the heart, the cry of the heart of all those who come here from all over the world,” said Monsignor Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, rector of Notre Dame. “Fire has not conquered stone, despair has not conquered life.”

Firefighters who helped save the cathedral in 2019 were present at its reopening on Saturday night, as were various heads of state, such as President-elect Donald Trump, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and Britain’s Prince William, who gathered amid great beauty to celebrate tradition. An astounding 340,000 donors from more than 150 countries contributed to rebuilding the site — some gave pennies, others gave millions.

Although it’s easy to think, and say, that our society has little reverence for the past, Notre Dame’s blaze disproved that. When the cathedral burned, the world reacted. When it was rebuilt, the world rejoiced. God’s hands are all over this redemption story: Archaeological digs that happened during the renovations uncovered medieval sculptures, made in 1230, that used to sit between the choir and nave. Rebuilding thousands of years of history has brought the opportunity to look to thousands of years more.