It was almost a state funeral. There were three German cabinet ministers, five French ministers, a dozen ambassadors, an army of Air France crews in a sea of blue and white uniforms.
There were 113 candles before the altar, each flame a life snuffed out in that patch of field outside Roissy.
The readings included a passage from The Prophet by the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran. "If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song," Gibran wrote. "And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky."
Two choirs sang the beautiful finale from Bach's Passion of St John as four Air France personnel placed the 113 candles on the steps of the altar. It was a moment of intense emotion for those in the great church of the Madeleine; they held their heads in their hands, put their arms around one another, wept.
And they were invited to ask the old question: how could God have allowed this to happen? Mgr Pierre d'Ornellas, the deputy bishop of Paris, addressed God - whom he also asked to help those who lost loved ones. "They feel the injustice of death and of this catastrophe."
"How, in such a trial, can we listen to words about the goodness of the God of the Heavens?" Mgr d'Ornellas asked. He went on to defend Him, by laying the blame with man. "These works which result from human genius - and the Concorde is one of them - serve man's well-being." God did not make death, the deputy bishop said.
"God, in a certain way, seems - like us - impotent before this tragedy of the Concorde . . . God who has provided freedom to humans for their happiness does not will technical failure."
The Germans had sent their Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, among their three cabinet representatives but the diplomats were swamped by the 1,000 people - all immediate relatives of the dead and Air France staff - who packed into the Madeleine for the hour-long service. Only two days after what should have been a routine take-off by Air France flight 4590, the very centre of Paris had been silenced.
Every religious text was read in both French and German. Several hundred Air France employees stood on the steps outside the 19th century church - originally built to the glory of Napoleon's grande armee - because there was no room for them. The pavements of the square and the rue Royale were crowded with friends of the victims and visitors to Paris, many of them German tourists.
As the service started, the airports of Roissy, Orly and Le Bourget observed a minute's silence - the check-in-desk clerks standing beside their counters - along with all Air France offices around the world.
The widow and two children of the pilot, Capt Christian Marty, were the first to leave. Capt Marty (54) had worked for Air France for 32 years and was well known for his athletic prowess.
French television has been showing video footage of him on the windsurf board on which he crossed the Atlantic. Like Capt Smith of the Titanic, he became a hero in the aftermath of the disaster.
Capt Marty steered his fiercely burning plane away from the town of Gonesse. It was he who insisted that a flawed thrust reverser on engine 2 be replaced just before the flight. No one yet knows if the repairs contributed to the disaster.