The Spiral Staircase in Santa Fe

There is an "impossible" spiral staircase leading up to the choir loft in the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico--and I've been completely enchanted by the story since I first learned of it. Today the story of the staircase is the main feature at Michael Brown's "Spirit Daily" website (http://www.spiritdaily.com/santafestairs.htm). Like many others, I speculated that the mysterious man who built the staircase could have been St. Joseph himself. However, the true builder was actually another master carpenter. Even so, nobody to this very day has even the faintest clue how he built it!

A Spirit Daily reader sent this comment to Mr. Brown:

"Did the carpenter come as an answer to prayers? I believe so. Was the construction of the stairs divinely inspired? I would agree.

"However, as to the identity of the mystery carpenter, I tend to agree with historian Mary J. Straw Cook in her book, 'Loretto: The Sisters and Their Santa Fe Chapel.' The carpenter, according to her, was Francois-Jean Rochas. He was a member of 'les compagnon,' a French guild of celibate and secretive craftsmen.

"Cook researched the matter for seven years and made seven trips to France. Part of her evidence is an 1895 article in The New Mexican, in which the chapel's contractor, Quintus Monier, names Rochas as the staircase's builder. There is also an 1881 entry in the sisters' daybook that indicates a Mr. Rochas was paid $150 'for wood.' There is a freight slip for wood delivered by ship from France.

"It is a beautiful staircase and indeed miraculously built. It may not have been made directly by the hands of angels or saints (Rochas was allegedly a bit of a rascal and died a mysterious death), but God does answer prayers by placing the right individuals at the right place and at the right time to accomplish his tasks. That should serve as an inspiration to all of us. You never know when God is using you to answer someone else's prayers."

So, discovering that St. Joseph didn't build the spiral staircase, you'd think that would burst my bubble, wouldn't you? But it doesn't. He still had a direct hand in the project: When the sisters prayed for help, they prayed a novena to St. Joseph.

And anyway, I am encouraged to know that even "rascals" can do great things for God!

"O-oh-h-h . . . O-KAY!

Just getting to Sunday Mass is a big deal for me. Not that it's hard logistically to get to a Mass. I have no physical disabilities or illnesses that prevent my attendance. It's strickly the struggle against sloth.

I stopped going regularly when I was in college, then went on and off sort of haphazardly for years afterward. I never wanted to stop being Catholic. And I knew that Mass attendance on Sundays and Holy Days was a precept of the Church. But in high school, college, and the years following, I didn't "get it" that a precept of the Church had the same moral force as the Ten Commandments. Nor did I make the connection between Mass attendence and the First and Third Commandments.

I was struggling even to just learn the actual Faith well enough to defend it, using second-rate catechisms found at a local Catholic bookstore that sold books authored by modernists, dissenters, and just plain flakes--then, and still today. The Baltimore Catechism and the Catechism of the Council of Trent weren't even on my radar at the time. The current "Catechism of the Catholic Church" was just a glimmer in the papal mind. I was a public school student and all that the parish CCD classes taught us was the "Peace-Love-Joy" pablum from the third grade on up. So a lot of the time, unless I was going with someone else or had a secondary obligation such as singing in the choir, I just didn't make it to Mass.

And yet, I loved being at Mass once I was there! I just wasn't taking the steps to actually get out the front door!

At some point, I learned that intentionally or negligently missing Mass on a Sunday or Holy Day is mortally sinful. I also began to understand why, not just from the standpoint of the Church's authority to command it; but also some of the reasons Mass attendance is necessary: Especially of God's right to our worship; but also of our need to worship, to have our emptiness filled, to have our longings answered, to find the help we can't find anywhere else, to benefit the Church and the world by our prayers, to serve as tools in the distribution of God's mercy and graces, to experience the power of worshiping with other Christians, to know our helplessness even to worship unless we are united with Christ--to receive Him in the Word and in the Eucharist.

You'd think now that I know all of this, getting to Mass would be easier for me. But it's not. Attending Mass regularly is a habit. I had acquired the bad habit of not attending and also found myself struggling against a tendency to be slothful and lukewarm. Twenty-plus long years of hit-or-miss attendance have dulled my conscience to the point where I hardly feel a pang if I skip Mass.

Here is an instance where I am extremely grateful to God for His Mercy in the confessional! I get to call on God's grace as I try once again to establish myself in the routine of attending Mass when I'm supposed to be there and have no good reason not to be there. So often I've been forced to confess that "It's been two months since my last confession. I've missed Mass seven (or five, or eight) times."

By God's mercy and grace, I really am more regular at Mass than I used to be. God has faithfully provided the graces I need to get there: Sometimes He helps me by sending someone to attend with me. Sometimes He gives me the desire and ambition to get to the Church. Sometimes, like this morning, He sends my Angel Guardian to keep "Murphy" from throwing a monkey wrench into my plans. Sometimes, He just reminds Me that the consequence of mortal sin is an eternal stint in hell, so it would behoove me to show up, unless I'd rather be hot than inconvenienced.

This is all leading up to the Mass readings for today. They have really heightened this whole long struggle for me: Joshua's challenge to the Israelites as to whether or not they were committed to serve only God; the love of husband and wife as the illustration of the love of Christ and His Church; and the Lord's challenge to his disciples and the Twelve as to whether they would abandon Him or believe His teaching about His Body and Blood. So that finally clinches it: I choose to serve the Lord. He loves me and I love Him. And besides . . . there is no one else that I can go to. Only Jesus can give me Eternal Life.

[My Lord, I am there without fail from this day forward!]

Prayer of Hope and Trust

On his blog (http://rome-ingcatholics.blogspot.com/) last Saturday (August 19), Terry Nelson posted a really beautiful prayer of Saint Claude LaColombière. I'm re-posting it here because it seemed to me that it was such a direct answer to my first blog posting here, particularly a line from the last paragraph, "I hope that you will love me always and that I also shall love you with unfailing love." Praise God for His servants in heaven and on earth (that includes you, Terry) that by them He provides so many helps for us!

O my God, I am so intimately convinced that you watch over all those who hope in
you, and that we can want for nothing while we expect all from you, that I am
resolved to live without anxiety in the future, casting all my care on you. "In
peace I will sleep and I will rest for you have wonderfully established me in
hope." Men may turn against me: sickness may take away my strength and the means
of serving you; I may even lose your grace by sin, but I will never lose my
hope. I will keep it even to the last moment of my life, and all the demons in
hell shall try in vain to tear it from me. "In peace I will sleep and I will
rest."

Jesus, I trust in you!

Others may look for happiness from
their wealth, or their talents and education; they may rely upon the innocence
of their lives, the rigor of their of their penance, the number of their good
works, the fervor of their prayers, the splendor of their liturgical
celebrations, the beauty of their devotions: but for me. O Lord, my confidence
shall be my confidence itself. For you have wonderfully established me in hope.

Jesus I trust in you!

This confidence has never deceived anyone.
"No one has hoped in the Lord and been put to shame. I am sure that I shall be
eternally happy, because I hope firmly to be so, and it is from you, O Lord,
that I hope it. In you O Lord, have I hoped; I shall not be confounded for ever.

Jesus I trust in you!

I know that I am weak and changeable; I
know the power of temptation against the most firmly based virtues: I have seen
the stars of heaven and the pillars of the firmanent shaken and fall; yet not
even this can make me fear. As long as I hope, I am safe from every evil, and I
am always sure of hoping because I hope for this unchanging hope. For you, O
Lord, have wonderfully established me in hope.

Jesus, I trust in you!

In fine, I am certain that I cannot hope too much in you; and that I
cannot obtain less than I hope for from you. Thus I hope that you will uphold me
in the greatest dangers, protect me in the most violent assaults, and make my
weakness triumph over my most formidable enemies. I hope that you will love me
always and that I also shall love you with unfailing love; and to carry my hope
at once as far as it can go, I hope for you from yourself, my Creator, both in
time and in eternity. Amen.

Jesus, I trust in you!

I No Longer Call You Slaves

I have got some real trust issues. I really haven't trusted God much--if at all--and it shows in my life. I desperately need, yet again, to get myself into the confessional. Anyway, thinking about my failure to trust, it got me to thinking about Mother Angelica and how EWTN is celebrating it's 25th Anniversary in satellite television. It would not be happening if Mother didn't have a powerful trust in God. And then THAT got me thinking about a snippet of a speech given by Dr. Scott Hahn for EWTN's 25th Anniversary Celebration recently, on that very topic.

I haven't been watching much television lately, but I happened to catch the beginning of Dr. Hahn's speech. He started by praying the Our Father with the audience. Then he explained the meaning of it, starting with the very words "Our Father." To help us understand the great priviledge that is ours when we address God as "Father," Dr. Hahn told a story about a highly-educated Moslem man who was enraged and would not even continue the conversation, because he believed that Dr. Hahn had blasphemed! How? By calling God "Father" and by referring to Jesus as the "Son of God." The man insisted that we are only slaves, and that God does not love us except as His property--absolutely not as His children!

My heart aches for this man, for all Moslems, for all those who do not know they are beloved by their very God! From Jesus' own lips we have it that we a not mere slaves. No! We are His friends, so intensely loved that He willing laid down His life for us! And so intensely loved by God the Father that whatever we ask is done for us, so long as we remain united with Jesus! So long as we do as He commanded: Love Each Other!

Fear, lack of trust, lack of humility, lack of love . . . these are at the heart of the sins I confess over and over again. What excuse do I have? None. I just don't love Him enough. And it is so glaringly apparent that I am among those "who do not know they are beloved." I have trouble really believing it, really living it, even remembering it as I go about my daily life.

"If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you. In this is my Father glorified; that you bring forth very much fruit, and become my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you.

"If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; as I also have kept my Father's commandments, and do abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be filled. This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.

"I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you. You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that you love one another."--John 15:7-17

[Please, Lord, please . . . help me love You and love others in Your Name. You have chosen me and appointed me to go, so others can know how deeply they are loved by God. Help me to remain in you and bring forth good fruit, that the Father may be glorified! Lord Jesus, thank You for being my true Friend, and forgive my unfriendliness. Saint Faustina, pray for us; with you I say, "Jesus, I trust in You!"]