Saturday, November 18, Capuchin Father Solanus Casey will be beatified in Detroit, Michigan. A Wisconsin native he became a Capuchin and was ordained a priest. But, for various reasons, he was not allowed to preach or hear confessions.
Reading about his life, I found out that he had been at St. Felix Friary in Huntington, Indiana, from 1946 until 1956. I taught high school part-time for two years in Huntington and often worshipped at the Friary. I did not know I was praying where a saint had lived.
After several assignments, he ended up in Detroit, where he served as porter, door-keeper for Saint Bonaventure Monastery. There he opened the door, counseled many, and saw that the poor were fed. He showed holiness in simple acts of love of God and of all who came his way. As he once said, “We must be faithful to the present moment or we will frustrate the plan of God for our lives.”
A friend of mine, David Nantais, wrote an article on Father Solanus for America magazine nine years ago. It’s worth reading as well as a more recent article on the Francican Media website.
There are other holy porters. One of the most notable is Saint André Bessette, a Holy Cross brother, who served in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The poor and sick flocked to him, seeking healing and love. He was very devoted to Saint Joseph and now you can visit a shrine to the foster father of Jesus on the hill where St. André lived and prayed.
You can read more about these two holy door keepers in an article by Fr. Thomas Rosica.
There are other porters, at least two I know of.
St. Juan Macias was a Dominican lay brother, porter of the Dominican convent of Santa María Magdalena in Lima, Perú. His generosity brought him the epithet “Father of the Poor.”
St. Alfonso Rodriguez was a Jesuit brother who entered the Jesuits later in life. He was the porter of the Jesuit college on the island of Majorca. He influenced the missionary vocation of St. Peter Claver to go to Colombia and work with slaves. When he was canonized, the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a beautiful poem in his honor. The second stanza reads:
Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
What moves me in the lives of these door keepers is their attention to those whom they welcomed at their door. Their hospitality moved minds and hearts; their attention to the needs of others brought healing. They recognized Christ in everyone who knocked at the door.
They truly practiced the virtue of hospitality.
I pray that I can learn that virtue from them an I ask their intercession for this grace. I am all too prone to consider people who knock at the door as interruptions, rather than as calls to live out my vocation as a Christian and, now, as a deacon.
They serve to remind me of the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews 13, 2:
Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have entertained angels unaware.
Another porter I just learned about today, April 22, 2021:
Saint Conrad of Parzam was a Capuchin lay brother and porter at Altoetting, Germany. He died on April 21, 1894.
walk the way 