Holy porters

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.

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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.

“Brother” Jacoba and Saint Francis

“Bring me the delicious almond cookies
that you prepared for me when I was ill in Rome.”
Saint Francis to “Brother” Jacoba, as he lay dying

There is one story about Saint Francis that deserves more attention – his beloved Roman friend, Giacoma Frangipane de Settesoli, also known as Lady or Brother Jacoba.

Francis seems to have met this wealthy woman who provided him with a place to stay while in Rome. She provided some land that the friars used as a hospice lepers. She later helped the Franciscans obtain the property that his now the church of San Francesco a Ripa Grande.

She was a great friend of Francis and arrived at the Porziuncula as Francis was dying. As Augusting Thompson writes in Francis of Assisi: a new biography:

“No outside visitors were permitted to see Francis, with one exception, a woman whose importance to him is known only from the stories told about the days immediately before his death. She was Jacoba de’ Settesoli, a matron of means from a prominent Roman family. Perhaps this woman belonged to the circle of pious Roman women that included the recluse Sister Pressede, of whom Francis was also very fond. Jacoba had provided Francis with lodging during his visits to Rome, and he remembered her with great fondness. She was probably the only woman with whom Francis ever developed a close friendship, one so close that he even called her a “brother” and excepted her from the rules excluding women from the cloister. He asked the brothers to send her a message, informing her of his impending death. He asked that she prepare him a gray shroud for burial, modeled on the burial robe used for monks of the Cistercian Order. In a moment of nostalgia, Francis also asked her to send him some of the confection of almonds and honey that the Romans called mostacciolo that she used to make for him during his visits.
“In fact, word of Francis’s decline had already reached Jacoba. Before his message could even be sent, she arrived at the friary. Asked what to do about the arrival of a woman, Francis, as in the past, told them that the rule of cloister did not apply to her, especially since she had traveled so far to see him. As it turned out, she had already bought gray cloth for the shroud, incense and wax for the funeral rites, and all the ingredients needed to make the mostacciolo. The brothers took her offerings to make the shroud and funeral candles. She prepared the confection, but Francis was now so sick that he could hardly eat any of it.”

Francis, ascetic though he was, did not hesitate to be close friends with a rich Roman woman, nor was he loathe to ask her to bring a special almond treat that she had prepared for him when he was sick in Rome. This was the man who would spread ashes on his food so that he would not enjoy it too much!

Francis, welcoming sister death, also welcomed “Brother” Jacoba and recognized the right of a righteousness woman to be present in the cloister where he was dying.

Brother Jacoba is an example of a woman who lived in the world but as a member of the Order of Penance (the lay Franciscans) did not hesitate to serve the poor and God’s people.

She is buried in the crypt of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, close to the tomb of the saint who inspired her and who loved her almond treats.

 

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The photo of Giotto’s Death of St. Francis in the church of Santa Croce in Florence was taken in February 2013.

The image of Frate Jacopa is from the website of the church of San Francesco a Ripa Grande

Enfleshing God’s love for the poor

Today is a strange confluence of events and feasts which, for me, show God’s ongoing love for the poor.

Since March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, fell on Good Friday this year, it is celebrated today.

Yes, the Word became Flesh on a specific day; but He continues being made flesh every day – in those who are marginalized, rejected, denied love and life.

Mosaic in the Filipino style in Nazareth

Today is also the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. I clearly remember the night, staying with my parents. I especially remember the phone call from a former classmate who knew of my concern for civil rights.

Benedict the Black

Today Franciscans celebrate the death in 1589 of a saint I have revered since grade school – St. Benedict the Moor (il moro), as he was known then.

The son of African parents who had been slaves, St. Benedict was raised in Sicily. After being freed from slavery, he joined a group of hermits and was eventually chosen their superior.

When the pope disbanded all the small groups of hermits, Benedict joined the Franciscans, where he served as cook. He was chosen superior, even though he was illiterate. He was later chosen novice master but he asked to be allowed to return to the kitchen.

His simplicity, his willingness to do whatever for the glory of God, reminds me of this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Whatever is your life’s work, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.”

Today is also the feast of St. Isidore of Seville, an encyclopedic bishop and teacher, who died in 636. He once wrote these words that reflect God’s love for the poor and mistrust of riches:

“The greater our love for the things we possess, the greater our pain when we lose them.
“Greed is insatiable. The person who is afflicted with it always needs something else; the more he has, the more he wants.
“The powerful are nearly all so inflamed with a mad lust for possessions that they stay well clear of the poor. Small wonder that when they come to die that are condemned to the flames of hell, since they did nothing to put out the flames of greed during their lifetime.”

Strong words that challenge all of us.

The challenge is how to be poor like Jesus, giving ourselves for others; how to be drum majors for justice like Martin Luther King; how to be humble servants like St. Benedict the Black; and how to use our gifts for the poor.

Image at St. Francis of Assisi Church, 31st Street, NYC