The joke about Alfonso was that the Jesuits couldn’t admit him as a priest, but OK as a saint. His early story is tragic: the deaths of his wife, mother and two children, a failed business. After several years of agonizing, he applied to become a Jesuit, but was refused for two years because of poor health and limited education. Finally accepted as a brother, he spent the next forty-five years as doorkeeper for their College on Majorca. That crowd of students parading through his door must’ve brought frustrations, disappointments, bright greetings and easy young grace. Apparently he welcomed all as Christ, and had a gift for turning what was bitter, sweet. He is perhaps best known through Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem:
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 without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
His ordinariness is attractive, and prompts wonderment about the uncanonized and unsung women who also sacralized the ordinary. Their names are largely lost, except perhaps for a cherished memory of grandmother, sister or friend. One example with a name:
In The Sanctuary of Women, Jan Richardson describes the work of Harriet Powers, who grew up in slavery, and made one Bible quilt displayed at the Smithsonian, another at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She referred to her creations as “a sermon in patchwork,” to “show my Lawd my humbility” (p. 216)
When women were denied any creative outlets like preaching, they worked with “the vocabulary at hand…a sermon in supper.” (223) Harriet took Scripture stories that were part of Sunday church and brought them to the county fair. (222) That got me started, with variations on the theme Alfonso and many women developed when “official” church channels were closed to them. The gospel of the door, the liturgy of lunch, the homily of housekeeping? We could all write a litany of care with different versions: “How was your day?” “Sarah, got your lunch box?” “James, you need a warmer coat.” “Welcome home!”
If we ever recognize the holiness of the small gesture, it’s only dimly. Most of the time we’re oblivious when the timeless intersects time, or the radiance fills the routine. Even the maddening activities like negotiating traffic, doing taxes, or enduring customer dis-service keep us grounded in the world God loves, mess as well as miracle.
But Jesus, often kicked out of religious institutions, hallowed the home. He spent the greater part of his life there, and one of his first miracles was healing Peter’s mother-in-law at home. Richardson says he “crosses with great intention” into her world, “sacred domestic space no less than in the holy space of synagogue.” (222) She, in turn serves him, and the author of Mark uses the same word to describe what the angels do for Jesus after his 40 days in the desert.
Later defending the woman who anoints him with oil before his passion, Jesus says, “she has done what she could” (Mark14:8). Given restricted roles and limited resources, how many millions of ordinary heroes have done–and continue to do–just that?
