{"id":102,"date":"2014-03-20T04:07:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T04:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.free-rosary.net\/?p=102"},"modified":"2014-03-20T04:07:55","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T04:07:55","slug":"the-miraculous-stairs-of-st-joseph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.free-rosary.net\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"The “Miraculous” Stairs of St. Joseph"},"content":{"rendered":"In September 1852 the Sisters of Loreto came, by paddle steamer and by covered wagon, to the Southwest.\u00a0 Their trip, which had begun in Kentucky the previous May on a riverboat steamer which took them up the Mississippi to St. Louis, was at the specific request of Bishop Jean Lamy, who had been appointed Vicar-Apostolic of the New Mexico Territory in 1850.\u00a0 From St. Louis to Independence, Missouri, the Sisters took the steamer “Kansas,” but on the way a sorrowful adversity befell the little community.\u00a0 Their beloved Superior, Mother Matilda, came down with cholera and died shortly after arriving in Independence.\u00a0 Two other Sisters also had the disease, but they slowly recovered.<\/p>\n
After more months of struggles and fears, broken axles and wheels, and scorching days, what was left of the missionary team finally arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.\u00a0 Sisters Magdalen, Catherine, Hilaria, and Roberta made up the community.\u00a0 At the direction of Bishop Lamy, Sister Magdalen was appointed Superior of the Sisters.\u00a0 She was a woman of strong faith and firm resolution, and the situation she and her Sisters faced was a difficult one.<\/p>\n
It was only because these Sisters of Loreto were great-hearted women, thoroughly permeated with an all-consuming love of God, that they were able to brave the hardships of those first years.\u00a0 Bishop Lamy was in the midst of a valiant struggle to preserve the Catholic Faith in “New” Mexico.\u00a0 The formerly Spanish Catholic territory was still groaning under its hostile “takeover” from Mexico in 1848, and the Sisters were not particularly welcome, as far as territorial officials were concerned.\u00a0 Thus, they certainly had no comfortable Convent waiting for them upon their arrival.\u00a0 They lived at first in a little, one-room adobe house.\u00a0 At that time the population of the little city of Santa Fe was still made up mostly of Catholic Mexicans and Indians.\u00a0 Today Santa Fe is a large modern city, the State Capitol, though, with its quaintly narrow streets and Spanish architecture, it still keeps alive the ancient climate of the old “Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assisi”\u00a0(The Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi)<\/i>, which is its proper name, founded by Spanish Catholic conquistadors and missionaries in 1610.<\/p>\n
But back in 1852 it soon became quite evident that, if the Sisters were to fulfill the intentions of Bishop Lamy, who had brought them to Santa Fe for the specific purpose of helping him to preserve the Catholic Faith of the people, they would need a Convent and a school to teach their children.\u00a0 Mexican carpenters zealously began to build for the Sisters.\u00a0 The school was swiftly completed and was called “Loreto Academy of Our Lady of Light.”\u00a0 Plans were made next for a beautiful Chapel.\u00a0 According to the Sisters’ annals for the year 1873, the Chapel was begun on July 25th of that year.\u00a0 It was designed by the same architect, Mr. Mouly, who had designed the Bishop’s Cathedral in Santa Fe.\u00a0 Because Bishop Lamy was from France, he wished the Sisters to have a Chapel that was similar to his beloved Sainte Chapelle in Paris.\u00a0 That meant that it was to be strictly European Gothic, in fact, the first Gothic structure west of the Mississippi.\u00a0 It was to be, in many ways, a visible symbol of the courageous Bishop’s opposition to “Americanism,” which would be condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1899.<\/p>\n
French and Italian masons immediately went to work on the new structure.\u00a0 It would be large — larger in fact — than most of the mission Chapels in that area.\u00a0 It was to be 25 feet by 75 feet with a height of 85 feet.<\/p>\n
Mother Magdalen recorded in the annals that the erection of the Chapel was placed under the patronage of St. Joseph “in whose honor we communicated every Wednesday, that he might assist us.”\u00a0 Then she adds, “Of his powerful help we have been witnesses on several occasions.”<\/p>\n
The Chapel work progressed with some financial worries and a maximum of faith on the part of the Sisters.\u00a0 It was not until it was nearly finished that they realized that a dreadful mistake had been made.\u00a0 The Chapel itself was beautifully done, and the choir loft was wonderful too, but there was no connecting link between the two.\u00a0 There was no stairway and, because the loft was exceptionally high, there was no room for a stairway as ordinary stairways go. \u00a0 Mother Magdalen called in many carpenters to try to build a stairway; but each, in his turn, measured and thought and then shook his head sadly saying, “It can’t be done, Mother.”\u00a0 It looked as if there were only two alternatives: to use a ladder to get to the choir which seemed impractical in any case, or to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it differently.\u00a0 The latter would have been a heartbreaking task.\u00a0 However, anyone who knows true Catholic Sisters and their trust in Divine Providence, knows they will not plunge into such a drastic solution to a problem without first saying something like, “Let’s wait awhile and make a novena.”\u00a0 So the Sisters of Loreto made a novena to St. Joseph for a suitable solution to the problem.<\/p>\n
On the very last day of the novena, a gray-haired man came up to the Convent with a burro and a tool chest.\u00a0 Approaching Mother Magdalen, he asked if he might try to help the Sisters by building a stairway! \u00a0 Mother gave her consent gladly, and he set to work.\u00a0 According to the story that was later told by some of the Sisters present at the time and passed on to others, the\u00a0only<\/i>\u00a0tools he had were a hammer, a saw and a T-square, and some of the Sisters remembered seeing a few tubs of water for soaking the wood to make it pliable.\u00a0 It is not clear how long he took to complete the work, for when Mother Magdalen went to pay him, he had vanished.\u00a0 She went to the local lumber yard to pay for the wood, at least. \u00a0 They knew nothing of it there.\u00a0 To this day there is no record stating that the job was ever paid for.<\/p>\n
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The winding stairway that the kindly man had left for the Sisters is a masterpiece of beauty and wonder.\u00a0 It makes two complete 360 degree turns.\u00a0 There is no supporting pole up the center as most circular stairways have.\u00a0 This means that it hangs there with no support!\u00a0 The entire weight is on the base.\u00a0 Some architects have said that by all laws of gravity, it should have crashed to the floor the minute anyone stepped on it, and yet it was used daily for over 80 years.<\/p>\n
The stairway was put together only with wooden pegs — there is not a single nail in it.\u00a0 At the time it was built, the stairway had no banisters.\u00a0 These were added later.\u00a0 Among the girls who attended the Academy at the time the stairway was constructed was a girl of about thirteen years.\u00a0 She later became a Loreto Sister, and she never tired of telling how she and her friend were among the first to climb up the stairway.\u00a0 She said that they were so frightened when they got up to the choir that they came down on their hands and knees!<\/p>\n
Visitors have come from all over the world to see the wonderful stairway.\u00a0 Among them have been architects who, without exception, declare that they cannot understand how the stairway was constructed nor how it remains as sturdy as it is after a century of use.\u00a0 Mr. Urban Weidner, a Santa Fe architect and wood expert, says that he has\u00a0never<\/i>\u00a0seen a circular wooden stairway with 360 degree turns that did not have a supporting pole down the center.\u00a0 One of the most baffling things about the stairway, however, is the perfection of the curves of the stringers. \u00a0 According to Mr. Weidner, the wood is spliced along the sides of the stringers with nine splices on the outside and seven on the inside, each fitted with the greatest precision.\u00a0 Each piece is perfectly curved.\u00a0 How this was done in the 1870’s by a single man in an out-of-the-way place with only the most primitive tools is inexplicable to modern architects.<\/p>\n
Many experts have tried to identify the wood and surmise where it came from.\u00a0 No one has ever been able to give a satisfactory answer to this mystery.\u00a0 The treads were constantly walked on for over 80 years since the stairway was built, but they showed signs of wear only on the edges.\u00a0 Mr. Weidner identifies this wood as “edge-grained fir of some sort.”\u00a0 (Others say it is long-leaf yellow pine.)\u00a0 He knows definitely that this hard-wearing wood did\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0come from New Mexico.\u00a0 Where the mysterious carpenter got this wood is a secret known to him alone.<\/p>\n
Holy Mother Church is always cautious about making statements concerning things of a supernatural nature.\u00a0 Therefore, the good Loreto Sisters whose prayers were so wonderfully answered, as well as Bishop Lamy, in this spirit, refrained from saying anything definitive about the stairway.\u00a0 But Mother Magdalen and her community of Sisters and students\u00a0knew<\/i>\u00a0that the stairway was St. Joseph’s answer to their fervent prayers.\u00a0 Many were convinced that the humble carpenter was St. Joseph himself, as his silent, prayerful labors were precisely the virtues one would expect of the foster-Father of Our Divine Lord.<\/p>\n
The Convent annals tell us that the Chapel of Our Lady of Light was dedicated by the Bishop on April 25, 1878, and remained as a beautiful testimony of the wondrous power and intercession of good St. Joseph for over 80 years. \u00a0 Tragically, in the devastating aftermath of Vatican Council II, religious vocations dwindled, and the Loreto “sisters” of the new post-conciliar religion, having first betrayed their Order by discarding their traditional religious garb and way of life, ended by betraying the faith and devotion of Mother Magdalen and her Sisters by\u00a0selling<\/b>\u00a0the entire Academy grounds, including the Chapel, to a commercial property developer.\u00a0 Most of the historical monuments of the love for souls, zeal for the Catholic Faith, and pious devotion of Bishop Lamy, Mother Magdalen, and the Sisters who established the Loreto Academy of Our Lady of Light were demolished to make way for monuments of secular “progress” (greed and materialism) upon their ruins. \u00a0 What the secular government had been unable to accomplish for almost a century, the post-Vatican II church did in a matter of a few short years.\u00a0 Even the beautiful shrine of\u00a0La Conquistadora<\/i>, by which Bishop Lamy paid homage not only to Our Lady, but also to the glory of the Spanish Catholic “conquest” of New Spain, was removed from its place of prominence in his ancient Cathedral dedicated to Christ the King.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, however, there was such an outcry from the devoted people of Santa Fe, including many of the alumni of the Academy, that the Chapel with the “miraculous” stairs was preserved as a national monument, albeit amidst the commercialism which surrounds it.\u00a0 To this very day, those who love and revere good St. Joseph, can still go and gaze upon that which is, without doubt, a visible testimony that St. Joseph indisputably finds ways to provide for those who humbly and confidently place their needs in his capable hands.<\/p>\n