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Sunday, April 04, 2010

A Blessed Easter

This is indeed a wonderful story, but alas, merely a legend! Today we celebrate a true story - of the one true man and true God who gifted us with our Resurrection life! Jesus is the stairway, the path, the gate, the open door! We are an Easter people and Hallelujah is 0ur song!

The Miracle of the Carpenter

by Max Lucado
Loretto Chapel took five years to complete. Modeled after the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, its delicate sanctuary contains an altar, a rose window, and a choir loft. The choir loft is the reason for wonder. Were you to stand in the newly built chapel in 1878, you might see the Sisters of Loretto looking forlornly at the balcony. Everything else was complete: the doors had been hung, the pews had been placed, the floor had been laid. Everything was finished. Even the choir loft. Except for one thing. No stairs.

The chapel was too small to accommodate a conventional stairway. The best builders and designers in the region shook their heads when consulted. "Impossible," they murmured. There simply wasn't enough room. A ladder would serve the purpose, but mar the ambiance. The Sisters of Loretto, whose determination had led them from Kentucky to Santa Fe, now faced a challenge greater than their journey: a stairway that couldn't be built.

What they had dreamed of and what they could do were separated by fifteen impossible feet.
So what did they do? The only thing they could do. They ascended the mountain. Not the high mountains near Santa Fe. No, they climbed even higher. They climbed the same mountain that Jesus climbed 1,800 years earlier in Bethsaida. They climbed the mountain of prayer.
As the story goes, the nuns prayed for nine days. On the last day of the novena, a Mexican carpenter with a beard and a wind-burned face appeared at the convent. He explained that he had heard they needed a stairway to a chapel loft. He thought he could help. The mother superior had nothing to lose, so she gave him permission.

He went to work with crude tools, painstaking patience, and uncanny skill. For eight months he worked. One morning the Sisters of Loretto entered the chapel to find their prayers had been answered. A masterpiece of carpentry spiraled from the floor to the loft. Two complete three-hundred-sixty-degree turns. Thirty-three steps held together with wooden pegs and no central support. The wood is said to be a variety of hard fir, one nonexistent in New Mexico!

When the sisters turned to thank the craftsman, he was gone. He was never seen again. He never asked for money. He never asked for praise. He was a simple carpenter who did what no one else could do so singers could enter a choir loft and sing.

See the stairway for yourself, if you like. Journey into the land of Enchantment. Step into this chapel of amazement and witness the fruit of prayer. Or, if you prefer, talk to the Master Carpenter yourself. He has already performed one impossible feat in your world. He, like the Santa Fe carpenter, built a stairway no one else could build. He, like the nameless craftsman, used material from another place. He, like the visitor to Loretto, came to span the gap between where you are and where you long to be. Each year of his life is a step. Thirty-three paces. Each step of the stair is an answered prayer. He built it so you can climb it.
And sing.


13 comments:

  1. Wow amazing! I was so intrigued I just had to look for more pictures!

    I found out after some years they put a rail to it since the sisters were afraid to go up without them. So beautiful! So awesome!

    http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loretto_Chapel_Miraculous_staircase.jpg

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  2. I visited the chapel while in Santa Fe a few years ago, and it is truly as lovely as it is remarkable.

    Many thanks for sharing this story today.

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  3. What a lovely post! I saw a movie about this on TV some years ago. Amazing story!
    I would love to visit the chapel to see it for myself someday.

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  4. I would love to visit the chapel too. I wish I lived closer.
    Happy Easter to you! Gaby xo

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  5. Wow! What an awesome true story! I would love to visit and see that stairway.

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  6. This is an amazing story...really loved reading it. God provides for us when there seems to be no way! And I always love hearing of "miracles".
    blessings,
    Debra

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  7. Beautiful! Happy late Easter to you! ;) Paulette

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  8. That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing such a lovely and inspiring story.
    ~Janee

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  9. your blog is adorable! you have such a talent and i love how you are bringing much glory to the Lord in all that you put your hands to.

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  10. Hey sweetie, I saw your message on my blog saying I won your ATC's. That would be wonderful, but I do not think I left a comment on the post you had the give-away. Was there a mistake???

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  11. Of course I would love them!! :)
    email me and I'll send you my address! Thank you so much!! :)

    maryefreeman@hotmail.com

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  12. Hey Patsy! Neat blog you have going on here. It's cool to know you're a Christian and a Filipino, too!

    Thanks for entering my giveaway! Good luck! :)

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  13. wonderful post. :) Thanks for the encouraging story.

    nicole visiting from
    http://lettersfromcoco.blogspot.com/

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I am so glad you dropped by! You are a blessing!
:^) Patsy