Me: Howdy Prodigal, where are you going?
Prodigal: I decided to stop in at this chapel. I heard it was beautiful!
Me: I have a story about another chapel called the Loretto chapel.
Prodigal: Of course I want to hear it!
Max Lucado in his book In the Eye of the Storm shares a story about the Loretto Chapel.
A block south of the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, on the corner of Water Street and Old Santa Fe Trail, you will find Loretto Chapel. The Chapel was completed in 1878. 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.
In 1878 everything 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 stairwary. 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.
The Sister of Loretto were then faced with a challenge of fifteen impossible feet.
So what did they do?
They prayed for the impossible to happen.
The nuns prayed for nine days. On the last last day, 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.
Pray for the impossible, you never know who or what may show up! God delights in surprises.
Luke 1:37
For nothing will be impossible with God.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.faithincounsling.org
www.theprodigalpig.com
