Defining

Stunning Event In American Desert South West Possibly "Miraculous"

Christmas is coming! It seems a good time to think about the miraculous. Can we define this word as we understand it? Could it be that a miracle really happened in the desert South West and does it have any impact on us today?

Our world is in religious turmoil. Nations and ethic groups are polarizing, and some are accepting the newest "fashion" and changing religions, even attacking religions that are the foundation of Western Civilization.

To this mix people will ask if God is real or a myth and then they'll query as to whether anything is miraculous. Let's consider that question with this historic real-life story.

In 1873, Catholic Archbishop Lamy offered support to a group of nuns for the building of a chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico – which in those days was a forsaken outpost at the end of The Old Spanish Trail from the area of today's Los Angeles. The architecture would be modeled from the "Sainte-Chapelle" in Paris.

By the time the Chapel had been built the architect was in his grave. The plan called for a stairway, which was to lead from another building. That building had never been built and there was no engineer to help them.

The nuns looked up at the choir loft and wondered how they would get there to sing and how a stairway might be built. Owing to the size of the chapel the placement of a stairway represented a serious architectural and engineering problem. In desperation the Mother Superior requested 9-days of prayer.

What happened on the 9th day and there after can only be called "miraculous." Discover the true story explaining how a miraculous staircase came to stand in the chapel and decide if it was a miracle or not.

Defining

"The Miraculous"

plethora of authors have debated whether a staircase in a little desert church can be called "miraculous."

Perhaps the answer begins with your definition of the word, and the meaning it brings to the lives of those who see and touch it. Dr. Steve Newdell delves deeper into the legend of The Miraculous Staircase. Enter the amazing Loretto Chapel as we search for a miracle residing within YOU!

Where did they come from, these Nuns, these ladies dedicated to God's work, called to be the Sisters of Loretto? They claim the miraculous happened here. What evidence can we find for a miracle?

The History of The Chapel and Santa Fe stems from the year 1610, and can be traced earlier to the first Spanish settlements and missions in

St. Augustine on the Eastern coast of Florida.

That anyone survived the difficult environment in those days
might be called "miraculous."

In 1852, seven Sisters of Loretto left their Kentucky Motherhouse for the southwest's Land of Enchantment, a trip of approximately 1,400 miles. They carried with them fear and faith, hearts beating with the excitement of an adventure, and sorrow for leaving those they knew and loved behind, never to be seen again.

They made their way by barge along the Missouri River connecting to the Mississippi River near West Alton, Missouri, off loading at Independence, Missouri. One sister overcome with ill health was forced to bid the others "God be with you," and return to the Kentucky Motherhouse. The six journeyed on with horses and a covered wagon.

They reached the endless grasslands of Kansas and made camp as the sun set. It seemed they had just closed their exhausted eyes when about them came a clamor as a band of Indians on horse-back surrounded the small camp riding, circling, shouting and calling, warning the six sisters they were not welcome to stay. Who knows, perhaps they were on sacred Indian ground, or perhaps the wild band was a premonition. The Indians left as suddenly as they had come leaving the sisters whispering prayers of thanksgiving to still be alive.

That same night, one of the sisters died. As much as they wanted to leave they made prayers, broke the sod and dug a shallow grave. This beloved member of the Sisters of Loretto remains buried there on the Kansas grasslands in an unmarked grave. "God's grace upon you." Now there were five young women and a guide alone on the grasslands as the morning's heat seared across the distant horizon. Terror in the past, and many miles before we sleep again.

(The exact route information is unknown. The distance between Independence and Santa Fe is approximately 675 miles or about 34 days traveling.)

Days passed, weeks passed. How big is this land? How long will we endure this endless painful travel? Months passed and a cold wind cut through their clothes. At last when it seemed the journey might never end the five sisters reached the City of Holy Faith, and settled into a home in the center of that little village. (Santa Fe is the end of the Spanish Trail which carried on to Los Angeles.)

Santa Fe, New Mexico, in those years, was a very small village inhabited mostly by Indians and Mexicans. At the invitation of the newly consecrated Archbishop Lamy, (the first bishop of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe), the Sisters of Loretto opening their first academy for girls. The year was 1853. The ladies had settled into a quiet purposeful routine and continued for twenty years even as The War Between The States 1861 - 1865 raged, for the most part, beyond their hearing.

In 1873, Archbishop Lamy offered support for the building of a chapel. The architecture would be modeled from the "Sainte-Chapelle" in Paris.

Santa Fe was by no means wealthy, mostly inhabited by poor Native Americans and Mexicans who labored all day to scratch a living from the dry soil. By some "miraculous" effort after nearly five years "Our Lady of Light" chapel was completed. It looked beautiful but hid one major problem!

The architect, P. Mouly, neglected to place a staircase in his design. He had planned to connect the choir loft with the second story of the convent-school, using an outdoor hallway. The convent school had not been built. Mr. Mouly had met his untimely demise and the detail about the stairway to the choir loft was not fitting to the present reality. Would they climb a ladder for the next many years? Would they be required now to build and tolerate a stairway on the outside leading to the choir loft?

The small chapel stands 25 feet by 75 feet, and reaches 85 feet in height. The high altar, statuary, stations of the cross, stained glass windows and pews all arrived from Europe (another "miraculous" journey). They were a source of pride and beauty, but the beautiful choir loft was left unattached and unreachable!

A conventional staircase would take up an entire side of the small chapel destroying the symmetry and reducing the seating capacity. That would never do! The Mother Superior, Mother Magdalene called the nuns to a novena to St. Joseph the Patron Saint of Carpenters. They need a Heavenly solution to an Earthly problem.

The stories vary here, but the official Loretto Chapel website tells us on the last day of the novena, a gray-haired man leading a donkey appeared at the convent. He asked to speak with the Mother Superior and introduced himself. He offered to build a staircase, on condition that the Mother Superior would never disclose the name of the craftsman. Mother Magdalene ordered her nuns not to speak with or in any way disturb the master craftsman. She swore herself to secrecy, and even upon her deathbed, refused to divulge the man's identity.

Some people say the man was a European craftsman. Others claim he had only a hammer, a saw and a carpenter's square. But the miracle might be that spanning the entire emptiness of the territory, without any mass advertising or electronic communication, a man competent beyond the skills of anyone local arrived and began to work.

Some people say the job was effortless and happened quickly. Others say it took 6 or even 9 months to complete. It's a wonder they don't require the stairway to be built of alabaster and gold to define it as a miracle.

Alone with his tools and water in heated tubs to soften the wood the man stepped into a place too small for a common stairway and produced a self-supporting double-helix (which in itself contains great mysteries about the origins of life) making two 360 degree turns. The stairway was revolutionary for its day and even still evades the understanding of many modern architectural engineers. It behaves like a spring taking up the stress of any step anywhere throughout the entire structure.

In those days nails were made of iron by a blacksmith and were extremely expensive. Consequently, joinery was made by hand sometimes using wooden pegs. This stairway contains no iron nails and no glue was used in the joinery.

The wood appears to be spruce but not from the local forests. No record exists with lumbar yards for the purchase of such wood. Where did it come from? No one knows.

For this author even drawing such a structure to scale would be nearly impossible. But the craftsman created the structure without flaw and it contains 33 steps, one to commemorate each year in the lifespan of Jesus the Christ.

At last the carpenter reported his work done. The legend says Mother Magdalene called the sisters together and discovered the carpenter had disappeared. They planned a dinner for him. He did not attend. They expected to pay him. He never asked for money.

The springiness of the stair was frightening and a bit dangerous. Ten years after the staircase was completed a craftsman named Phillip August Hesch added furniture grade railings completing the work in year 1887. No mean feat in my opinion. A well made banister and it's many balusters is, by any craftsman's estimate, fine woodwork. To produce such a turned piece on such a small platform in the middle of the high desert among people who were not prosperous was amazing. To find any man who could and would take the project was in my view, miraculous.

Picture of the Loretto Staircase with choir girls on the steps Looking at the photos, or touching the very stairs I think anyone would say it is a brilliant work of art and engineering.

Observing this next photo we count 15 women standing on the stairway and several more on the loft. Assuming each woman weighs an average of 114 pounds we calculate the stairway as we see it is supporting a weight approaching 2,000 pounds. Mind you, this is a stairway with a century of service "miraculously" supporting all of these dedicated lives. Could I rightly call this a miracle?

I contend that we swim in a sea of miracles. I made my living in the health care sciences for many years and found it impossible to deny The Creator and replace Him with a mythology claiming life and the universe occurred accidentally. Many occurrences can be called miracles. Some people say there are three miracles in this story, others say four. I say more....

Miracles in Texture: God Creates The Universe, God creates Earth and an environment that supports life, God creates life, God Appears to Moses and alters physics to usher people out of captivity into a new home land.

Generations of Essene people set themselves apart to maintain the strictest order of holiness, Children are born and raised to maintain the royal line of King David. In that royal line to Joseph and Mary in the 7th Generation, a child is born whom they named (in Hebrew) Yahowshua which means "God among us" and implies, "'The Christ' or 'Our Savior,'"

Monks save the last surviving copy of the Bible before their monetary is destroyed by Muslim invaders.

Seeds planted become a harvest.

Children see a vision of the Mother Mary (year 1917) and prophesy.

A cat yowls waking the inhabitants of a burning apartment building. All escape unharmed.

Two lone missionary ladies make a wrong turn in a dark city alley. Two dangerous looking boys press themselves against the wall as the ladies pass and one is heard to say, "Did you see the size of the two guy with them women?"

Soldiers give up a World War I battle position and join with the enemy in singing Christmas carols.

Bombs fall all around London but the Cathedral is left undamaged.

An impoverished family in Manila gets the support they need from a stranger and they are enabled to start working and thriving again.

My car breaks down exactly a tenth of a mile before a freeway exit beside a truck stop just outside of Nowhere, Arizona on a holiday. I limp the car into the truck stop and receive the help I need to survive and continue on.

An unexpected man arrives at an obscure chapel in an obscure impoverished desert town on a mile high plateau exactly on the ninth day of a novena, and produces a double-helix stairway using wood from God-only-knows where, then disappears unpaid, leaving us filled with wonder.

A man and woman seeking a life partner meet and marry. A child is born and they welcome him/her into their lives.

Miracles come in many textures, colors, shapes and forms. The miraculous is defined by your viewpoint. Nuns traveled a perilous journey, did the nearly impossible getting a chapel built, and a stranger arrived and built a stairway that virtually no one within a thousand miles could have so much as drawn, let alone built.
Another carpenter comes along and builds a furniture grade railing.

Fifteen women weighing a total of nearly 2,000 pounds are photographed standing on this century-old stairway. Who is right to say the entire story and scene is not miraculous?

A couple marries here before God and touches the stairway in prayer and thanksgiving. Someone in the crowd of visitors to Loretto Chapel determines to accept Jesus the Christ as his/her savior.

To some of us, all of these can be defined as miraculous.

1 Corinthians 12:28
And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues.

Loretto Chapel is a destination everyone should see in Santa Fe. When you do, touch the stairway and consider these things.

Photo by: http://www.bluerosestudios.com/

visit their website

Loretto Chapel http://youtu.be/yvid_KnFq7s

See this link for their video representation about the Chapel and the Stairway.

Credit/Links:

Blue Rose Photography Studio

221 E. DeVargas, Santa Fe, NM 87501

505-988-7536

Bellissima Music Services

Santa Fe, NM

505-566-2883

Absolute Entertainment Live Music & DJ

Santa Fe, NM

505-986-5882

The Inn and Spa at Loretto, adjacent to the Loretto Chapel and right in the heart of Santa Fe, is the ideal location for your wedding reception, rehearsal dinner, or bridal luncheon. Beautiful indoor and outdoor event spaces are available for your special day, and catering menus are customized by our award-winning chef using the bold flavors of the Southwest. The Inn offers luxurious accommodations for the entire wedding party and magnificent suites perfect for the bride and groom.

To find out more about the wedding facilities and room packages at the Inn and Spa at Loretto, please visit our Website.

OR CALL 505-982-0092

EMAIL: weddings@lorettochapel.com

http://www.innatloretto.com/santa-fe-nm-weddings.php

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