A Reflection for Monday of the Thirty-First Week in Unusual Time
Find today’s readings here.
Every time that I leave my Jesuit community, I pass by three men and a lady who function security and reception for Xavier High School. The boys are all former cops, a fact they wear very frivolously. At all times ready with a smile and a friendly word, they appear to spend their days mostly helping people get where they should go and watching out for the scholars. Early within the morning you will discover them not only at the doorway but down the block on the subway station, ensuring our youngsters get to highschool okay.
Meanwhile, the girl who sits behind the front desk misses nothing that is happening at Xavier. She jogs my memory of so many amazing office assistants I even have had the privilege of knowing within the Society, individuals who at all times know exactly what is happening in our institutions and communities, and in addition what to do about it. They’re trusted by Jesuits and others as advisers, friends, even confessors. They often provide a greater welcome to our works than we Jesuits do. In the event you’ve ever had occasion to call or visit America Media, you’ve seen this for yourself. Glenda Castro has been with the organization for occurring 30 years, and nobody is wiser or more helpful.
To face on the door is to be allowed to greet the world, to face within the position of God, who welcomes us all with kindness and mercy (even once we’re type of a large number).
Whether we’re going to the doctor’s office, a bar or out our front door, all our lives are touched by interactions with people whose job is at the very least partially to “work the door.” And within the lifetime of the church, today we have fun a person who I like to consider as their patron saint, Jesuit brother Alphonsus Rodríguez. Rodríguez was not your average Jesuit; he entered at 40 years old, after having been married and a father to 3 kids. His life with them was sadly like something out of the book of Job; each of his family members died in quick succession. Then his business failed, too.
But slightly than breaking him, those losses in some way brought Rodríguez to a greater faith in God. He decided to pursue religious life.
Six months after he entered the Jesuits, Rodríguez was asked to turn into the porter at a recently founded Jesuit college (i.e., highschool) in Majorca. He stayed in that job for 46 years, and he became an establishment. People would come to him for help or counseling, including other Jesuits. And he treated everyone with enormous respect. In memoirs discovered after his death, Rodríguez wrote that every time the doorbell rang, he would imagine that it was God on the opposite side waiting to be let in. “I’m on my way, Lord!” he would say as he went to greet whoever he met there.
Inside the Jesuits, reflections about Rodríguez have often centered around his humility. He took a job that others (read: priests and educated people) wouldn’t want and made it something special. Personally, I feel if he could, he would correct that. To face on the door is to be allowed to greet the world, to face within the position of God, who welcomes us all with kindness and mercy (even once we’re type of a large number). What a privilege to be that person. And what a present those that have that job are to others.
