At the Center of Ethics and Culture’s 11th annual fall conference, “Younger than Sin: Virtues of Humility, Wonder, and Joy,” Professor Lawrence Cunningham, the John A. O’Brien Chair of Catholic of Theology, spoke of Holy Cross’s first canonized saint in this year’s Jack Schuster Memorial Lecture: “The Humility of the Door Keeper: The Case of Andre Bessette, CSC.”
In his lecture, Prof. Cunningham focused on the life of St. Andre as a door keeper, where his practice of humility, hospitality, and constancy contributed to his holiness.
The most profound virtue St. Andre practiced was humility. Barely literate, poor, and familiar with labor intensive jobs, Andre Bessette entered the religious life as brother in 1874. He took the religious name Andre to honor the parish priest who suggested he consider the Holy Cross Community.
As the door keeper, Prof. Cunningham said, St. Andre was the greeter at the “threshold of hospitality.” Cunningham explained St. Andre as a model of Abraham in his belief that “to show hospitality is to show hospitality to angels unaware.” Like Christ who shared meals with the poor and the outcast, St. Andre drew various people to him who needed prayers and healings.
Prof. Cunningham also discussed St. Andre’s constancy, or the virtue of stability. St. Andre’s humble job as a porter linked the “sanctity of the cloister to the world beyond.” Through this virtue of constancy, the saint expressed love in his vocation and his utmost obedience to God.
In light of these three virtues, St. Andre’s greatest model of humility, hospitality, and constancy was St. Joseph. St. Andre encouraged his visitors to devote themselves to the humble, just spouse of Mary by calling on St. Joseph’s intercession for them and healing them with the oil of St. Joseph.
St. Andre also erected a chapel on Mount Royal in St. Joseph’s honor. As a barber, St. Andre collected the money he earned to give to charity and to help begin construction of St. Joseph’s Oratory.
Although the construction process encountered many obstacles, St. Andre never faltered in his perseverance. In the midst of the Great Depression, Canadians of all ages continued to donate gifts and the basilica was completed.
Toward the end of his lecture, Prof. Cunningham proposed putting St. Andre’s virtue to practice: “If we want people to come back to the Lord, we ought to welcome them when they come.” As the doorkeeper of Christ, the humble St. Andre Bessette was motivated by the grace of God: “Philanthropists grow weary. Saints never grow weary.”
St. Andre died in 1937 at the age of 91. 55,000 attended his funeral mass and one million visited his body outside of the Oratory after his death. He was beautified in 1982 by Pope John Paul II and was raised to the altars by Pope Benedict XVI in October 2010.
Sandra Laguerta is a sophomore theology major who enjoys playing the ukulele while wearing brightly colored sweaters. You can contact her, addressing the email as “To LaSaundrah,”at slaguert@nd.edu.
