The Little Door

The Door to God

Travelling about the environs of Santa Clara, Cuba I was impressed by the fact that there are very few churches to be seen—and the churches I did see were old and worn (but still beautiful in their austerity).

The churches stood in contrast with the only grand structure I saw in Santa Clara— the mausoleum constructed in honour of Che Guevara, the celebrated hero of the Cuban revolution (1959).

My reflections on Santa Clara remind me of the simplicity and littleness of the Lenten season. It is a time characterized by the humility of Jesus as he travelled throughout Galilee preaching the Good News (not bad news!) of God’s revelatory kingdom of compassionate love. And if Jesus’ journey was one of littleness, then the path of his followers should be shrouded in simplicity as well. The poet Jessica Powers alludes to this sense of docility in her poem “This May Explain”:

The door to God, the door to any grace

is very little, very ordinary.

Those must remember who would gain the place

this rule that does not vary:

all truth, all love are by humiliation

guarded, as One has testified before.

This may explain why the serf finds salvation,

and kings and scholars pass the little door.

Let our days of Lent share the same tasty fruit of Jesus’ simplicity, humility, sparsity and authenticity. May we be, above all, content with passing through “the little door’ that is ‘the door to God.”