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Greatness can be the common life well lived, doing the ordinary, small things with great care, as spiritual exercises, doing them for the greater glory of God.

Alphonsus Rodriguez's father died when he was 14, he left school to help with the family business. His young wife died in childbirth, his mother and son a short time later. His business failed. He applied to be admitted to the Jesuit order, but was turned down because of lack of education. He went back to school.  In 1571, the Jesuits accepted him as a lay brother. He was sent to Montesione College on Majorca. He served as doorkeeper for forty-five years. He greeted each person as if he were meeting Jesus, he'd say as he went to the door, "I'm coming Lord."  He had a profound effect on the people who knew him, especially those who knew him at the end of his life when he was plagued with very poor health until he died October 30, 1689.  His canonization took place on January 15, 1888.

Gerard Manley Hopkins  

St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
Lay brother of the Society of Jesus


HONOUR is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;      
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

  Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,      
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.