Advent

Advent is the season of preparation for Christmas in the convent’s calendar, but in the story it also becomes a test of expectation: the girls are urged to make themselves worthy after Saint Joseph fails to appear, while José races to finish the chapel staircase. Around that seasonal deadline, daily prayer and acts of care reveal faith as something practiced and interpreted amid uncertainty, not simply received as doctrine.

The Season and Its Expectations

After the girls have waited for Saint Joseph and he has not come, the school settles into a chastened quiet. Mother Magdalena reminds them almost every morning at breakfast, “We have not been worthy of him,” then turns their attention to the coming of Jesus: “Now Christmas is coming. It is the season of Advent. We must make ourselves worthy of the coming of Jesus.” Her words redirect the girls’ expectation from a hoped-for intervention to religious preparation. Lizzy, a Methodist among Catholic pupils, recognizes the distinction between the two expectations: she is relieved that the girls do not actually expect Jesus to arrive in the same way they had expected Saint Joseph.

The approaching feast also imposes a practical deadline. José works inside the chapel from six in the morning, pauses for Mass, and continues late into the night; Mother Magdalena warns the girls not to disturb him because he is racing to complete the staircase for Christmas. The season thus measures time through both observance and labor: prayer marks the day, while the unfinished structure makes the remaining days visible.

Prayer and the Work of Care

The convent’s seasonal observance belongs to a wider rhythm of religious practice. During a week of evening prayers and a novena to Saint Joseph, Lizzy grows accustomed to the incense, Latin, and responses. The chapel becomes an oasis amid the school’s confusion: with the day students gone, its quiet gives her time to think. It is also the one time she allows herself to think about Mama, whose absence otherwise returns to her in passing thoughts during the day. Prayer does not remove grief; it gives Lizzy a protected interval in which to face it.

Religious practice also takes material form outside the chapel. Sister Roberta keeps Mrs. Lacey’s medicine in a small basket beside sweet coffee with milk and nutmeg, and explains her kindness by saying, “God forgives disobedience, when the act helps someone in need.” The line places care beside rule-following: compassion can require a practical exception rather than mere submission to authority. Elsewhere, Lizzy recalls that Santa Fe requires midwives to be licensed by a municipal judge and to carry a parish priest’s certificate that they know how to administer baptism. Her wondering whether Lozen would count as licensed brings local care, civic regulation, and sacramental responsibility into the same frame.

Personal Faith and Religious Authority

The story’s religious life is not reducible to a division between Catholic and Protestant belief. When Mrs. Lacey is baptized Catholic while in a coma, Lizzy explains that Mrs. Lacey is Methodist, lacked papers proving her earlier baptism, and had asked Lizzy to put a bag of asafetida around her neck if the nuns baptized her. Lizzy asks whether the folk remedy can undo the baptism and whether the Catholic baptism will stand. The exchange makes the conflict concrete: a vulnerable woman’s stated wishes meet institutional action, and Lizzy seeks reassurance about what that action means for her.

The answer Lizzy receives shifts attention away from religious bookkeeping. José says that God loves everyone equally and is not a punishing figure keeping account of human errors. He points instead to the world’s gifts, naming Lizzy’s kitten and baby Elena. In this view, faith is expressed through loving attention to living beings as well as through formal rites. The passage does not settle every disagreement about baptism; it offers Lizzy a way to think about divine care that is less fearful than the judgment she imagines.

The Christmas Deadline and the Staircase

When José completes the staircase without a banister, the girls’ expectation of a miracle gives way to a structure they must actually use. Asked why he did not make a handrail, Sister Roberta answers, “Faith,” and says that she will descend in the only way she considers feasible before they practice coming down gracefully. She turns and creeps backward, step by step, on her hands and knees; once safely at the bottom, she praises the beauty of the wood. Her response joins belief to bodily caution and adaptation rather than pretending that the missing banister is inconsequential.

The staircase’s progress brings the Advent passages together. The hoped-for Saint Joseph has not arrived, yet the school’s Christmas preparations continue through José’s long hours and Sister Roberta’s practical demonstration. Advent’s movement toward the feast is therefore marked not by a confirmed miracle but by work, prayer, disappointment, and the effort to act faithfully with what is present.