Angelology(2)

consternation of the crowd, Rose did not burn but stood in skeins of flame for three hours, conversing

with angels as the fire licked her body. Some believed that angels wrapped themselves about the girl,

covering her in a clear, protective armor. Eventually she died in the flames, but the miraculous

intervention left her body inviolable. St. Rose’s incorrupt corpse was paraded through the streets of

Viterbo hundreds of years after her death, not the slightest mark of her ordeal evident upon the

adolescent body.

Remembering the hour, Sister Evangeline turned from the portrait. She walked to the end of the

hallway, where a great wooden portal carved with scenes of the Annunciation separated the convent

from the church. On one side of the boundary, Sister Evangeline stood in the simplicity of the convent

; on the other rose the majestic church. She heard the sound of her footsteps sharpen as she left

carpeting for a pale roseate marble veined with green. The movement across the threshold took just

one step, but the difference was immense. The air grew heavy with incense; the light saturated blue

from the stained glass. White plaster walls gave way to great sheets of stone. The ceiling soared. The

eye adjusted to the golden abundance of Neo-Rococo. As she left the convent, Evangeline’s earthly

commitments of community and charity fell away and she entered the sphere of the divine: God, Mary,

and the angels.

In the beginning years of her time at St. Rose, the number of angelic images in Maria Angelorum

Church struck Evangeline as excessive. As a girl she’d found them overwhelming, too ever-present

and overwrought. The creatures filled every crook and crevice of the church, leaving little room for

much else. Seraphim ringed the central dome; marble archangels held the corners of the altar. The

columns were inlaid with golden halos, trumpets, harps, and tiny wings; carved visages of putti stared

from the pew ends, hypnotizing and compact as fruit bats. Although she understood that the opulence

was meant as an offering to the Lord, a symbol of their devotion, Evangeline secretly preferred the

plain functionality of the convent. During her formation she felt critical of the founding sisters,

wondering why they had not used such wealth for better purposes. But, like so much else, her

objections and preferences had shifted after she took the habit, as if the clothing ceremony itself

caused her to melt ever so slightly and take a new, more uniform shape. After five years as a

professed sister, the girl she had been had nearly faded away.

Pausing to dip her index finger into a fount of holy water, Sister Evangeline blessed herself

(forehead, heart, left shoulder, right shoulder) and stepped through the narrow Romanesque basilica,

past the fourteen Stations of the Cross, the straight-backed red oak pews, and the marble columns. As

the light was dim at that hour, Evangeline followed the wide central aisle through the nave to the

sacristy, where chalices and bells and vestments were locked in cupboards, awaiting Mass. At the far

end of the sacristy, she came to a door. Taking a deep breath, Evangeline closed her eyes, as if

preparing them for a greater brightness. She placed her hand on the cold brass knob and, heart

pounding, pushed.

The Adoration Chapel opened around her, bursting upon her vision. Its walls glittered golden, as if

she had stepped into the center of an enameled Fabergé egg. The private chapel of the Franciscan

Sisters of Perpetual Adoration had a high central dome and huge stained-glass panels that filled each

wall. The central masterpiece of the Adoration Chapel was a set of Bavarian windows hung high

above the altar depicting the three angelic spheres: the First Sphere of Seraphim, Cherubim, and

Thrones; the Second Sphere of Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; and the Third Sphere of

Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Together the spheres formed the heavenly choir, the

collective voice of heaven. Each morning Sister Evangeline would stare at the angels floating in an

expanse of glittering glass and try to imagine their native brilliance, the pure radiant light that rose

from them like heat.

Sister Evangeline spied Sisters Bernice and Boniface—scheduled for adoration each morning from

four to five—kneeling before the altar. Together the sisters ran their fingers over the carved wooden

beads of their seven-decade rosaries, as if intent to whisper the very last syllable of prayer with as

much mindfulness as they had whispered the first. One could find two sisters in full habit kneeling

side by side in the chapel at all times of the day and night, their lips moving in synchronized patterns

of prayer, conjoined in purpose before the white marble altar. The object of the sisters’ adoration

was encased in a golden starburst monstrance placed high upon the altar, a white host suspended in an