Angelology(3)

explosion of gold.

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration had prayed every minute of every hour of every day

since Mother Francesca, their founding abbess, had initiated adoration in the early nineteenth century.

Nearly two hundred years later, the prayer persisted, forming the longest, most persistent chain of

perpetual prayer in the world. For the sisters, time passed with the bending of knees and the soft

clicking of rosary beads and the daily journey from the convent to the Adoration Chapel. Hour after

hour they arrived at the chapel, crossed themselves, and knelt in humility before the Lord. They

prayed by morning light; they prayed by candlelight. They prayed for peace and grace and the end of

human suffering. They prayed for Africa and Asia and Europe and the Americas. They prayed for the

dead and for the living. They prayed for their fallen, fallen world.

Blessing themselves in tandem, Sisters Bernice and Boniface left the chapel. The black skirts of

their habits—long, heavy garments of more traditional cut than Sister Evangeline’s post-Vatican II

attire—dragged along the polished marble floor as they made way for the next set of sisters to take

their place.

Sister Evangeline sank into the foam cushion of a kneeler, the cover of which was still warm from

Sister Bernice. Ten seconds later Sister Philomena, her daily prayer partner, joined her. Together

they continued a prayer that had begun generations before, a prayer that ran through each sister of their

order like a chain of perpetual hope. A golden pendulum clock, small and intricate, its cogs and

wheels clicking with soft regularity under a protective glass dome, chimed five times. Relief flooded

Evangeline’s mind: Everything in heaven and earth was perfectly on schedule. She bowed her head

and began to pray. It was exactly five o’clock.

In recent years Evangeline had been assigned to work in the St. Rose library as assistant to her prayer

partner, Sister Philomena. It was an unglamorous position to be sure, not at all as high-profile as

working in the Mission Office or assisting in Recruitment, and it had none of the rewards of charity

work. As if to emphasize the lowly nature of the position, Evangeline’s office was located in the most

decrepit part of the convent, a drafty section of the first floor down the hall from the library itself,

with leaky pipes and Civil War—era windows, a combination that led to dampness, mold, and an

abundance of head colds each winter. In fact, Evangeline had been afflicted with a number of

respiratory infections in the past months, causing her a shortness of breath that she blamed entirely on

drafts.

The saving grace of Evangeline’s office was the view. Her worktable abutted a window on the

northeast side of the grounds, overlooking the Hudson River. In the summer her window would

perspire, giving the impression that the exterior world was steamy as a rain forest; in the winter the

window would frost, and she would half expect a rookery of penguins to waddle into sight. She

would chip the thin ice with a letter opener and gaze out as freight trains rolled alongside the river

and barges floated upon it. From her desk she could see the thick stone wall that wrapped about the

grounds, an impregnable border between the sisters and the outside world. While the wall was a

remnant from the nineteenth century, when the nuns kept themselves physically apart from the secular

community, it remained a substantial edifice in the FSPA imagination. Five feet high and two feet

wide, it formed a stalwart impediment between worlds pure and profane.

Each morning after her five o’clock prayer hour, breakfast, and morning Mass, Evangeline

stationed herself at the rickety table under the window of her office. She called the table her desk,

although there were no drawers to its credit and nothing approximating the mahogany sheen of the

secretary in Sister Philomena’s office. Still, it was wide and tidy, with all the usual supplies. Each

day she straightened her calendar blotter, arranged her pencils, tucked her hair neatly behind her veil,

and got to work.

Perhaps because the majority of the St. Rose mail came in regard to their collection of angelic

images—the main index of which was located in the library—all convent correspondence ended up in

Evangeline’s care. Evangeline collected the mail each morning from the Mission Office on the first

floor, filling a black cotton bag with letters and returning to her desk to sort them. It became her duty

to file the letters in an orderly system (first by date, then alphabetically by surname) and respond to

inquiries on their official St. Rose stationery, a chore she completed at the electric typewriter in

Sister Philomena’s office, a much warmer space that opened directly upon the library.