Saint Training (6 page)

Now, about the two kinds of Catholics you talked about
—
old-fashioned and modern-day. It is, in fact, a tumultuous time in the Church. But if you think about how people are responding to the changes from Vatican II, you’ll see that it’s really more complicated than that. You yourself may find that you hold fast to some of the old Catholic traditions and at the same time welcome some of the reforms. Most of us are muddling through right now and asking for constant guidance as we look to building the Church of the future.

God bless you!

Mother Monica

P.S. Yes, we pick the adoptive parents. Babies stay for two weeks to a year. After the girls have their babies they go back to their lives, though a few apply to enter our convent.

No, you can’t use sign language when practicing silence. You certainly are a creative one!

M
ary Clare began each morning more determined than the last to be saintly in her thoughts, words, and actions. But usually she had racked up at least one sin before she even made it to school. Fighting with Mark and Luke was her biggest challenge, but lately she’d become more aware that her thoughts were not always charitable. Sometimes she even forgot that she was trying to become a saint and didn’t think about her sins for hours. That worried her in particular. She knew she couldn’t be perfect, but she did have to keep an accurate sin count. If she missed some at Saturday confession, she might still have blotches on her soul afterwards. And that’s why God had stopped listening to her to begin with.

On Tuesday Mary Clare was prepared to keep better tabs on her sins. She had remembered that some saint or other had used pebbles to keep count, and she had decided to do the same. In the morning she placed ten pebbles in her right pocket (right for righteous) and forced herself to move one over to the left pocket each time she committed a sin. By lunchtime she had four sins: one for sneaking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school when she was supposed to be eating hot lunch, two for talking in class, and one for writing Kelly a note. But she would try to
make up for these sins by making a big sacrifice. She was going to sit with the unpopular kids at lunch.

She approached their table with a broad smile and a cheerful “hello” and plopped herself down in the empty chair next to Joannie Marino. The four of them eyed each other, wearing expressions that looked like a bird had pooped in the middle of the table. No one said a word. She looked around the table at the blank expressions and pulled out her sandwich, though she’d lost her appetite. It had never occurred to Mary Clare that maybe the unpopular kids might not want
her
to sit with
them.

They all focused on their lunches. Joannie Marino removed one item after another from her lunch bag and set it all before her as if she were putting it on a plate: an egg-salad sandwich, a Tupperware container of fruit cocktail, a chocolate cupcake in wax paper. Phil Flanagan briefly considered the hard-boiled egg in his bag and tossed it back in. He removed the wax paper from his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and started eating. The DeLuca twins opened containers of cold macaroni and cheese and started eating too.

“You like cold casserole?” Mary Clare asked.

Peter and Paula nodded.

She tried again. “How come you guys don’t eat hot lunches? Don’t you like them?”

Silence.

Finally Paula asked a question of her own. “How come you’re eating with us today?”

“I thought the change would be nice,” Mary Clare lied.

“Fat chance,” Phil said. The other three laughed—even Joannie.

Mary Clare wished she could disappear. She had never felt so unwelcome.

“Hot lunches are fine,” Peter said.

“It’s the kids we can’t stand,” Paula added.

Joannie nodded, keeping her eyes focused on her sandwich.

Phil laughed.

Mary Clare tried not to look as surprised and hurt as she felt. She broke off a tiny bite of her sandwich and put it in her mouth, but it was hard to swallow. Phil had laughed at her. Phil, who should have been in seventh grade instead of sixth but flunked fourth. Phil, who was always late for school and fell asleep in class all the time—sometimes even drooling. Phil, who was a farmer and smelled like a barn, was laughing at her.

She couldn’t say anything because she had peanut butter stuck in her throat. She had never thought of these guys as friends. She had figured they stuck together with nothing more in common than their unlikeability. But the looks they were giving each other, like they enjoyed making her squirm, made it seem like they had secrets and inside jokes like a real group of friends.

“How are you doing on your essay for the diocesan contest?” Paula asked Joannie.

Joannie shrugged and made a so-so gesture with her hand. Mary Clare didn’t know why Joannie was so quiet. She was tiny, with dirty blonde hair and a mousey voice that actually squeaked when she tried to answer a question in class. Mary Clare had been one of the kids who mocked Joannie by making squeaky noises when they passed her in the hall, but she hadn’t done that for a long time, and she regretted doing it now.

“We haven’t even started ours,” Peter said. “But mine is gonna be about a paragraph long.”

Mary Clare decided to jump in. “I’ve been thinking about mine. I just haven’t put it down on paper yet.”

“You’ll win,” Phil said.

Mary Clare momentarily forgot she was with kids who didn’t like her. “You think so, really? I’d love to win!”

Paula and Joannie rolled their eyes.

“I’d
love
to win,” Paula imitated in a fake voice.

Everyone except Mary Clare laughed. Her eyes stung, and she was sure she had a red face from the heat she could feel in it.

Paula spoke again, this time using her real voice. “Really, Peter and I would love to win but we have cooties, remember?”

The blow was harder than any physical hit. “It’s been a long time since I said anything like that,” Mary Clare said weakly.

“Fourth grade,” Joannie said. Her eyes were teary.

Mary Clare thought of all the times she had slowed down or sped up on the walk to avoid walking with Joannie, even though she lived right across the street.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking directly at Joannie. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Thanks,” Paula said.

Peter nodded. He crumpled his bag and got up to leave.

“See ya,” was all Phil said. He left too.

When Mary Clare got up to leave she saw that Sister Agony was standing guard in the doorway. She held a broom in one hand and a dustpan in the other. Mary Clare could hear snickering at the hot lunch tables. The same kids who’d admired her yesterday for kicking that stone were laughing at her.

Sister leaned her head slightly to the left as Mary Clare took the broom from her. “Why aren’t you eating hot lunch?” she asked. “Your family has always taken hot lunch. Your sisters just ate hot lunch.”

“I just wanted a change,” Mary Clare said. Here she was lying again. And her left pocket was already bulging with pebbles from so many sins. But nosey Sister Agony had left her no choice.

“Is that what your mother would say if I called and asked her?”

Mary Clare could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. Her eyes burned with unshed tears.

“Well?” Sister demanded.

Mary Clare was aware that the whole room was quiet. Everyone was waiting for her answer. She said nothing.

“I can go call your mother now.”

“Don’t,” Mary Clare said. Hot tears tumbled down her cheeks in spite of her determination not to cry. “I was trying to save them some money.”

“I’m sure,” Sister said sarcastically. “Well, you’ve got some sweeping to do. You can use that big trash can there.” She pointed to the dented aluminum one in the hall.

The first things that went into the trash can were the pebbles from her pocket.
It’s too hard,
she thought.
Just too hard.

Mary Clare O’Brian

188 Jackson Street

Littleburg, Wisconsin 53538

Sister Monica, Mother Superior

Saint Mary Magdalene Convent

1123 Good Shepherd Road Minneapolis, Minnesota 55199

April 23, 1967

Dear Reverend Mother,

I am worried about whether or not it will be possible for me to become a Good Shepherd nun. Before I started paying attention to my sins I thought I was a pretty good person. I probably had a regular number of sins, but who knows, I never heard anybody else’s confession. But when I decided to perfect myself the way the saints did and asked myself—Are you sure this isn’t a sin, Mary Clare? Are you sure that’s not a sin?—the sins started piling up like never before. Or at least I never realized how much I sin until now.

For example, Gabriella was prancing around in her First Communion dress—which was mine first and then Anne’s, but it still looks great. She makes her First Confession on Friday and her First Communion is next Sunday. Anyway, she was being very vain, and I didn’t want her to sin, so I told her Anne looked prettier in it. I had to count that as two sins because when I thought about it, what I said was mean and also not true, because Gabriella is every bit as cute as Anne. See what I mean?

I started using pebbles to keep perfect track of my sins, but I’ve given up because there were so many pebbles in my pocket by the
end of the day, they were weighing me down and people were asking what made my pockets bulge.

Can you give me advice on how to stop sinning?

Sister Regina told us that saints had less than seven sins a day. How many sins can you have and still become a nun?

Please pray for me.

Sincerely,

Mary Clare

P.S. I think I’m beginning to understand what real humility is about.

T
he essay on religious vocations was due tomorrow. The essay that would win Mary Clare fifty dollars! If she won first place. If it was perfect. If it stood out, demanded attention, won the hearts of the judges. If it was the best of the best. That was why she had started it nineteen times and had a big fat nothing to show.

Everything she wrote was just plain ordinary. When she tried to dress it up, the words came out lacy. When she tried to be serious, the words came out prim and proper. When she tried to be funny, it sounded like she was making fun of vocations. And when she tried to compare nuns to priests, she sounded mad because she
was
mad. Priests got to say Mass, perform all the sacraments, touch the host…and they could become pope. The closest nuns could get to the altar was to clean the sacristy and wash and iron the priest’s vestments. They could never become cardinals or bishops or the pope.

Mary Clare reached for her last failed effort, which lay crumpled at the top of the waste basket. She smoothed it out and re-read it.

What does a vocation as a sister mean to me? Everything! Sisters are women who have devoted their lives to serving God through the
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Sisters devote their lives to prayer and doing God’s work.

Yuck!

She leaned back in her father’s swivel chair. He was presenting books in Chicago schools this week and his office was, by far, the safest part of the house to get work done—especially if she snuck in without anybody seeing her. She knew she needed to be quiet if she didn’t want company, but she didn’t want to be quiet. She wanted to scream! At this rate she’d be lucky to have something to turn in tomorrow, never mind an award-winning something.

Mary Clare could hear her mother hollering to the little kids to come inside for quiet hour, which her mother referred to as her “one salvation.” Between 2:00 and 3:00 on weekend afternoons and every day in the summer, kids under the age of twelve had to be in their rooms napping or reading. During this time her mother could read or write or sew undisturbed. Mary Clare loved quiet hour, especially for her mother, who usually came out of her bedroom with more color in her face than before.

Mary Clare wanted to take a nap herself, or do anything but sit here writing an essay.

The door swung open and her mom stood in the doorway with a book in her hands, which she quickly tried to hide under her sweater. She didn’t realize that Mary Clare had already seen the title.

“I wondered where you’d gone off to,” her mother said.

Mary Clare started to gather her things together.

“Don’t leave,” her mother said. “I just want to sit in your father’s easy chair for a while and read. Are you working on your essay?”

Mary Clare nodded and frowned.

“I’ll take a peek at it if you’d like.”

Mary Clare handed her the paragraph she’d retrieved from the trash. She watched as her mother read through it, then read through it a second time. She furrowed her eyebrows and looked up at Mary Clare.

“Don’t just tell them what you think they want to hear, Mary Clare. Don’t get into the roles everybody expects from a woman—where your identity is what the Church tells you it should be. ‘God’s servant, and God’s bride’…that’s just all part of the feminine mystique,” she said. “Everybody knows what nuns
do
and the vows they take. Go inside your heart and tell them who you are.”

Mary Clare was confused. She didn’t know what the feminine mystique was, and she was pretty sure that to win this contest she had to pretty much say what the judges wanted to hear, but she
did
want to be real. She watched her mother cozy into the comfortable chair and open the book to a pen that was holding her place. She watched her mother read a little bit and then underline what she had read. Mary Clare couldn’t help it.

“Why are you reading that Freidan book?” she asked. “You know Dad doesn’t like ‘women’s libbers.’”

“I’m reading it because finally someone is acknowledging that being a housewife and mother are not going to fulfill every woman. Women need to get meaning through things other than their husbands and families. We need to use our minds, our creativity. We need to be more than baby machines.”

Mary Clare thought about this. For some reason it made her squirm inside.

“Think about it! Women define themselves through men. If a man is successful, his wife gets to feel successful. If he’s not, then she’s not.”

Mary Clare had never seen her mother this animated. She seemed like a different person. She wasn’t sure about this new version of her mother.

“And the reason this book—this thinking—upsets your father so much is that he’s scared he’ll lose something if I look beyond him to be fulfilled.”

“Oh,” Mary Clare said. It was all she could think of to say. She understood her dad’s fears more than her mother’s new thinking. The idea of her mother finding fulfillment beyond the family scared her, too.

“The ironic thing about your father’s reaction is that he hates censorship of any kind. But when it comes to feminist ideas, he’d love to keep me from thinking.”

She paused and looked down at her watch. “We better stop talking or we’ll miss the whole quiet hour.”

Mary Clare sighed. She pulled out a fresh sheet of paper. She felt a little guilty doing the opposite of what her mother suggested, but she had an image in her head that would be a dramatic beginning. She asked God to inspire her.

WHAT A VOCATION AS A SISTER MEANS TO ME

I
like to imagine walking down the aisle for my wedding. I’m wearing a white gown and a long lacy veil. My spouse waits for me at the altar. My spouse is Jesus. I am marrying him by answering his call to become a nun.

When Mary Clare completed her essay, the clock read 4:15. She couldn’t be sure that it was a winner, but she’d certainly used her imagination in writing it. Behind her she saw her mother sleeping soundly. She crept out of the room, careful not to wake her, and tiptoed up the stairs to check on the little kids. The kids had already released themselves from their rooms, and she found them playing in the backyard. Mary Clare returned to her father’s office and coaxed the book from her mother’s hands without waking her. She had to see what the fuss was all about. She sat on the floor and began to read.

Mary Clare O’Brian

188 Jackson Street

Littleburg, Wisconsin 53538

Sister Monica, Mother Superior

Saint Mary Magdalene Convent

1123 Good Shepherd Road Minneapolis, Minnesota 55199

May 1, 1967

Dear Reverend Mother,

I have a question about the women’s liberation movement. Have you read Betty Friedan’s book
The Feminine Mystique?
I tried to read it but it was too boring. My mom acts like it’s a Bible. She has a whole bunch of corners turned down in it and she underlines things and puts exclamation marks in it. My parents fight about whether women should work or not and whether or not Mom should be happy as a housewife. Dad thinks Betty Friedan is out to destroy the family. Mom says Betty Friedan is just helping women wake up.

I just wondered if you read it and what you thought.

Sincerely,

Mary Clare

P.S. Why doesn’t Saint Theresa the Little Flower stand up for herself instead of always turning the other cheek?