A Light in the Long Winter

Is it selfish for a nun to want more for her church?  Maybe if they barely have anything.  St. Joseph Seminary, an up and coming school for girls of very humble beginnings, did end up prospering. But it was during these trying time in the late 1860s when the small clergy was so close to giving up.  After my part in the story, though, I keep asking myself the same questions, not out of remorse, just out of curiosity.  When is the church really in need?  What if they have enough?  Are not Christian people supposed to be grateful?  And what if they have plenty?  I do not know if I have the answers.  But apparently, I did have the answer to the nuns of St. Joseph Seminary.  I had money—$1.25 worth of it. 

      They told me that I was somewhat of a coincidental savior when I came to start the funds for their oratory, something to put their Blessed Sacrament in, something on their church-wishlist, something to bring a light in the long winter.  Not only was this winter long and dark, but the sisters were short on food and sickness spread with every sneeze. The story was not that funny, as people think they are when starting off their own coincidental anecdotes in which they were heavily involved.  No, I was simply like any other decent human being, I felt terribly for the sisters who had come all the way from Notre Dame’s congregation in Montreal to Bourbonnais eight years prior.  The conditions only seemed to worsen for them and they said it was a miracle that I was able to help. 

      I had just come from my carpentry job, working hard, long hours and my pay check was just as small as it usually was.  That was when I felt a strange calling on the gray February day.  A storm was just setting in and I found myself at the seminary.  Right in front of its pillared porch and then inside the dark building, lit only by candles.  The place smelled like wick and wax, with a couple of smokey inhales.  Stone and brick, not much furniture.  Enough pews but not enough people. 

      In the middle of it all was a black pentagon kneeling in front of the stage.  When I moved a bit closer down the aisle, I recognized a nun praying.  She heard my shuffling as I tried to turn back, feeling a guilty pang deep in my stomach. I would simply go back into the cold storm anyway.  So I stayed.  She looked at me mournfully as she welcomed me as a brother.  Before I knew it, I had emptied my pockets to find $1.25 and she embraced me.  The start of the oratory for the Blessed Sacrament.

      By now, it is already 1905 and in just a few years, number for boarding school students has raised further than the sisters imagined during that dark time.