Sweet Salvation by Lily Miles

Author:Lily Miles [Miles, Lily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781951346072
Publisher: Written Warrior Press
Published: 2019-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

18

After supper, Mother Antonia makes her way slowly down to her office. For a woman who is frequently fierce, she seems rather at peace at the moment.

This is perhaps the only time of day she doesn’t stomp about the halls looking for misbehaving young ladies to punish. She knows the younger nuns will all be finishing their dinners, and then roguish Sister Monica will be stuck in the kitchen cleaning for at least a half hour, so she has no one to worry about. Soon enough, the girls will gather in the small, dimly lit choir hall for their after-dinner hymns.

Today had been long and Mother Antonia is looking forward to finishing up her evening routine and retiring to her private chamber, a large but simple room with a mattress newer than those of the rest of the nuns, and far softer blankets. She listens to the sound of her feet clicking along the stone floor, absently counting the steps it takes to return to her office. She’d been on the phone for most of the day calling other convents and slowly working her way up the Catholic Church's bureaucratic ladder.

Things are finally starting to fall in place, and she’s clearly pleased by this. Though Mother Antonia doesn’t smile often, she’s been delightedly giggling to herself for hours. Only a few more pawns need to move and then the way will be cleared.

Safely within the locked space of her office, the mother superior sinks down to her knees before the lifelike representation of Christ on his cross, her hands folded and pressed against her forehead as she whispers urgent prayers. Even though she wants to start with the matter at hand, which she considers the most important, she delicately pushes it aside for the moment so as not to appear too selfish to the good Lord above.

One’s prayers should always be about others first. She’d been taught to do her litanies that way since she was old enough to whisper out the garbled devotionals as a toddler. Never start your prayers pleading for the things you want: it’s selfish and won’t do for a proper Catholic girl.

Just like weary Mother Antonia now, child Antonia would collapse to her knees and vehemently pray. Back then she would pray for simple things; she knew better than to pray for new toys or clothes, because she never received new things to begin with. She would pray for her schoolmates’ salvation, especially the little boys who would tease her relentlessly and pull her pigtails ’til she cried, and she would pray for her teachers, even the ones who gave her bad grades, and she would pray for her parents, even when they were cross with her.

But most of all, young Antonia prayed for a purpose.

She always knew she wanted to be a nun. The calling had found her at a young and tender age. Or perhaps it was the incessant bullying of her schoolmates that pushed her towards a cloistered living, though she would never admit that out loud.

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