cross, there is a birdbath, do you know? And right in the middle of that birdbath there is a silver ball. Isn't there?"
"Yes'ster."
"Now if you look into that silver ball you see that it reflects everything at once, up, down, below, above, near, far. Doesn't it?"
"Yes'ster."
"Yes. You can see the walls curving all around and every window and even yourself sitting there looking in. And when I sit and look into that ball I think, That is what the eye of God is like, looking at everything at once."
Under Sister Mary Philomel's tutelage the Oliphant kids and Pierce were enmeshed again in the old net of observances and scruples, and provided again with the ritual objects, scapulars, holy cards, Miraculous Medals, which under Miss Martha they had been without. Now for their parents’ birthdays or for Thanksgiving or Christmas gifts they were each to prepare a Spiritual Bouquet: a cluster of prayers said, Masses heard, Communions taken, rosaries told—even tiny prayers whispered throughout the day, scattered in the Bouquet like baby's-breath, Ejaculations.
"Jesus Mary and Joseph!” said Hildy. “That's an Ejaculation."
"Or Oh my God!” said Sam, whom she was instructing in this prayer type, not understanding why he had laughed at her offering of One Thousand Ejaculations.
"You can make Ejaculations all day long,” she said. “Wherever you are."
"Yes,” said Sam, still laughing. “I see."
Sister Mary Philomel was their daily instructrix in such pieties; she was the great pythoness of their cult, the guardian of the gate into the land of the dead: it was she who taught them what prayers the Church had determined would, if said at Mass on All Souls’ Day, free a soul from its salutary torments in Purgatory and get it (still sore and trembling) right into Heaven; she who all on her own gathered them up on that November morning, next day after All Saints', bitter damp day with the smell of coal fires and dung sharp in the air, and got them to church to do the work. Two, four, six souls released by their prayers, and Hildy wanted to stay longer and do more, imagining the grateful dead freed by the prayers of conscientious children like herself worldwide, winging upward by tens and hundreds like autumn blackbirds rising to migrate.
It was she also who convinced Pierce (and Winnie and Sam too) that Pierce was fit to take up liturgical duties himself; she touched his vanity and his taste for the hieratic as well as his good nature and willingness to assent, and she brought him to Father Midnight to be instructed. Now (she said) it would be easy for him to make a daily Communion; now he could begin accumulating the special benefits that accrue to those who volunteer in God's service. Joe Boyd snorted, amazed that Pierce would volunteer for duties he could have wriggled out of, but Pierce didn't mind; he learned his lines by rote, he took his place beyond the altar rail with Father Midnight. And long after, when the words he had committed to memory were no longer said anywhere, not anyway in the dead language Pierce had learned them in, they would now and then return spontaneously to him like the jingles of old ads, heard by an inner ear in the mnemonic rhythms he had bent them into, their absurd dago-American pronunciation. Soosheepiat Dominus sacrafeechium d'manibus tooies. Touching him with an inexplicable poignancy in the street or on the stair.
In some ways dealing with Sister Mary Philomel was like dealing with a smart and powerful child, a Warren able to make a grownup's case for his fear of the dark or his theory that badguys came into his room at night while he was asleep and messed up his things. If Sister Mary Philomel opened a closet door in search of her umbrella and found it not there, and then not much later (after asking God's help in finding it) she opened the same closet again and there it was, her first thought was not that she had overlooked it the first time. Saints and angels, when compelled by the
"Yes'ster."
"Now if you look into that silver ball you see that it reflects everything at once, up, down, below, above, near, far. Doesn't it?"
"Yes'ster."
"Yes. You can see the walls curving all around and every window and even yourself sitting there looking in. And when I sit and look into that ball I think, That is what the eye of God is like, looking at everything at once."
Under Sister Mary Philomel's tutelage the Oliphant kids and Pierce were enmeshed again in the old net of observances and scruples, and provided again with the ritual objects, scapulars, holy cards, Miraculous Medals, which under Miss Martha they had been without. Now for their parents’ birthdays or for Thanksgiving or Christmas gifts they were each to prepare a Spiritual Bouquet: a cluster of prayers said, Masses heard, Communions taken, rosaries told—even tiny prayers whispered throughout the day, scattered in the Bouquet like baby's-breath, Ejaculations.
"Jesus Mary and Joseph!” said Hildy. “That's an Ejaculation."
"Or Oh my God!” said Sam, whom she was instructing in this prayer type, not understanding why he had laughed at her offering of One Thousand Ejaculations.
"You can make Ejaculations all day long,” she said. “Wherever you are."
"Yes,” said Sam, still laughing. “I see."
Sister Mary Philomel was their daily instructrix in such pieties; she was the great pythoness of their cult, the guardian of the gate into the land of the dead: it was she who taught them what prayers the Church had determined would, if said at Mass on All Souls’ Day, free a soul from its salutary torments in Purgatory and get it (still sore and trembling) right into Heaven; she who all on her own gathered them up on that November morning, next day after All Saints', bitter damp day with the smell of coal fires and dung sharp in the air, and got them to church to do the work. Two, four, six souls released by their prayers, and Hildy wanted to stay longer and do more, imagining the grateful dead freed by the prayers of conscientious children like herself worldwide, winging upward by tens and hundreds like autumn blackbirds rising to migrate.
It was she also who convinced Pierce (and Winnie and Sam too) that Pierce was fit to take up liturgical duties himself; she touched his vanity and his taste for the hieratic as well as his good nature and willingness to assent, and she brought him to Father Midnight to be instructed. Now (she said) it would be easy for him to make a daily Communion; now he could begin accumulating the special benefits that accrue to those who volunteer in God's service. Joe Boyd snorted, amazed that Pierce would volunteer for duties he could have wriggled out of, but Pierce didn't mind; he learned his lines by rote, he took his place beyond the altar rail with Father Midnight. And long after, when the words he had committed to memory were no longer said anywhere, not anyway in the dead language Pierce had learned them in, they would now and then return spontaneously to him like the jingles of old ads, heard by an inner ear in the mnemonic rhythms he had bent them into, their absurd dago-American pronunciation. Soosheepiat Dominus sacrafeechium d'manibus tooies. Touching him with an inexplicable poignancy in the street or on the stair.
In some ways dealing with Sister Mary Philomel was like dealing with a smart and powerful child, a Warren able to make a grownup's case for his fear of the dark or his theory that badguys came into his room at night while he was asleep and messed up his things. If Sister Mary Philomel opened a closet door in search of her umbrella and found it not there, and then not much later (after asking God's help in finding it) she opened the same closet again and there it was, her first thought was not that she had overlooked it the first time. Saints and angels, when compelled by the
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