“Perhaps she was just thinking about something.”

“Her looks,” the girl said glumly. She was an unattractive girl who had decided to join the Order six months after a broken engagement, and the Mistress of Postulants was still somewhat in doubt about the girl's vocation, though not in the least about Gabriella's. No one in the convent ever doubted it for a moment. And Gabriella had clearly never been happier in her life. She was obviously thriving in her new life at the convent. And all of the nuns who had known her all her life beamed each time they watched her.

Gabriella wrote a Christmas story for them all that year, and made little books of it for each of them, working on them late at night in Mother Gregoria's office, and each of the nuns found one at their place in the dining hall on Christmas morning. It was a story she had worked on for months, and which the Mistress of Novices insisted ought to be published.

“She's showing off again!” Sister Anne, the girl from Vermont, complained again, showing very little generosity of heart, and even less Christmas spirit. She left the table and went to her room, tossing the little book Gabriella had handmade for her into the garbage. And later that afternoon, Gabriella went to see her, and tried to explain that this had been her home for many years, and it was hard for her not to be jubilant about joining the Order. “I suppose you think everyone here is in love with you because they know you. Well, you're no better than the rest of us, and if you weren't so busy showing off all the time you might make a better nun. Have you ever thought of that?” She spat the words in Gabbie's face, and reminded her suddenly of her mother. Being told how inept and how wrong she was cut into her heart like a dagger, and later that afternoon, she talked to Mother Gregoria privately about it.

“Maybe she's right. Maybe I am arrogant… and show off without knowing it.” But the Mother Superior tried to explain the obvious to her, that the young nun from Vermont was jealous.

And for the next three months, it became a kind of holy vendetta. She reported on Gabriella constantly, and confronted her with her failings every time the opportunity arose. It became an agony of worry for Gabriella, who constantly feared that the girl saw flaws in her that were really there and would keep her from serving Christ with true humility and the appropriate devotion. Gabriella went to confession constantly, and began doubting her own vocation. By spring, she was beginning to think she'd made a mistake, and that the girl saw faults in her that were clearly there and had to be excised before she could make a final decision about joining the Order. There was something so painful and familiar about the way the young girl went after her that it rattled her to her very soul, and in confession one night she admitted to the priest on the other side of the grille that she had serious doubts about the vocation she had once been so sure of.

“What makes you say that?” The unfamiliar voice sounded puzzled, and Gabriella was startled to realize that she wasn't confessing to one of the priests she had known since her childhood.

“Sister Anne accuses me constantly of vanity and pride, and arrogance, and self-justification, self-importance, and maybe she's right. How can I possibly be of any use to God if I can't express humility and simplicity and obey Him? And what's more,” she blushed in the darkness as she confessed, but it didn't matter anyway, since she didn't know him, “I think I'm beginning to hate her.”

There was a moment of silence on the other side, and then a gentle question. He had a kind voice, and for some odd reason she found herself wondering what he looked like.

“Have you ever hated anyone else before?”

She answered without hesitation. “My parents.”

“Have you ever confessed that before?” He sounded intrigued by her and she told him she had, frequently, for many years, ever since she had come to St. Matthew's. “Why did you hate them?”

“I hated them because they beat me,” she said simply, sounding humbler than he had expected, and far more open. He knew only that she was one of the postulants, but this was only the second time he had come to hear confession there, and he knew nothing about her. The other priests all knew Gabriella, but he didn't. “Actually, my mother beat me,” she went on to explain. “My father only let her… but when I thought about it as I grew up, I hated him for it.” It was the most outspoken she had ever been in any confession, and she wasn't sure why she was doing it now, except that she needed to make a clean breast of everything so as to free herself of her feelings about Sister Anne. She had been utterly tormented by her but was ashamed of her dislike for her.

“Have you ever told your parents how you felt?” he asked, sounding very modern, trying to heal the wounds and relieve her of them, and not just hearing her confession.

“I've never seen them again. My father deserted my mother when I was nine and I never saw him after that. He moved away to Boston, and a few months later my mother left me here, and never came back. She told me she was going away for six weeks to Reno, and she got married again and decided that I didn't fit into her new life. In a lot of ways, it was a blessing. If I'd gone back to her, eventually she'd have killed me.” There was shocked silence on the other side of the grille again.

“I see.”

She decided to tell him the rest of it then, and make a good confession. “Sister Anne is starting to remind me of my mother, and I think maybe that's why I hate her so much. She shouts at me all the time, and tells me how bad I am… my mother used to do that… and I believed her.”

“Do you believe Sister Anne?” Gabriella's knees were beginning to hurt from the length of the confession, and it was terribly hot in the confessional for both of them. It was like kneeling on the floor of an overheated phone booth, and the total darkness made it seem even warmer. “Do you believe what she says about you, Sister? About how bad you are?” He sounded deeply interested in her problem.

“Sometimes. I always believed my mother. I still do at times. If I hadn't been bad, why would they have left me? Both of them. There must have been something pretty awful about me.”

“Or them,” he said gently in a deep voice, as she tried to imagine the face that went with it. “The sin was theirs, not yours. Perhaps the same is true of Sister Anne, although of course I don't know her. Perhaps she's jealous of you for some reason, because you seem so confident and so at home here. If you've lived here for most of your life, she may simply resent it.”

“And what do I do about it?” Gabriella asked, sounding desperate, and this time he chuckled.

“Tell her to knock it off, or get out her boxing gloves. When I was in the seminary, I had a boxing match with another seminarian I'd had a series of disagreements with. It seemed like the only way to resolve it.”

“What happened?” she whispered, smiling at the unconventional confession. It had been more like a session with a therapist than an ordinary confession. But whoever the unknown priest was, she liked him, and she felt as though he had helped her. He seemed to have compassion, wisdom, and humor. “Did the boxing match help?” she asked with interest.

“Actually, it did. He gave me a fantastic black eye, and almost knocked me out cold, but we were great friends after that, for some reason. I still hear from him every Christmas. He's a missionary priest with the lepers in Kenya.”

“Maybe we could arrange for an early novitiate and Sister Anne would like to join him,” she whispered. Even in college, she had had no exchanges like this one, bantering with her fellow students or professors. And the priest with the youthful voice was chuckling discreetly.

“Why don't you suggest it to her? In the meantime, say three Hail Marys and an Our Father, and mean them,” he said pointedly, sounding serious now that they had shared their little joke. She was surprised at how little penance he had given her before giving her absolution.

“You let me off pretty easy, Father.”

“Are you complaining?” He sounded amused again.

“No, I'm just surprised. I haven't gotten off that light since I got here.”

“Sounds like you're due for a break, Sister. Go easy on yourself, and why not just try to let it roll off your back for a while? It sounds like it's more her problem than yours, or should be. Don't confuse her with your mother. She's not the same person. Neither are you anymore. No one can torment you, except yourself. Love thy neighbor as thyself, Sister. Work on that until your next confession.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Go in peace, Sister,” he whispered, and she left the confessional and slipped into a pew at the back of the chapel to say her penance. And when she looked up, she saw Sister Anne go into the confessional shortly after. She was in it for a long time, and came out with a red face and looked as though she had been crying. Gabriella hoped charitably that he hadn't been too hard on her, and then felt guilty for saying so much to him. But she felt better than she had for a while when she stopped for a moment to chat with the Mistress of Postulants on her way out of the chapel. And they talked for so long about one of the older nuns who had been ill for a while that Gabriella saw the light come on in the confessional, and the priest she had spoken to emerge, and she was startled when she saw him. He was very tall and athletic-looking. He had broad shoulders, thick sandy-blond hair almost the same color as her own, and he smiled as soon as he glanced up and saw the two nuns chatting.

“Good evening, Sisters,” he said easily as he stopped for a moment where they were talking. “What a beautiful chapel you have here.” He was looking around and admiring the church they were all so proud of, as the Mistress of Postulants smiled at him, and Gabriella tried not to stare at him. There was something very powerful and very compelling about him. And in an odd, more athletic, even better-looking way, he reminded her vaguely of her father, as he had looked to her when she was a child and he had just returned from Korea.