A prayer for a nun in a wheelchair

By John Shea

In the Convent of Perpetual Adoration

on an eternal summer afternoon

the three o’clock chimes called back

the flight of the old nun.

In her wheelchair

before the God who lives in bread

and runs the risk of staleness

she watched the hour

that Peter, James, and John did not.

Two young ones come for her

with the precise steps of piety

and perpendicular genuflections.

The guard is changed.

She is pushed from the adoration space

but the bright light of God goes with her

in the monstrance behind her dimming eyes.

The sacred has performed its slow alchemy.

The wheelchair hypnotically clacks

the revolutions of her exit.

She is maneuvered by the sister on duty

to a sparse clean room with a crucifix and flowers

and placed in the windowed light

where she dwells with silence

and the memory of praise and

the dancing particles of the undying sun.

A prayer shared with us by Sister Jan Craven, director of the Shrine of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin