The Last Confession

Illustration by ChatGPT

Fiction

The nuns in the convent were all stunned. Sister Agnes called the Mother Superior Satan. “You hated me. You stole my life. Get out of my room.” Sister Agnes shrieked with all her energy.

Sister Agnes was on her deathbed. She was 82 and ailing from many illnesses that made their visitations rather abruptly. But no one who knew her for any length of time would ever imagine she would shout at anyone in anger, let alone Mother Superior.

Agnes was regarded as a living saint by most people who knew her. She was a nun who lived an exemplary life of prayer, meditation, humility, and simplicity. Even if someone hurled an insult at her, as it happened occasionally in the convent too just like in any human community, Agnes would dismiss it with her characteristic disarming smile. She never said no to any duty, however lowly. She was considered the best counsellor by the novices. She nursed the sick. She prayed for everyone, even those who hated her for whatever reason.

As a child she was spirited, intelligent and outspoken. Entering the convent, she mistook obedience for holiness. Every painful event became an occasion for self-mortification in humble imitation of Jesus’ sufferings.

“At Calvary, God did not explain suffering; He entered it.” That was one of the favourite quotes of Sister Agnes. A retreat preacher had said it long ago. “It is our sacred duty to share Jesus’ suffering,” Sister Agnes taught the novices. “Jesus did not carry His cross in silence because He had no pain; He carried it without bitterness because He entrusted His pain to the Father.”

Sister Agnes entrusted her pains to God the Father without any complaint. In fact, she sought out pain in the belief that her suffering would mitigate Jesus’ suffering.

When Sister Euphrasia came in as the new Mother Superior a few years ago, Sister Agnes got all the imaginable opportunities for mitigating the suffering of Jesus.

Mother Euphrasia had heard about the fame of Sister Agnes for many years though the two had hardly met except on occasions like annual Retreats when the nuns didn’t get any opportunity to interact with one another. Retreats were all about prayer, meditation and silence.

Mother Euphrasia decided to test Sister Agnes’s saintliness by giving her as much suffering as possible. She made snide remarks like: “Your humility is truly admirable, Sister. I only hope you’re not becoming aware of it yourself” and “Some sisters are born to serve; others are born to be noticed for serving.”

Most of the tasks that others didn’t want to do were given to Sister Agnes by Mother. “I want to check whether your meekness is genuine holiness,” Mother said, “or simply a way of being popular.”

Agnes was popular, no doubt. Visitors came asking to meet Sister Agnes. Never the Mother Superior.

“You have a gift for attracting admiration,” Mother told Agnes once. “Pray that it doesn’t become your secret addiction.”  

Mother Euphrasia told Jesus during the prayers that she had taken it as her sacred responsibility to watch over Sister Agnes’s soul lest it be doomed by the grave sin of pride.

Eventually Agnes was broken. Mysterious illnesses visited her one after another. Her muscles atrophied too quickly. She was bedridden. Sores developed on her back due to lying down in the same position for days. But Mother Euphrates didn’t care. She didn’t let other nuns care either. “God has a plan for Sister Agnes,” Mother declared.

But Satan overtook God, as some nuns thought. Because Sister Agnes lost her sanity and sanctity towards the end. She abused Mother Euphrates calling her Satan. She used all the energy that was left in her feeble body to shout at Mother: “Get out of my room.”

The ire ebbed into silence. And the nun’s usual serenity returned.

Sister Agnes stood on the quiet threshold between this world and the next. She lingered in that sacred hush where the dying no longer belong wholly to this world, yet have not quite entered the next.

Someone informed Mother about it. Will there be another outburst? She was afraid. Yet she decided to pay a final visit to the dying nun.

“I forgive you,” Sister Agnes said through her wheezing. “I forgave you all the time… You taught me to hide my anger… I became holy outside… A volcano inside… I was angry not because I’m dying… But because I never lived honestly.”

The room fell into a silence that seemed too sacred for anyone to disturb. Mother Superior stood motionless, her lips parted, but no words came. Sister Agnes closed her eyes, not in weariness but with the calm of one who had finally laid down a burden heavier than the illnesses that consumed her rather quickly. Her breathing grew shallower, each breath softer than the last, until, like the final note of a hymn fading into the stillness of the chapel, it simply ceased.

A day after the funeral, Mother Euphrasia entered Sister Agnes’s room. Among her personal belongings was a journal with Sister Agnes’s print-like handwriting.

There wasn’t any mystical line on any page. Instead, the entries were about the embarrassments, humiliations, unspoken anger… all caused by Mother Superior. The final page read: “God never asked me to bury my anger. He asked me to transform it. I buried it instead. Seeds buried in darkness do not die. They wait.”

Euphrasia wiped away the tear drops that welled up in her eyes. She felt crushed within. Not under the weight of accusation, but beneath the light of truth. In that unrelenting light she saw, perhaps for the first time, that it was not Agnes’s saintliness she had measured, but her own poverty of heart.

 

PS. This is fiction though the plot emerged in my heart after a visit to a dying nun recently.