God's Messenger

Okay, so let me tell you about my sister, Evelyn.

She is the world's biggest . . .word that I'm not allowed to say, but it means female dog.

She's always talking about how wonderful and pretty she is. And she thinks she's better than everyone else just because she wears fancy clothes and oh yeah she sings in the church choir--1st soprano!

Being proud of that is really stupid because I'll bet she wouldn't even want to go to church if she wasn't in the choir. I remember how back before she joined choir, our parents would have to drag her to mass and she would spend the entire thing looking at the ceiling, waving to her friends, or sometimes even making goofy faces at the priest until our Mom spotted her and made her stop. And even now, she never talks about God or Jesus the other six days of the week.

Me on the other hand, I'm pretty religious. More than Evelyn or my parents. I've been into the Bible ever since I started religion class and learned about all the cool things like angels, devils, and miracles. I read the Bible and I wondered why nothing cool like that ever happened to me.

Plus recently, I got into the Rosary. Most Catholics don't talk about the Rosary as much as they used to, but I found a web site about it and a Youtube video. Pretty soon, I learned that there are Four Sets of Mysteries in the Rosary: The Joyful, the Sorrowful, the Glorious, and the Luminous. Each of the sets has five mysteries, and each mystery has a fruit or something that you're supposed to learn from it. So, for example, the first Joyful mystery is The Annunciation and the fruit of that mystery is Humility.

The other day, Evelyn saw me reading the Bible and said, "Ever thought about being a priest?"

I shrugged. "Not really."

"Well, you should. It's not like any girl is ever gonna want to have sex with a smelly loser like you."

I thought about punching her, but then my mother came into the room. Punching Evelyn in front of my parents was a bad idea. "What's going on here?" said my Mother.

"The usual," said Evelyn, who was on a nastiness role now. "At least, you have me, Mom!"

"Excuse me?" asked Mom.

"I mean, at least you have one child who doesn't look --and smell--like that," she gestured at me.

"Evelyn! That is a terrible thing to say about your brother!"

"Well, it's true. And it's not just me. He has no friends at school or anyplace else."

"Evelyn, that's enough," said my mother. "I will not tolerate you talking to your brother or anyone else that way." Then she looked at me. "Although, Jason, when was the last time you showered?"

I cringed. It's not that I have anything against soap or water. It's just that well. . .sometimes I forget for a few days. . .or weeks.

So, ten minutes later, I was standing in the shower with my Mom's admonition, "Don't forget to shampoo," ringing in my ears. I guess, at that point, I must have started humming, or maybe even lah -ahing, or maybe I was singing by the time I got out of the shower and wrapped the towel around myself.

Then there was a knock at the bathroom door and Evelyn's voice called out, "Can you hurry up?" That sounded like Evelyn. She was always hogging the bathroom. "I want to talk to you about something." Somehow that sounded less like Evelyn, but I wasn't going to worry about why.

"Can it wait until I'm decent?"

"You know I've seen it before, but alright."

So five minutes later, I was dressed and in my room when Evelyn came by. At first, she looked like she wasn't sure what to say. "Uhm... Mom said I owe you an apology for what I said before, so. . .I'm sorry."

"Great. Now can you get out of my room?"

"That's not the only thing." She hesitated some more. "I heard you in the shower. You were singing."

That made me twitch, but I tried to look cool about it. "So what?"

"Actually, you were singing that hymn I was rehearsing before."

I was? Well, hearing her constant rehearsal must have made the song stick in my mind.

"The thing is," she went on. And now she was really hesitant as if she really hated saying what she was about to say. "You sounded kind of. . .good. Your voice has gotten very deep in the past few years. You could be a baritone or bass. And the choir needs baritones and basses." She sighed. "Actually, the choir needs more boys."

This was unexpected, but I knew exactly how to respond. "No way!"

"Why not? Besides you could meet some new people. It's like I said before. You have no friends. I'll bet you could make friends in the choir."

"Friends with a bunch of people like you?"

I thought that was pretty good burn, but she just smiled at it. "What's wrong with that?"

Then there was a moment ot silence when I guess neither one of us was sure what to say. She looked around the room and her eye fell on my book about the Rosary. And that almost seemed to give her inspiration."You know, how much are you learning from this book of yours?"

"More than you."

"Oh Really? It starts off on a strange note. The First Mystery is that thing called the Announciation?"

"Annunciation. It's when the angel told Mary she was going to be Jesus' mother."

"Right. And did you say that the fruit of that mystery is humility?"

"Yeah so? Something you could use more. of" I couldn't understand what made Evelyn so interested in this all of a sudden.

"Which I thought was kind of stupid," she went on. "I mean, Mary just had an angel tell her that she was going to be the most important woman in history and it makes her feel humility. Shouldn't it have had the opposite effect?"

Actually, that may have occurred to me when I first read about it, but I shrugged it off. "What does this have to do with what we were talking about?"

"Well, Everything. Now that I understand the story. You see, when Mary got that news, she didn't say, 'Forget it, I'm not worthy!' She said, 'Okay, I'll do it' because she knew that God wouldn't have picked her if she wasn't the right woman for that job. You, on the other hand, are so conceited and full of yourself that when God asks you to do something, you have the nerve to say, 'Sorry God. I know better than you and I know that I'm the wrong person for the job."

That got me. There was another long silence. I guess she was waiting for my response. And I was confused trying to work out the logic of what she had just said. Finally, I spoke. "God didn't ask me to do anything. You did."

"Well," said Evelyn. "Think of me as God's messenger."

I couldn't help laughing. "Now who needs humility?"

She smirked a little. "Maybe, but I think God picked me to deliver this message, and believe me, it wasn't easy."

Oh I could believe that. Still, I felt strange. In the past few minutes, Evelyn, of all people, had accused me of lacking humility and the really strange thing was that it kind of made sense. So I sighed. "Maybe I can try being in the choir."

And that's when a really strange thing happened. Her face broke into a smile and she reached across and hugged me. And the funny thing was that I didn't mind it as much I thought I would. It felt kind of nice.

"By the way," said Evelyn, "you'd better get used to this. In choir, we hug a lot."

Well, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

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