CHAPTER 19 – PENNSYLVANIA
Madam Effie Wu and Sister Jane sat companionably in the sun room. Clean up after dinner was complete and community members were recreating by playing cards, listening to music, or taking a walk. Sister Jane was sharing her story about Brother Francis’ close call with death, at least one of them, as her inner prompting encouraged her to do.
"It was a late fall day, not too unlike this one. Hunting season begins right after Thanksgiving. Our abbot was out for his daily power-walk and a Pennsylvania state police car stopped him."
"Do you know it’s hunting season, Brother?" asked the State Trooper from behind the wheel of his rumbling car.
"I almost forgot, Trooper. I do hear rifle shots echoing now and then."
"Please be careful. I'd encourage you to wear some orange clothing, at least bright colors."
"Thank you, Trooper. I appreciate your concern and your care for all of us with the work that you do," responded the monk.
"My pleasure, Brother. We are grateful for the presence of your little community in our midst." With that the state officer drove off.
"It was only minutes after that when Brother Francis was shot," the nun continued. "An older couple down the road saw him fall to the ground practically in front of their house and came to his aid. They stanched the flow of blood in his side and got him to the hospital. Everyone around here knows us so it was easy for them to identify him at Pocono Medical Center and call us here in the monastery. It seemed like hours before we knew our abbot's medical condition."
Madam Wu had a quizzical look on her face. "It was no accident, was it?"
"We are still not certain. Someone tried to make it look like a hunting accident but it may have been premeditated."
"What individual or group, for that matter, would want to kill Brother Francis? He’s spent his life, as I understand it, researching the roots of racial, religious, and social prejudice while trying to eradicate it through his writing and clinical practice."
"Religion has a way of evoking strong feelings. Even when living a simple quiet life such as ours, we are symbols of something much larger and older. There are many who love what we value and symbolize, and there are some who hate it. It was someone from this smaller group who referred to himself as 'an angry Catholic' in a letter we found in our mailbox shortly thereafter. He hid in the woods with his rifle. Brother Francis is a creature of habit and the would-be assassin knew when he would be running by. The man was a good shot but the rustle of a deer in the distance, according to the note, startled the gunman, and his aim was not as perfect as he would have liked."
"Brother Francis almost bled to death, didn't he?"
"Yes, it was touch and go for quite a while. He lost a lot of blood but fortunately the bullet did not hit any vital organs." The nun laughed. "I think the most difficult part of the whole experience for Brother Francis was that he was unable to be as active as he is used to being for several weeks. He replaced his normal daily power-walk with a 'work out' using canned goods in each hand, lifting them up and down and moving them around in a way a little reminiscent of the qigong moves he does in his Chinese wellness practice. While none of us in the community wanted anything like this to happen, we quietly rejoiced that Brother Francis was now forced to spend extra time in quiet reading, something he enjoys immensely but has little time to do."
The Christian psychic seemed to be absorbing information from another realm. "It was a gunshot, unfortunately a fatal one in this case, that helped give birth to the Salesian family, was it not?"
“I never quite thought of it in that manner, but I suppose you’re right, Madam Wu. Our foundress, St. Jane de Chantal, lost her husband to a gunshot. Some things seemed to cycle over and over again in life. The best case scenario is that the good things recycle and we learn from them at a deeper level, and the not-so-good things have their cycle broken by our own hard work and courage."
"Sister Jane, can you tell me anything about the documents being passed on to Brother Francis in China? I must admit that I have a little feeling of fear concerning the transmission of those documents."
"The only thing I know is that they have been handed on from generation to generation and are supposedly directly from the hand of St. Jane de Chantal and St. Francis de Sales. Aside from them being valuable Church documents, they are valuable historical documents as well. I know that people burglarize and steal valuable old paintings, and I suppose the same could happen with valuable old historical documents also."
Madam Wu only nodded silently.