Dear Mother Millea, We are so excited by your visit

We are so excited at the prospect of your forthcoming visit. We are doubly excited to be in the first group to be visited because we have always tried so hard to be good sheep and follow wherever we were led. We were never really able to agree with Bishop Fulton Sheen who said that his fear for the religious of the Church was that we would be fit only for the sand-boxes of heaven. Maybe he did not understand that, as you do, dear Mother, that there is no room for independence and intelligence in holiness.

We presume this will be a ‘flying’ visit - just my little joke - but we will sell the back forty to pay for all your travel expenses - even cinnebuns in the airport should you so desire - though I would ask you to keep all the receipts; our sister treasurer is a stickler for keeping to the letter of the accounting laws too.

There will be a limo at the airport to meet you - the residue of the sale of the back forty will provide for that. We will line up all the sisters in the foyer to greet you and your visitation team. Do you want them in alphabetical order, or in rank or by height. We always did it by height in the second grade processions so I thought you might like that best.

We will have your rooms ready. Your offices will be provided with everything that you asked for. You didn’t mention Scotch tape or paper clips but we can always provide these. We do not own any shredders but a kind layman is arranging for us to borrow some of these machines from the local CIA office.

Unfortunately our infirmary is already full but we have made reservations for you at the local hotel. They assure us that you can pay for this accommodation by travellers cheques. You will, of course, be most welcome to join us for our Lenten soup lunch each day.

Could you let us know if there will be men on the visitation team so that we can make sure there is a grill in place between them and the sisters for the interviews. We will also hire as many port-a-johns as you think necessary.

Just a little heads up for you with respect to the daily liturgy. We presume you are bringing your own chaplain with you? Unfortunately there has been no priest available for daily liturgy for several years. Even the local bishop found himself too busy to celebrate Eucharist with us and several of our best pastors now find themselves in prison. On the other hand, one of our sisters could say Mass for you.

We will have no trouble in finding eight laypersons to meet with you. There are so many that love us, we could have mustered twelve or even seventy-two as Jesus did.

Thank you so much for your very specific instructions, they make us feel so much more comfortable about your coming and take all the anxiety out of our eager preparations. After all we only have fourteen sisters with Ph.D’s, forty-two with double Masters, eighteen with single Masters and seven authors of published books. We could not have done it without you.

Thank you, dear Mother, for all your care for us. Why, most of us have not been mothered for almost half a century since that extraordinary gathering in our Church known as the Second Vatican Council.

Your daughter, always obediently and in the bleeding heart of Jesus Christ,

Sr. Mary Roll the Stone Away from the Tomb.