Sister Philadelphia lit the candles in the vestibule and inhaled the rich incense wafting from the church.  The pews were empty, and darkness yawned across the altar, its maw stretching up to the crucifix where an impaled Savior grinned arcanely at his dismemberment.   The flames drew out the stained glass window and outside, an early snow.  Sister Philadelphia heard a crow caw in the dripping pine, and she gathered her habit and red shawl around her shoulders as she fared the evening twilight and flakes of ice in the withering sky out to her small cell.  Her sisters were fast asleep, tired out from worship, and she had had the evening shift on All Soul’s Eve.  Sister Philadelphia gave a happenstance glance at the graveyard, full of weeping angels, and she imagined them singing alleluias in weeping Christ’s passion.  How crucifixes and the crutches of Saint Lazarus and wounds of…