God's busy work

LORETTO, MN—Although you won't see her speaking from the pulpit or spreading God's word to the masses, St. Augustine Catholic Church parishioner Betty Salas, 46, sacrifices both her time and energy to complete the many mundane tasks the Lord has asked her to take off His plate.

Betty Salas lets the good Lord work through her to organize the church library.

"At a very young age, I felt the call to do God's busy work," said Salas, spiritually fulfilled from a long afternoon spent photocopying hymn lyrics for Sunday's mass and changing the bulletin board's decorative seasonal border. "I am just a vessel through which He cleans the church Tupperware."

When she was only 8 years old, Salas said she heard the voice of God call out to her from on high, rattling off a few things He needed done before the Sabbath. Salas took up her heavenly Father's holy to-do list as her own personal calling, devoting her life to refilling the holy-water containers and picking up the priests' vestments from the dry cleaners.

After reaching her 30s, Salas became more dedicated to her spiritual puttering, and began not only replacing the prayer candles, but also ordering the new prayer candles, and emptying and cleaning the prayer candle donation box.

"The Lord hath spoken to me, and He hath said, 'The lightbulb in the rectory needs changing,'" Salas said.

Today, the veteran church bulletin copyeditor continues to be a model of religious commitment as she heeds the call of her swamped Savior.

"The Lord is my shepherd, and I will not question His infinite wisdom or bother Him with the details of who's bringing what to the Palm Sunday spaghetti supper," Salas said. "He has brought me forth from the darkness to the promise of eternal life, and the least I can do is refill the offering envelopes."

"And DustBuster the pews, and sharpen the tiny pencils we hand out during the annual Bishop's Appeal, and make sure all the youth group permission slips are turned in on time," Salas added. "Phew! Lord, give me the strength to do thy tedious errands!"

But even after devoting nearly four decades of her life to lightening the Almighty's load, Salas shows no signs of slowing down.

"God has a divine plan for all of us," said Salas, carefully straightening an errant letter "E" on the roadside sign announcing the day's services. "And besides, if I don't polish the chalices, who will? Ramona's sure as #$%^ not going to."

The Almighty God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, was unavailable for comment, as he was reportedly "up to [His] eyeballs" in drowning Bangladeshis. [Full Article]