The Story of Barrett (Part 4 ... continued)

And then came Jesse

There can be no question that the God I worshipped in those days had a sense of humor. The transition from rebellious teenager to humble and obedient postulant would have been difficult enough had He left me alone to work things out by myself. I have a mental image of this bearded old man sitting on a cloud, chortling as He elbows the archangel Gabriel in the ribs and says, "This is gonna kill ya. Watch what I do to the kid now."

Of all the things I could have foreseen before my arrival, falling completely and hopelessly in love for the first time would not have been on the list.

Romantic love, unlike our more prosaic emotions, is reinvented by every generation. Our first encounter with "puppy love" is always totally unique. The range of emotions we feel is so intense we instinctively know it's unlike anything anyone else has ever experienced. We may know that other people have fallen in love. We may acknowledge that our parents love each other but it's inconceivable that they could ever have felt a love as pure and beautiful as the love we feel for the object of our affection.

I met confrater Jesse (not his real name) on my first day at Holy Cross when I finished unpacking and went to the lake for a swim. I had barely walked into the water before he waded up to me and stuck out his hand. 'Hi. I'm Jesse," he said.

That was all it took.

At least 80% of the first year class was from Pittsburgh which is is the regional headquarters for the eastern province of the Congregation of the Passion. Jesse was a freshman and had arrived the day before from Pittsburgh. Like me, Jesse was learning his way around and didn't yet know anyone. In spite of, or maybe because of the dozens of introductions that were made that day, it would be weeks before we would remember which names went with which faces. Jesse was the exception. Being smitten on your first encounter with someone almost guarantees that you will never forget the name or the face of your smitter. We spent the rest of that first day together and as much time as possible with each other during the days that were to follow.

We explored the beach for miles in both directions (technically a violation of the rule about leaving the property but since there were no fences marking the transition from seminary to outside world on the beach, we could rationalize that we didn't know the beach five miles away wasn't still on seminary grounds). We would sneak out of the building after the evening meal and make our way, in the dark, to the cemetary behind the school where deceased members of the faculty had been buried and scare each other with stories of brother Alphonse who had died fifty years before and was reputed to wander the school grounds at night. We played tennis together, went swimming together and during the winter months we skated together on a small pond near the lake.

It was Jesse who first taught me that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It was winter and we were walking on the frozen stream that fed into the lake on our way back from another questionably legal exploration when we heard the ice cracking under our feet. Jesse, who was close to the edge of the streambed jumped to safety while I stood, stranded on the ice near the center of the stream. "Quick," he called to me. "Lie down on the ice. Distribute your weight". It seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, the ice broke as I was stretching out and, instead of sinking up to my knees in icy water, I completely submerged. [Cut to a close up of God and Gabriel clutching their sides and laughing hysterically.]

Our times together weren't exclusionary. Sometimes we were part of a larger group, sometimes we would have one or two classmates with us. In either case, where you found one of us, you invariably found the other. And the best times, to me, were when we walked alone, talking privately about anything and everything imaginable from theology to our respective histories, our goals and doubts and hopes.

Each of us found in the other something we needed and something we hadn't found before.

On my side certainly, our times together produced a lot of sexual tension. This was something we NEVER talked about. Jesse and I had identical goals that required celebacy and neither one of us ever hinted at a desire for physical affection or anything beyond wanting to be together as much as possible. References to the relationship we had with each other would be stated in the most oblique terms but was still one of our favorite topics when we were alone together. Its amazing how many ways we learned of saying "I love you" without ever saying the words "I love you"

I experienced all the joys, pains and ecstasy every teenager experiences when riding the roller coaster of a first infatuation. Oddly enough, I had no trouble reconciling my feelings for Jesse with my desire to serve God and achieve sanctity. Jesse was kind and cute and generous and smart and, in some way I could sense but not fully understand, he needed me. Something in him touched my soul in a way I had never been touched. Loving him felt good. It felt inevitable It felt right the way nothing had ever felt right before. Expressing our love physically might have been sinful and unthinkable but the love itself was as holy and as sacred as the sacrament of communion. If our friendship meant I would have to constantly battle to overcome impure thoughts and improper urges than so be it. I would wage the battle and I would win ... because I knew I was destined to love Jesse until the day I died.

December came and with it the Christmas break. I was probably the only student who would gladly have skipped the break altogether and remained at school if only Jesse weren't going home for the holidays. On the day we were to depart, he and I played a last game of pool in the rec room before Father Roberts came to collect us about 10:00 AM for the ride to the train station. Jesse remained behind. He wouldn't be leaving until midafternoon when his father was scheduled to pick him up and drive him to Pittsburgh. We parted with mutual assurances that we would see each other in two weeks.

Patrick and Georgiana no longer lived with Uncle John in Northampton but had moved to the first floor apartment of a house in West Springfield, Massachusetts. They met me at the train station in Springfield with the enthusiastic excitement of fans greeting a celebrity. I wasn't their grandson any more. I was their grandson who was going to become a priest. I enjoyed my elevated status and it helped distract me during the holiday that still seemed too take far too long to pass. I don't remember anything that I did that Christmas. I have no idea what gifts I gave or received, which particular disliked relatives made ritual Christmas visits and which ones stayed away. The one thing I did notice was that during the holidays my usually taciturn grandfather seemed tired and even more quiet than usual. I didn't bring it up or ask about it and no one said anything to me so I didn't worry much about it.

January 2nd, 1960 finally arrived and I was driven to the train station late that night for the return trip to Dunkirk. It was a good feeling to know that every minute that passed was bringing me closer to Holy Cross ... and to Jesse. I was awake all night and tired but happy when I was met by Father Roberts at the station for the ride back to school.

The reunion I was picturing never happened. Jesse never came back from Christmas vacation.

It took awhile but I recovered, finally. What choice had I? It was a sad time for me, made worse by the absense of anyone I could talk to, anyone with whom I could share my loss. I could casually mention I was sorry Jesse hadn't come back after winter break but that didn't begin to describe how alone and lost I felt. To be any more honest was to reveal more about me than I could bear to reveal ... even to the caring community at Holy Cross. Especially to the caring community at Holy Cross.

Life went on. Our daily schedule didn't leave a lot of time to brood or pine for a lost love. Within a couple of weeks I could sometimes go for an entire day without thinking of Jesse. The pain and horrible feeling of emptiness went away and was replaced by a dull ache, unpleasant but bearable. Like every other young person in the world, I would survive my first love affair and go on with my life. Eventually I would even fall in love and learn the difference between an attraction based on need and one based on a meeting of minds and souls. But all that was a long way in the future. Before I could learn to love someone else I was going to have to learn to accept and love myself. That particular bit of wisdom would elude me for years to come.

One of the perks of growing old is the increased respect we get from those around us. When I was 15, I was a jerk. At 62, I have become a lovable eccentric. And I am essentially the same person now that I was then. My elevation in status isn't a result of any increase in wisdom. It's a direct result of my grey beard and wrinkled skin. It isn't hard to become wise and respected. All you have to do is live long enough.

The patina of age doesn't eliminate our imperfections; it merely conceals them.

Not that I'm complaining. When you have a choice between being regarded as a wise eccentric or being thought a stupid jerk your preference should be obvious. Wisdom doesn't come with age; it comes with experience. That's God's practical joke because the wisdom brought with experience comes after the fact instead of during the experience when it might do us some good. The only value to wisdom lies in its usefulness when we pontificate and advise others what to expect based on our experiences. Advising others is almost always a frustrating exercise in futility since the advisee usually lacks the experience to see the value of our advise (otherwise, why come to us for advise in the first place?).

Did Jesse share my affectional preferences? Maybe so but I suspect not. He was probably just a very special, gentle and caring, heterosexual young man who needed and found a special friend in some one who had never had ... or been ... a special friend to anyone.

In 1965, when I found myself in Pittsburgh, I learned that Jesse was an apprentice chef at one of the better restaurants in the city. I phoned the restaurant and got him on the line, explaining that I was just leaving the city but wanted to at least call and say hello. He left work imediately and we spent a pleasant couple of hours driving around the city getting caught up on each other's lives. Jesse was 19 then and had married a year earlier. He and his wife had a 2 month old daughter.

I had thought I would love Jesse until the day I died and in at least one sense, maybe I have. Half a century later, I still remember him with affection. I sincerely hope his life has been rich and fulfilling and that his marriage has brought him as much happiness as my partnership with my own mate has brought me.

By early February I was entering new phase in my life and faced a crisis of a new sort. I was beginning to have doubts, not only about my calling to the priesthood but even about my faith in the existence of God. As I learned more about the history of Catholicism and the church I had been raised in, there were many things that seemed illogical or even repugnant and incompatible with my personal ideas of right and wrong. More and more of the scriptural stories I had learned and never thought about critically began to take on the flavor of children's fairy tales.

This kind of "crisis of faith" is a recognized and common problem affecting some laymen as well as many members of religious orders and the clergy. Referred to as "The Dark Days of the Soul" it is a period of doubt and disaffection of faith. The biographies of the saints that were read to us during our silent meals often spoke of the pain these worthies suffered when their faith was attacked by the devil who used intellect and reason to undermine the Word of God. The solution, we were taught, was to be found through the exercise of "intellectual sublimation". This sublimation, we were told, is the highest form of virtue man is capable of practicing and we must pray for the grace and humility to ignore the devil's lies. Our doubts were were the result of sinful pride in our fallable human intellects and we had to recognise that God and the Church Fathers knew more than we did. Doubt must be suppressed and overcome by confession and prayer.

Put simply, intellectual sublimation meant that when reason conflicted with our faith, we were to ignore demon-inspired reason and sublimate rationality to what we were told was the Will of God for the salvation of our souls.

There are those who achieve the level of spirituality and humility needed to embrace and accept this concept immediately. I wasn't one of them. The hours of each day that were intended for prayer and meditation became mental battlefields as emerging doubt waged a relentless war with previously accepted dogma.

That was my state of mind when I arrived for mass one midweek morning and found the Director of Students, Fathere Brendan, waiting for me by the door of the chapel in full liturgical vestments.

"Richard," he said softly, putting one hand on my shoulder. "Your grandfather passed away yesterday. You'll be going home today for his funeral so get your things together after you have breakfast." His hand dropped from my shoulder and he paused before adding, "I'm sorry, son. I'll remember him in our prayers today". I stood for a moment, absorbing the words as he turned and entered the chapel. Students and faculty stood as he reached the altar. Mass had begun when I slowly followed him into the chapel, feeling an odd mix of emotion as I genuflected toward the altar and took my place with the other first years.

This was my first encounter with death and just the idea that some one I had known and spoken with so recently no longer existed was intellectually hard to accept. I knew that I was supposed to feel grief but my biggest reaction was shock mixed with a just hint of disbelief. How could Patrick be dead? I had known him all my life.

Paul of the Cross, the founder of the Congregation of the Passion, is almost always pictured either holding or standing over a human skull. the intended message being that death and the passion and sacrifice of Our Savior should never be far from our thoughts. When a member of the order dies, instead of mourning, the custom is a celebration by the community to mark the entry of that soul into paradise. I told myself that my lack of a deeper emotional response was a result of my faith and the training (conditioning) that came from six months of living a monastic life.

The truth is less flattering. Before one can feel the pain of loss, they have to believe they've lost something. All my efforts to become empathetic and caring, my nightly examinations of conscience and the earnest prayers I daily sent heavenward had done nothing for my soul. I felt no grief because I felt no love for the people who had given me life ... and then made that life so miserable for so many years.

At 8:00 PM that evening I was again disembarking from the train in Springfield. I don't remember who met me (my grandmother didn't drive) but I was taken directly to the funeral home where Patrick was being waked.

A wake is a semi-structered event. Visitors sign a guest book at the door as they arrive and then walk to the front closest to the casket to offer condolences to the bereaved family. This done, they move to the casket and stand or kneel next to the deceased to offer prayers for his soul. After a few moments of this, they take a seat with the crowd of relatives and friends seated behind the family and renew old acquintances, gossip among themselves or simply gaze at the dead body until they've remained long enough to satisfy the requirements of courtesy at which time they can escape once again to their own lives, having met their duty to the departed.

The air is always thick with the smell of floral tributes sent to the deceased and placed around the casket by the undertaker, as well as by the various perfumes and colognes worn by the mourners who fill the room dressed in their Sunday best.

Georgiana, dressed in black and seated in front, was genuinely devestated by my grandfather's death but still managed to play to the crowd of sympathizers. Each new arrival to greet her caused a fresh paroxysm of loud sobs which would subside as the guest moved to the casket, only to start up again with the next visitor. She would chokingly point out that Patrick looked so natural she couldn't believe he wasn't going to sit up and offer a quip or a joke to the group. I didn't see much point in observing that I thought he looked very dead and totally beyond a humorous monologue. She had never placed a high value on the opinions of others and I suspected this wasn't the best time to expect a change of attitude.

The whole thing seemed phony and hypocritical. If these people and my grandmother in particular, really believed that Patrick was with God in heaven and if they really believed that they would eventually join him in heavenly bliss, what were they mourning? It seemed as if the Passionist philosophy of celebration would be the inevitable consequence of faith but that wasn't what I was seeing or hearing from the good Catholics around me..

One more inconsistency joined the litany of doubts that plagued my soul.

On a Monday, three days after the funeral, I returned to school to complete my first year as a seminarian. I wasn't yet ready to share any of my misgivings and troubling doubts with my confessor or a counselor but I was beginning to question both my vocation and my faith. The values and beliefs that I had been exposed to all my life were too powerful to to be abandoned simply on the basis what I saw as my imperfect attempts at rationality and logic. It would take an emotional catalyst to bring me from a state of doubt to to one of outright rejection. That catalyst turned out to be something as simple and innocent as a tennis tournament.

The student/faculty tennis tournement was an annual event that took place each May just before final exams. Everyone took part so my complete lack of ability on the court wasn't an obstacle. To everyone's surprise, including mine, I squeaked through the first round, defeating our 70 plus year old religion teacher who may have been the only player on either team with less athletic ability than mine. In fairness, I think his crutches may have slowed him down.

With him eliminated, my next opponent was Father Brendan, the Director of Students and several days later he and I faced each other across the court.

It wasn't a contest. I was soundly trounced and eliminated from the competition. Father Brendan was a natural athlete and I would have lost even if I hadn't been distracted.

It's one thing to know about a religious ritual; quite another to see first hand its effects. In shorts and tennis shoes, Father Brendan was broad-shouldered and muscular. It was the first time I had seen a shirtless member of the Congregation of the Passion. It was also the first time I had seen the marks on father Brendan's back from the self-flagellation that he, and every member of the order, performed each Wednesday evening to atone for his faults and shortcomings.

The next day, during the time reserved for study hall, I went to the office of the vice director, Father Edgar, and knocked on the door. When I heard his "Ave" which was permission to enter, I went in and stood in front of his desk.

"I think I have a problem," I said.

The floodgates opened. I told him about my doubts. There was a lump in my throat and I struggled to keep my voice steady as I told him I didn't think I belonged at Holy Cross. I said I loved the school and everyone in it ... but I no longer believed in God or the church.

Father Edgar was gentle and understanding. He spoke about the Dark Days of the Soul. He told me that what I was feeling was natural and that it would pass. He asked me about my life before Holy Cross and I answered almost truthfully, giving him a sanitized version of my life until then. Finally, he told me to pray about it and ask for guidence and then to make a list giving all the reasons I felt I should leave the seminary and all the reasons I could think of to remain.

I never made the list.

I tried. There were all kinds of reasons I wanted to remain and continue my studies. I was happier and more at peace with myself than I had ever been in my life. I felt genuine affection bordering on love for my classmates and the clergy who were my teachers and superiors.

And none of that mattered because I no longer believed in the religion, or even God. If I remained in the seminary, it would be hypocracy of the worst sort. It would be a sin and a betrayal, not against God but against myself and the same classmates and clergy I respected and cared about.

In June I graduated with the rest of my class and left Dunkirk for the last time. Although I didn't know it yet, my life as a seminarian was over and so was my time as a passive victim of other people's believes and philosophies. I had learned how to think critically and that lesson would change my life forever.

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