“Madre di Dio! You married man?” “No, Father.” “You work — got job?” “No, Father.” “What you do?” “Nothing, Father.” “You student?” “Yes, Father.” “How old you?” “Fifteen, Father.” “Madre di Dio! You sick?” “No, Father.” “In a good health?” “Yes, Father.” “For a your penance you pray rosary every day till next confession.” “Yes, Father.” “That a not all. You run mile morning, mile night. Make good act contrition. God bless.”
4. AT THE SEM
JOE KNEW FROM his reading that some of the best saints had worn hair shirts. Catherine of Siena. Bernard of Clairvaux. And that Thomas à Becket, when murdered in the cathedral, had been wearing one that was crawling with vermin. (That, though, was pushing the penitential idea too far, Joe thought.) He had heard that hair shirts were still being worn, even in this country, by the tough contemplative orders — the Carthusians, the Trappists. But he had never seen one until he and a few of his fellow seminarians were invited to “take tea or beer” in the Rector’s study one evening, it being the policy of the Rector, a stylish gray man, new at the job, to have everybody in at least once during the academic year.
The hair shirt — actually, this one was sleeveless, not a shirt but a vest of a coarse black-and-brown fabric that Joe later learned was goat’s hair, woven like chain mail or a Brillo pad — was on a coat hanger hooked to an arm of the floor lamp by the Rector’s chair, and not a pleasant sight. It was there to be asked about, Joe thought, and for that reason he wouldn’t ask about it. But Cooney, his best friend, did.
“My cilicium—my hair shirt,” said the Rector. “Back from the cleaner’s.” Seeing that Hrdlicka (a simple soul) believed him, the Rector said to Joe, “No, I’m afraid an old friend sent it to me as a joke”—as if Joe (pretty sophisticated), and not Hrdlicka, needed help, and for this Joe had to admire the Rector.
The next time Joe saw the hair shirt, three months later, he didn’t see it as a joke at all. Joe in those months, during and after the annual retreat — six days when the seminarians, lectured by an outside expert in the field, considered the state of their souls — had taken a big step up, spiritually. Oh, he still had a long way to go, but could now look back and down, like a man climbing a mountain, and see where he’d been. He could see himself as he’d been when he entered the seminary, down there in the foothills of sentimentality, sound asleep and dreaming that he would someday do great things for God, the Church, and his parishioners, and would thus, incidentally, make the world a better place. He could see himself as he’d been later on, on the lower slopes of reality, waking up and fearing that he too would poop out when put to the test, as others had, to judge by what was happening and not happening in parishes he knew about, to say nothing of the world. And now he’d changed again — this time for good, he believed. He had grown up. Now he knew what he was doing, or, anyway, what he was trying to do — simply the hardest job in the world: getting to know God, growing more like God, growing in holiness. Holiness, as the retreatmaster had said, was the only ambition worthy of the priest and therefore of candidates for the priesthood. Holiness was the point of all the lives of the saints, the point where all those glorious lives converged, and what the whole world was crying for. “And,” the retreatmaster had said, “you can’t give what you haven’t got, lads.”
So Joe and some others, in quest of holiness, had gone into spiritual training, which had its physical side. “Detachment!” the retreatmaster had cried, and they gave up their attachments — smokes, sweets, snacks, snooker, and handball were Joe’s — and haunted the chapel. They were a dozen or so in number, kneeling in prayer and meditation by the hour, some, though, sitting from time to time — Mooney and Rooney, for example; not Joe, though, and not Cooney, and not Hrdlicka. But the way of the world is also the way of the seminary, and the number of those who kept vigil in the chapel, kneeling or sitting, daily diminished — down to five only a week after the retreat.
The five of them — Joe, Cooney, Hrdlicka, Mooney, and Rooney — came in for a lot of headshaking from their peers, were called quietists, “detachers,” and so on (only to be expected if you knew anything about the history of the Church, the intramural dogfights between ascetics and timeservers), and were also a source of concern to some of the high-living faculty and the Rector. It was believed that the Rector enjoyed the favor of the Archbishop but not of his reverend consultors, who remembered their days in the seminary and were unhappy about the way the place was being run now — as a club, they said. So the ingredients were there, at the seminary and close by, for trouble — which Joe did all he could to avoid.
He counseled the members of the little band (they seemed to regard him as their spiritual director) to use their heaven-sent opportunities, which were many, to turn the other cheek. And he gave good example whenever he could, as when he was called “Holy Joe” or just “Holy.” (“Hi, Holy!” Deadass Boekenhoff greeted him every morning in the lavatorium, and Joe, though tempted to answer something else, would murmur politely, “Good morning, George.”) But not all members of the little band did so well. Mooney and Rooney, who were both sorry later but cited St Peter’s bad example in the Garden of Gethsemane in extenuation of themselves, had exchanged sharp words and shoves with their persecutors. Mooney and Rooney had also fallen behind in their studies, as had Hrdlicka, owing to the hours they spent in the chapel. The three of them had to be tutored by Joe and Cooney, who were excellent students, and Mooney and Rooney were now keeping up. Things still looked bad for Hrdlicka scholastically—he, however, was making great progress spiritually. There were times in the chapel when Hrdlicka appeared to Joe to be out of this world, in a state of mystical ecstasy, reminding Joe of an old picture of St Aloysius with halo, lily, scourge, and upturned eyes.
And then, one evening early in December, Hrdlicka came to Joe’s room and said, “I’m thinking of leaving the sem.”
“What!”
“For the Trappists.”
“Oh,” said Joe, less gratified than relieved. “That’s different, Al. That makes sense in your case. Well, well. The Trappists. Pretty quiet about it, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t know if I’d get a reply when I wrote. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”
Hrdlicka handed Joe the reply from the Trappists, and Joe read it, surprised to see that they had a typewriter. “So now you need a letter of recommendation from the Rector, Al. Told him yet?”
“Not yet, Joe. I thought I’d tell you first.”
This pleased Joe, as spiritual director of the little band, but, mindful of higher authority, which he knew from his reading was where so many good men had gone wrong, he said, “Better tell the Rector, Al. Tell him right away.”
Hrdlicka went off to do this, but he soon returned — so soon that Joe assumed the Rector was out. Then he saw what Hrdlicka had in his hand — the hair shirt.