THE NOVICE 

Abbot Ignatius would never admit to anyone that he entertained any doubts, even for a moment, that the words of Jesus, “He who listens to you listens to me” applied to himself in his dealings with those in his charge.  When Father Martin told him to expect novice Frater Bede to come in to say that he wished to terminate his stay at the monastery, he was prepared.

As for Freddie, for the first time in ten months he felt happy, deeply happy.  In a few minutes he would be free, as free as the spring air blowing over the brown prairie after the long winter.  He was going home. He would no longer be Frater Bede. He would be able to play hockey again, not that he was that good a player, but so much more fun than skating back and forth on the rink just for exercise. Oh yes, and he would dance again. He loved dancing and singing and partying. Those things would no longer be prohibited.

He would see his Mom and his sisters, whom he hadn’t seen in six months. That sole visit during his novitiate was very short.  On the way out, he held his widowed mother back and confessed that he did not want to be a monk.  She stopped, stood there silently for a while.  She took his hand to lead him back to the parlor.

“But, Mom, time’s up.  I can’t …”

“This is too important.  You need to tell me what is going on.”

For long moments she looked lovingly into his eyes, saying nothing.  Freddie opened his heart to her.  He told her how unhappy he was.  “You need to decide what is best for you.  Only you know what that is. You are a good boy, Freddie. You need to trust yourself and then do whatever you think is right.  That is all I expect of you.”  She opened her arms to hug him and held him close.  He had wanted clearer direction.  He wanted her to tell him to come home.  He simply could not bear the burden of this momentous life decision alone.

All during his months in the monastery, Marilyn appeared constantly in his thoughts.  He reviewed every memory, every conversation, every feeling he had experienced with her.

In grade nine he received a scholarship to attend the monastery’s boarding school with the expectation that he would join the monastery.  Despite the long absences between rare weekends, he and Marilyn managed to keep in touch.  Each visit created fresh, confusing, and unexpressed emotions. There were other girls too, but she was special.

On a clear, star-brightened autumn evening when they were seventeen, they joined a small group of other young people after a parish youth meeting.  They were standing a little apart.  Their hands met.  Sensations he had not dared to harbour stirred within him.  He pulled her closer to him, just to keep her warm, he told himself.

She made no move to pull away. “Let’s find a star that we can have as our own some day, where no one else can come to.  Just for us.”  They settled on the third star from the end of the Big Dipper.  He felt an overwhelming thrill of belonging to her in this special way.  He liked that feeling, liked it very much.

Later that evening she kissed him.  He could still feel every detail of it, so sweetly did she lay her lips on his.  Cool and moist.  For one brief eternity she lingered there, holding his face with both hands, pressing herself against him, and then she was gone.  Every part of his being responded.  It felt good, so very good.  He had not allowed himself to explore what it might be like to be in love with Marilyn.  Now he would be free to examine that possibility.  He would go home and find out if they were meant for each other.  He could hardly contain his excitement.

The morning he left for the monastery, Freddie and Marilyn had attended Mass.  They walked away from church together in silence.  Upon arriving in front of her home he turned to her.  “Today you will be rid of me once and for all.”  What in the world made him say a stupid thing like that?  What must she think?

He never found out.  She turned away quickly.  Were there tears in her eyes?  Was she angry?  Was she sad to see him go?  Why didn’t she say goodbye?  He wanted her to throw herself at him, to hug him, to kiss him over and over, to scream at him to stay and not go to the monastery. He  wanted her to cry because he was crying inside and could not say what was in his heart to say.  He wanted her to tell him she would wait for him, that if it didn’t work out she would be here for him.  Instead, she walked away, never turning to look at him. He stood there, like a stupid ox, watching her until she disappeared around the corner of her home.

He thought it would be so easy to knock on the abbot’s door, announce his plan to leave, and be out of there in minutes to call his cousin to come and pick him up to take him home.  He almost whistled his happiness as he packed his few belongings. How wonderful it would be to have fun again, to laugh, to tell crazy jokes, to hang out with his friends.

He felt satisfied that he had given the monastic life a sincere try.  The Rule of St. Benedict opened with poetic inspiration, of “running the way of God’s commandments with expanded hearts and unspeakable sweetness of love.”  Freddie wanted that. Yet he had not found it.  The daily talks by Abbot Ignatius were singularly joyless, with the constant theme that the abbot’s will is the will of God.

He had spent the last several months convincing his spiritual adviser, Father Martin, that although he might “have all the signs of a priestly vocation,” he could not bring himself to make the sacrifices necessary to follow that path.  Father Martin had often sighed, “There are two things you need, good will and generosity.  You have the good will…”  Okay, so he wasn’t generous enough to give his life to the service of God, to answer the call to the priesthood.

“Should I go and tell the abbot?”  Father Martin asked him after the last of these sessions.

“I guess that’s my job, isn’t it?”  he answered.  It did not occur to Freddie that the abbot would challenge him.

He took a deep breath, knocked softly on the abbot’s door, and entered when he heard the invitation. He blessed himself with holy water from the big copper stoup just inside the door.  Despite the early afternoon hour,  the room was cheerless, dispiriting.  It smelled of stagnation and decay.  A maze of paths meandered through the room, around an oversized oak desk piled high with papers, around tables burdened with stacks of magazines, and mountains of dusty books all over the floor, years of accumulated clutter.

“Sit down.”

Freddie sat down on the edge of the leather chair the abbot pointed to.  Abbot Ignatius stood, ready.

“I  want to leave, to go home, and take care of my mother.”   He had not rehearsed this line.  It was clearly false.  Why didn’t he tell the truth?  Why could he not have said, “I want to leave.  I can’t breathe here.  I can’t sing.  I can’t play.  I have never been so unhappy in my whole life.”

Abbot Ignatius wasted no time in niceties.  He loomed over Freddie like a voracious vulture, his bony old fingers with their ragged fingernails shaking in his face.  Around the room, grim-faced former abbots painted by mediocre artists stared vapidly at the scene below them.

“That is not your concern.  She can take care of herself.  You are called to the priesthood.  That is God’s will for you.”

Somewhere deep inside a voice intervened.  “Freddie, you do not have to listen to this.  He has no inside track on what God wants of you.  God speaks in many ways.  You owe this man nothing.  You do not have to explain or justify any decision you make about your life.  You are free to get up and walk out right now.  You do not need his permission.  There are no locks on the doors unless you put them there yourself.” Could he trust that voice?

“You must follow the will of God.  As your abbot, I alone am the instrument of God’s will for you.  Abraham was rewarded for his obedience.  Jesus himself was obedient, even unto death.  God’s plan for you is clear.  You must give up your own will, your self-love, your pride.  Only the most despicable person says to God I will not serve.”

Freddie stared at the array of crucifixes over every door, on every available space on the uneven dirty white plaster  walls.  The tortured Christ writhed in agony for the sins of the human race.  The crowning virtue for the follower of Christ was obedience without question, without hesitation, whatever the cost.

The voice inside whispered, “But you have made no vows of obedience to this man.  You do not have to do what he tells you.”  Freddie not found that voice confusing. Who was right, the voice of desire or the voice of religion?

“God has called you to the monastic life and the priesthood.  If you say no to God you  will surely lose your immortal soul.  You will find the way open to hell.”

Throughout his life, from his earliest memories, an abject dread of hellfire had dominated much of Freddie’s experience of religion, a paralyzing fear of God as a most strict judge, quick to punish those who disobeyed even in little things, whether in thought, word, action, or even desire.

Abbot Ignatius caught the look of fear in Freddie’s eyes.  “God is asking you to be perfect in your acceptance of his will.  You must rid yourself of your self-will, your self-indulgence, your emotional tendencies, your silly pride, your independent thinking, if you want to reach heavenly bliss.  The only road to that is absolute and unquestioning submission to the will of the abbot.  That is what God demands of you.”

Freddie felt himself sinking lower into the chair as the abbot loomed ever closer, towering over him.  The finger of God in that old man’s hand.  If he listened too long he would be overwhelmed.  Defeated.  He couldn’t tell the abbot the real reason for wanting to leave.  How could he tell the old man that he needed to be free, to play, to see Marilyn,  to party, to laugh and be silly.

The anticipation of freedom Freddie had felt just before knocking on the abbot’s door was threatening to melt away.  He imagined the chain of God, whipped into a frenzy by Abbot Ignatius, wrap itself around his neck, his hands, his feet, his heart.  Snared, skewered, crucified, castrated.  He sank ever deeper into the huge chair, becoming a small child in the presence of a domineering father.  And he hated it.  Hated it with all his heart.  He stifled a surge of intense rage.

“Forget your mother.  She doesn’t need you.  She’ll do all right on her own.  You wouldn’t help her anyway.   You are too selfish to give yourself to God, so how do you expect not to be selfish with your mother?  You’ll leave her too, just as you want to leave God behind.  Selfishness leads to all sin.  The death of your soul.  You can forget the promises of God to enter the narrow gate.”

The voice inside now seemed smaller, desperate.  “Freddie, listen.  You are not and never have been a selfish person.  God speaks inside your heart as well.  Listen to that voice.  It speaks the truth.”

It was quickly intercepted with another familiar theme.  Father Cosmas had been a monk and priest, a brilliant man who had left the monastery and the priesthood years ago to marry.  “Here was a talented man who tore up his vows to God, who was unfaithful, first in little things.  He thought he knew better than anyone else, and then he met a woman and he  was gone.”

How could Freddie now admit that he wanted to leave because he wanted to marry, to have a family, to be normal?  That he wanted to see Marilyn,  and not feel so lonesome, so alone, so dreadfully alone.  How could he admit to this man that he longed for another taste of Marilyn’s forbidden lips, her kiss still lingering fresh and cool and inviting, the feel of her body against his?  That fresh, clean feeling of wellbeing, of being alive, totally alive.  A precious two seconds held in the balance against eternal fire.  He would burn forever,  with the worm crawling,  the worm that dies not.  The unquenchable fire.

The abbot’s face had gone livid, as it did whenever the dread topic of sex “reared its ugly head.”  Selfishness and pride and now sex.  “Straight down the road to hell, they all lead.  Awful about Cosmas.  That woman took away his precious priesthood.  He gave up being another Christ for the body of a woman.  What an exchange!  What a terrible, terrible tragedy befalls those who give in to Satan and sex.”  Once on this theme Abbot Ignatius could no longer stop himself.  He rolled his eyes heavenward and sneered. “You leave now and what you’re heading for, you selfish young fool, is destruction.”

Freddie tried to think what it was that changed in the old abbot’s expression. It was vaguely creepy, shocking and yet somehow thrilling.  It reminded Freddie of something he had felt years ago, something he had suppressed.  He had not been able to put a name to it.  Now he felt it again, that he was being stalked, being approached by a benign predator. Yes, he had seen that look in other eyes before.

Wave after relentless wave the abbot’s polemics had come, threatening to drown him, with no time to recover between them.  He was back working on the farm on a blistering hot day when he was shoveling wheat inside a grain bin during harvest.  The auger kept pouring the wheat in through the only opening, a square hole in the roof.  As the granary filled, the heat and dust became so oppressive that it threatened to suffocate him in the avalanche of grain. He fought his way up, gasping for air and scrambled to the hole to shout for relief.

Now he again felt equally trapped.  Like he could not breathe.  He knew he had to get away from this man, from this unnamed sinister blackness.  He looked for help from the twin images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and his Sorrowing Mother, whose blank countenances offered nothing but indifference to his plight.  The look of desperation was not lost on Abbot Ignatius.  Or was it revulsion?

He issued his final contemptuous challenge.  “Don’t you ever trust any woman, and that includes your mother and your sisters and don’t you ever forget that.” Furious now, jaws set, Abbot Ignatius sputtered, “Get up to the chapel right now, and ask God to forgive your selfishness and pride.  Give up your own will to the will of God.”

He thrust his ring into Freddie’s face for the kiss of subjection.

With his head spinning out of control, with the voice inside gone silent, Freddie rushed to the door, leaving Abbot Ignatius leaning against the chair.

Father Martin appeared out of nowhere.  “Well, how did it go?  What did the abbot say?”

Only a whisper, “Nothing, nothing I haven’t heard a  million times already.”