Chapter 15
However pure and sparkling the rills at which others may drink, he puts his lips to the very rock, which a divine wand has struck, and he sucks in its waters as they gush forth living.
In Rome, Joseph lived in a palace—the seventeenth-century Palazzo di Propaganda Fide.
His own chamber resembled a monk’s cell, though it was for sleeping only, locked during the day.
His desk was in a study room monitored by a proctor, who would pace the rows murmuring over his breviary until he noticed something amiss.
Joseph had brought a few favorite books with him.
Two were confiscated. He should have known better than to bring Donne.
The Palazzo housed a hundred seminarians who spoke twenty-five languages.
After Ordination, they would return to their own dioceses and celebrate Mass in one tongue all across the Earth—truly “one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” There was even an African student, a boy of fourteen with skin as dark as jet.
He came from the colony of Saint-Louis in Senegal, so he knew French.
His Latin was minimal—his Italian, nonexistent.
The African sought out Joseph their very first week, since the prefect told him Joseph spoke French.
Joseph tried to be civil. But he saw how the other seminarians stared at the black boy, how they stared at him when they were together.
Joseph had been stared at all his life because of his mother.
This was supposed to be a fresh start for him, an opportunity to become someone new, to escape his African blood and “vanish into Christ.” If the other students realized that Joseph shared more with the black boy than language…
Their lives were ruled by the bells, and there were few times during the day when the students were permitted to speak, so Joseph could prepare. When the African approached him between classes, Joseph would have an excuse ready, or he would simply pretend he hadn’t heard.
He was keeping his distance for the African’s sake as well as his own, Joseph told himself.
Hadn’t their professors warned them that they must not form friendships?
They must surrender their love for their families and never again become attached to another human being.
They must remain aloof from this imperfect world.
All their attention must be focused on God.
Joseph first noticed the African’s absence in their music class. The boy’s voice had already deepened to a rich bass, and their polyphony was markedly poorer for its loss. Their choir-master told them the African had returned to Senegal and said no more about it.
Sacred music was Joseph’s favorite subject, but he could no longer concentrate.
When they filed into the chapel, he stared at the painting behind the altar with new eyes.
King Balthazar’s white turban and black skin stood out distinctly against the blue sky—he was the only one of the Magi not yet kneeling before Virgin and Child.
Had he done this, Joseph wondered? Had the African left because of him?
What would happen to all the souls in Senegal that the boy would have saved?
Hadn’t Joseph doubted his own decision to come here?
Those first terrible nights, hadn’t he lain awake in the cold dark, fighting back tears and feeling as though the loneliness would drown him?
He might have been kind to another lonely soul. Instead, he’d been selfish.
Joseph had known seminarians lived liked monks, but he hadn’t understood what that meant.
At the College of the Propaganda, they ate in silence while the older seminarians practiced homilies.
Some were interesting. Others seemed interminable.
During the silences, the Priests and students communicated through simple hand signs.
Joseph longed to teach his classmates how to truly talk with their hands.
Then he reminded himself that such desires—to circumvent the rules, to form a bond with the other boys—only showed his weakness.
With his teachers and classmates, Joseph explored every permitted corner of St. Peter’s and the Vatican Palaces, and he admired a thousand other marvels of stone, paint, and mosaic.
But his favorite place in Rome was a small convent church not far from the seminary, unassuming outside but so ornate within: Santa Maria della Vittoria, consecrated to Our Lady of Victory.
In the vault over the nave, the Queen of Heaven vanquished Heresy.
Holy Mary, give me victory over doubt, Joseph begged her on his knees.
Blessed Virgin, give me victory over temptation.
Somehow she made him feel closer to his own mother, who remained in his prayers every day.
No matter how hard Joseph tried, he could not conquer his affection for his mother.
In addition to the high altar, Santa Maria della Vittoria possessed eight side-chapels.
For the altar-piece of the Cornaro Chapel, Bernini had depicted the Transverberation of Saint Teresa of ávila.
Large as life, at once fluid and frozen, this magnificent sculpture was the reason Joseph returned to Santa Maria della Vittoria.
Only Bernini could make marble shudder and float.
Joseph wished he could witness this miracle every day.
Instead, he had to wait several months between visits, which made every moment more precious.
Seminarians weren’t permitted to leave the college alone, and Joseph’s walking companions didn’t share his fondness for Saint Teresa.
One student dared to criticize Bernini: “That nun is far too young and beautiful. When she experienced this vision, Saint Teresa was nearly fifty. The angel’s instrument of Divine Love should be a spear, not an arrow; and both should be ‘afire.’”
“But the other nuns who witnessed Teresa’s death reported that it was equally miraculous,” Joseph argued.
“They said she became young again. I think Bernini is combining that moment with her Transverberation.” The sculptor had captured Teresa’s soul, her “mystical union” with Christ. Teresa had died not of infirmity but of love—she had perished in ecstasy.
Sometimes, Joseph’s meditations at the chapel were interrupted by visitors with even less respect for Bernini’s genius.
Two separate men had peered into the altar niche and sniggered at Saint Teresa and her angel.
Once, a grey-haired woman had glanced at the statue with disapproval, at Joseph with censure, and then scurried from the church.
He didn’t understand why. Was it because Bernini had sculpted a nipple on the young angel, where his robe fluttered low?
He did look somewhat pagan; that smiling face surrounded by curls seemed more appropriate for a faun.
The visitors could not find anything indecent about Saint Teresa herself.
The nun was so swaddled in her habit that only her feet, hands, and face were uncovered.
In-between, she hardly seemed to possess a body at all, or at least it had become weightless, her head back and mouth open in rapture.
Saint Teresa inspired him. Her own patron had been Saint Joseph, and Teresa even had tainted blood.
In her time and place, sixteenth-century Spain, that meant she was the granddaughter of a converso, a Jew who had converted to escape the Inquisition.
Teresa too had been tempted in her youth—again and again in her writings, she called herself a “broken vessel” and a “wretched worm.”
Yet no saint he knew had given herself so completely to God.
Teresa wished she were all tongues, so that every part of her could praise the Lord.
How He rewarded her, what visions He granted her: of Hell, yes, but also of Heaven.
What must it be like to experience such ecstasy, to be freed from your body and find union with Someone greater?
Saint Teresa had made herself so empty, so open to God’s love, she had actually levitated.
In Bernini’s sculpture, Saint Teresa seemed like a bridge between Heaven and Earth, just as a Priest was supposed to be.
She hovered behind the rail and above the altar of the chapel.
Joseph longed to reach out to her—to touch that exquisitely shaped bare foot.
What might such contact transmit, what glimpse of the divine like a lightning bolt through his soul?
In the streets of Rome, Joseph’s thoughts were rarely directed toward Heaven.
His explorations of the city became gauntlets to run, tests he always failed.
The College of the Propaganda bordered the Piazza di Spagna, and his walking companions frequently wanted to climb the Spanish Steps.
Joseph dissuaded them whenever he could.
Perhaps the other seminarians could pass that way without sinning, but Joseph could not.
On that wide sweep of steps lurked pairs of lovers and beautiful models hoping to catch the eyes of artists.
Joseph met thousands of pilgrims come to this center of Christendom.
He would direct the visitors to St. Peter’s Square, St. John Lateran, or St. Paul Outside-the-Walls.
The husbands and fathers would pretend they hadn’t needed any help, while the daughters and mothers would smile with relief and bless Joseph.
The mother would pat Joseph’s hand and tell him he would make a fine Priest. But he would know the truth: he hadn’t offered to walk with them because their destination was close or because he was going that way already—he had lingered because the daughter was pretty.