Chapter 49 #3
The monster passed him carrying a plate of cornbread.
They sat down to supper. Wallace blessed the meal. Andrew began telling his mother and brothers about his day. Joseph had little appetite.
Wallace noticed. “If I might venture a guess, Joseph: you’re imagining everlasting hellfire?”
Joseph didn’t need to answer.
“Remember, Joseph: it is not the Church that will decide who is saved and who is damned. Only God can do that.” He gazed at his concubine.
“What I feel for Sarah, what she feels for me, it is love. I cannot believe that offends God. What Saint Paul talks about in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, how we are nothing without love—the Church has forgotten that. It has become a ‘sounding brass’ and puffed itself up with rules that have little to do with God and everything to do with control. That’s what celibacy is about.
The Church tries to terrify us into submission; it claims we endanger our ministry and forfeit our souls if we fulfill the needs God Himself instilled in us.
One day, Joseph, all the false trappings will fall away, and only the perfection of God will remain.
If we are wise, if we listen to Him alone, we can glimpse that perfection here on Earth.
‘He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is love.’”
That was the First Epistle of John.
“I know what you’ve been taught: that if a man loves a woman, ‘his heart is divided,’ that only ‘he who is free from the conjugal bonds’ can belong to God.
” Wallace was quoting Saint Alphonsus. “But before I knew Sarah, my heart was considerably more divided than it is now. I was in far greater bondage to lust than I am to love. I spent hours and hours battling my attraction to women, punishing myself. Now, all of that wasted energy is fulfilled with Sarah or redirected into my ministry. My feelings for her strengthen me instead of exhausting me. I am a better Priest because of my family, not in spite of them. Being a husband to Sarah has made me a wiser confessor. Being a father to my sons has made me a wiser pastor. I was lost, alone in the darkness. But I have found my guiding stars.”
After supper, George and Andrew played their violins. Already rubbing his eyes, James crawled into his father’s lap. Afterward, when Sarah tried to dislodge him, James clung to his father’s neck and murmured drowsy protests.
Wallace whispered: “Let him stay. I’ll carry him upstairs. Very soon, he’ll consider this unmanly and he won’t let either of us close enough to kiss him. ‘Now the time is most precious.’ Just hand me my breviary, would you, my love?”
Sarah smiled and relented, kissing both of them while she still could.
With his youngest child slumbering in his lap, Wallace read the Divine Office for the day—keeping one promise he’d made at Ordination, at least.
Seven and a half years ago, if Joseph had married Tessa instead of Holy Mother Church, they might have had a son like James.
Joseph’s bedchamber shared a wall with Wallace and Sarah’s room. Fortunately, as far as he could tell, they managed to restrain themselves that night. Perhaps they’d relinquished each other for Lent. He heard only companionable murmurs and once, muffled laughter.
The next morning was Sunday. Joseph suspected Wallace did not have permission from his superior to celebrate Mass in his home; but he did it anyway. He asked Joseph to assist. After silently begging God’s pardon, Joseph conceded.
As he fastened his amice, Wallace observed: “I see I have not yet convinced you. Allow me to play Devil’s Advocate, then. Even if I were in a state of mortal sin, remember that every Sacrament I administer remains valid. We have the authority of Saint Thomas Aquinas on that.”
They had the authority of Saint Alphonsus and Saint Teresa as well—though both of them shivered in terror for the soul of any Priest who so offended God.
“We defile the body of Christ whenever we approach the altar unworthily,” wrote Alphonsus.
The mere violet of Lent did not seem sufficient Penance. They should be wearing sackcloth.
Wallace interrupted: “We’re not meant to be sinless, Joseph. In his Epistle to the Hebrews, Saint Paul talks about how ‘every priest…can have compassion on them that are ignorant and that err: because he himself is beset with weakness.’ And surely you are familiar with the felix culpa paradox?”
The “happy fault,” the “blessed fall,” depending on how you translated the Latin. Reluctantly, Joseph nodded. Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Francis de Sales all discussed it. Each Easter eve, in every Catholic church across the world, a Deacon or Priest sang the paradox aloud:
O truly necessary sin of Adam, which has been blotted out by the death of Christ!
O felix culpa, which has merited so great a Redeemer!
“Indulge me, please,” Wallace urged. “Pretend I am one of your students: Why did God place the Tree of Knowledge in Paradise? Didn’t He know Adam would eat the forbidden fruit?”
Joseph stared down at his stole. Like most of his vestments, it had a cross embroidered at its center.
Against the violet of Penance, the golden cross was particularly striking.
“Of course God knew. But if mankind had never fallen, Christ would never have died for us; and if Christ had never died for us, we would never have understood the depth of God’s grace and His love. ”
“In the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas: ‘God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom.’” Wallace donned his chasuble. “Purity is not perfection, Joseph.”
After they had broken their fast, Wallace and his eldest son saddled Prince.
When his things were packed and Joseph had mounted, Wallace patted the horse’s neck and smiled up at him.
“I cannot tell you how or when, in your situation or in mine; but I can tell you this, Joseph: ‘Sin is necessary, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’”
Joseph thought he’d heard those words before, or part of them. He did not remember “Sin is necessary.” “Who are you quoting now?”
“God”—Wallace grinned—“by way of Mother Juliana of Norwich. She was a fourteenth-century anchorite and mystic.” He held up his index finger.
“Grant me one minute longer.” Wallace dashed up the porch steps and disappeared into the house.
When he emerged again, he carried a slender, leather-bound volume.
Wallace handed it up to Joseph, who opened the cover and read: Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love: Shewed to a Devout Servant of our Lord.
“‘All shall be well’ is part of Juliana’s Thirteenth Revelation. ”
Thirteen seemed appropriate.
“Keep it, please. Something to remember us by.”
As if Joseph could ever forget.