Page 234 - What They Did to the Kid

222 Jack Fritscher

very instant the sacrament of the priesthood would mark my own
soul indelibly.
Once a priest, always a priest! A priest forever! Nothing more
could Rector Karg do about it.
But my joy slipped. Even perfect ritual cannot deliver perfect
moments. I suddenly felt sorry for the people down below, for the
mother or father who was shoved off to the side or behind a pillar
while I could see so well. Rector Karg threatened my path to this
day. Always in awe of my vocation itself, I was suddenly overpowered
by him.
Our whole seminary year was built up to this supremely meta-
physical moment when boys became priests who could conjure
Christ’s body and blood and soul and divinity under the appear-
ance of bread and wine. My blood flushed with anger. I felt simply,
with all my clothes on, high in the choir loft above all those people,
naked. I felt stripped, even under my wool cassock, naked, nude as
a sculptor’s model who, locked and tensed into position, remains
totally, separately, existentially himself despite the artist’s devouring
eye, despite the brush-brush of charcoal sketches, despite the soft
slap of hands laid on clay to give it shape.
My very desire for the crystalline purity of the priesthood caused
an unaccustomed hardness in me. Perfume rose on the warm air.
No, my God, I said calmly, I want no pleasure from this natural
feeling that will go away if I distract myself. I concentrated on sing-
ing our rendition of the hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus, Come, Creator
Spirit.” My body was betraying my soul, so I stepped outside my
body. Everything, I realized is not either-or. Some things are plain
neutral. I wanted nothing: not pleasure, not indistinct desire. Noth-
ing in the world could matter. Not even the world. No one could get
in my way. Not even Rector Karg. I stepped fully into my vocation.
I could will my way over anything, even the hard physical joy in the
very idea of the priesthood.
In the faraway movie down in the sanctuary, the sixteen new
priests in their new robes moved about con-celebrating the mass
with the bishop. A thrill passed through my soul, but I would not
be seduced by spiritual emotion any more than by physical pleasure.

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