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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK30 Jack Fritscher%u201cWhen I was a chaplain in the Second World War, a lot of the young Marines, they were out for the first time. Up at the front and plenty scared. They came up to me and couldn%u2019t say anything. Maybe looked at me kind of funny and started to cry.%u201cMen, everybody gets lonesome for the good things. Anybody here thinks he%u2019s not going to miss his ma%u2019s cooking, and his own room, and all his friends is wrong. If not tonight, you wait a few days. I guarantee it. Because you miss your folks is no sign you haven%u2019t got a vocation. It%u2019s only God testing your vocation to see how much of a man you are and if you can take it. One way or another you%u2019ve got to pay for your vocation.%u201cGo ahead and cry. Get it over with and make a prayer out of it. Don%u2019t any of you think of leaving because you%u2019re homesick. You come down and talk to me and we%u2019ll straighten it all out. I make appointments with anybody. There isn%u2019t anyone going to go home the first two weeks because he%u2019s a weak sister. Nossir. You%u2019ve got to take it.%u201cHear me good one more time. I don%u2019t say these things for money or to fill up the time while I wait for some civilian boat. You%u2019ve got to be men, manly men, especially nights here in the dormitory. There%u2019s rules of the Grand Silence to keep for the Christ you%u2019re to receive in Holy Communion the next morning. Don%u2019t be afraid to say extra prayers at night.%u201cMany%u2019s the night I%u2019ve walked through the seniors%u2019 dormitory and seen hands, precisely where hands should be, out on top of the blankets, the rosary wrapped tight around the fingers, and the man there asleep on his rack. %u201cA priest should have a tender love for God%u2019s mother because she is the mother of priests and therefore your mother because you are future priests.%u201dI thought of Annie Laurie halfway home in a motel, with Dad and Thommy, and lost all track of what Father Gunn was saying. I thought of our car and our house on a street of Chinese elms and my old school, and Sister Mary Agnes, and my dog, Brownie, who was almost ten years old, because my dad had given her to me before I went to kindergarten.I knew my family was gone. Tomorrow they%u2019d be even farther from me than tonight. Homesickness sat on my chest like some panicky choking thing and pressed a single syllable, uh, from up behind my mouth, and my eyes crinkled. I wanted to cry but would not.The whooshing of Father Gunn%u2019s cassock stopped. He blessed us with his night blessing and was gone. Inside our dim, vaulted dormitory high up on the fourth floor, I was left to hear in the Grand Silence the world%u2019s music from way across the grounds, a miracle from the roadhouse a mile