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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 65The Lord would take me.Oh Lord, do take me. My life. My vocation. Wreck me. Break me anew in You. Bring me close to You and Your Virgin Mother and pronounce me a priest forever. To hold You in my hands, having said the consecrating words, while the world crashes in its own violent sins around us. To move out through the streets, to the sick and to the sinners, carrying You in my heart. Oh God. Jesus God. Let the priests themselves deny me the way to You. I%u2019ll only crawl onward on hands and knees to Your altar rail. Crucify me with fewer words than You spoke crucified. Let me will nothing but what You will. Let my will be Your will or Your will be my will%u2014or however it goes. See, Lord, I can make jokes with You and talk to You as my friend and brother. You are all I have. My whole family is You. Your souls must be my children because I am not like other men. Let me suffer the fearful violence of Your life in my life. And, Lord, the one thing, oh no, the only thing I ask is You deliver me safe from the awful temporal possibilities of temptations. I%u2019m afraid to be too free. I might change or be changed and lose You. So if anything should ever go wrong, I don%u2019t, if I should commit a serious sin and be about to die, I beg You to remember, don%u2019t want, that this once, this actual moment, I loved You intensely, this pleasure, with all my heart and soul and never really meant to take my heart and soul away. Save me, Lord, from the fires of hell. Oh, omigod, take me, Lord. Take me now into Your changelessness.In the phosphorescent dark, the sanctuary lamp flickering light without heat, real as anything, breathless, I slipped down onto the pew, halfkneeling, half-sitting, hardly breathing, excited, gasping for air, panting, that the whirlwind of grace had passed, leaving me sated and triste-ful, a mystic in the Mystical Body of Christ.Outside the chapel windows the soft urgent cry of doves soothed me against the ruzzabuzza praying of other seminarians entering and exiting from the ten Confessionals.When the supper bell rang in the church, I walked down the unheated terrazzo stairs to the refectory vowing to speak no uncharitable words to anyone at the table, under penalty of eating no dessert in reparation.March 15, 1957 The Ides of MarchEight of us boys sat at each table, three to a side, a single at both ends. Every day a different boy started the big plastic bowls of steaming food. Gunn had regulated the drill after a feud at one of the tables grew to such