Authors: John Cornwell
L
YING AWAKE BEFORE
dawn on Maundy Thursday I felt sick to the heart at the thought that Satan could have power over a person irrespective of the state of their grace and holiness. The retreat priest had said that Satan could not permanently harm a person thus possessed; but that seemed to me a small consolation.
The day at last dawned pale and cold. After the Mass of the Last Supper, and for the rest of the retreat, we were allowed to
walk in the gardens in front of the old hall and along the pathways around the church, a privilege intended to aid our meditations. There were crocuses appearing in the borders and timid shoots of daffodils on the margins of the lawns. Sitting by the statue of the Virgin I read the book I had chosen for my retreat reading, Archbishop Goodier’s account of the Passion and Death of Jesus. I felt that I was reliving, vividly, immediately, the Passion of Jesus through the liturgy and in my imagination. I could see Jesus in his suffering and feel his presence.
The sound of a rattle echoing inside and outside the buildings (bells, a sign of celebration, would not be rung now until the Mass on Saturday night) announced that it was time to return to the church for the Passionist’s first homily of the day. He kept us waiting for some time before he glided up the aisle. His text, taken from the day’s Mass, the Mass of the Last Supper, was: ‘Whosever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.’ The priest said that he wanted to encourage us that day to review, year by year, all the sins of our past life from the dawning of our age of reason to this very day when Holy Mother Church remembers throughout the world those sinners who have come back to God.
After the retreat father’s homily I walked to and fro on the driveway behind the church where I could be alone. I could see the distant hills beyond the valley and hear the wind in the pine trees at the top of the bank known as Peggy’s Wood. A cold sun shone in the white sky. I was growing more and more agitated as I attempted to recall the principal sins of the whole of my life. The peace of mind gained during Mass, after the terrors of satanic possession before dawn, had been replaced by a compulsion to question my confession with Father Hemming in Wanstead after Christmas. Had I been strictly truthful with him about the event in the early hours of Christmas morning? Had I not, in fact, deliberately indulged in impure
thoughts? Had I not touched myself deliberately? Had I tried to give Father Hemming the impression that I was only semiconscious? Did this not mean that my confession was wilfully false? And did this not mean that all my Holy Communions had been sacrilegious ever since? ‘Whosever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.’ As I stalked up and down the pathway in a state of mounting anxiety, my stomach was churning.
At the priest’s homily that afternoon he said nothing to allay my mental torment. He talked of the danger of being smug about the state of our souls, and of presuming that we were in a ‘state of grace’ when we might well be headed for hell. He told the story of Thomas à Kempis, the ‘supposedly saintly’ author of
The Imitation of Christ.
This man, said the priest, famous throughout the history of the Christian Church for his spiritual guidance, was considered for many years a candidate for sainthood. It was common, he went on, to exhume a candidate for sainthood in order to establish whether the corpse was incorrupt. To the dismay of the onlookers, Thomas à Kempis’s corpse was found to be contorted as if he had died in terrible agony. It was obvious that he had been buried alive and had died in a frenzied attempt to claw his way from the grave. ‘This supposedly holy man,’ he said, ‘most likely died in despair.’ His beatification process was dropped and had never been resumed. ‘If I tell you this, dear young brothers in Jesus Christ, it is to be ever mindful of the sin of presumption.’
After meditation, in which my brain raged with the certainty that I was damned and destined to spend eternity in Hell, I developed a sharp headache over my right eye. I hastened to the room where the retreat father was hearing confessions. I stood outside for what seemed an age. Eventually the bell rang down in the cloister for tea.
The door opened and a boy came out. The priest was about to follow him. I stood before him as if to block his way. He
said: ‘You are troubled, young man…Why don’t you come in.’
We sat opposite each other in rose-coloured armchairs. I began to cry, holding my painful head and rocking to and fro. The priest sat looking at me impassively.
‘Well, I can’t help,’ he said, ‘unless you tell me what’s wrong.’
So it gushed out. The Christmas morning, my uncertainties, Father Hemming, my fear of being in a state of mortal sin.
He took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe. ‘Dry your eyes!’ he said curtly.
As I sat trying not to cry, he launched into a lecture on masturbation, wet dreams, intentional acts and sexual fantasies. He used a lot of long, unfamiliar words about bad habits of ‘concupiscence’, and the vicious circle whereby sexual excitement becomes an irresistible compulsion if early restraint has not been achieved. Wet dreams, or what he called ‘nocturnal emissions’, were natural in a boy, he said, perhaps every ten days, or even more often. Their frequency, he said, could be reduced by avoiding deliberate indulgence in sexual thoughts and images during waking hours, abstinence from rich food in the evening, or vigorous exercise in the fresh air. He said: ‘When the emission has occurred in the half-waking state it is not a mortal sin. But if you wake up it would be a mortal sin to take pleasure in it or to provoke it further.’
At this point, I was most alert. For he had now touched on the subject that was agonising me most: my culpability on Christmas morning. But I quickly lost him. Was I stupid, I thought, or was this business of masturbation, nocturnal emissions, culpability and mortal sin, an inextricable maze in which the soul could wander forever lost?
I asked: ‘Father, what if I’m in a state of doubt about whether I was awake or not?’
‘Why then, where there is doubt as to sin committed, one must judge by presumptions.’
I was baffled. What could that possibly mean? ‘Presumptions!’
And what had it to do with the ‘presumption’ of the man who had been condemned to hell? Why was this matter of sin and damnation so complicated, shrouded in ambiguities? But he had already launched into a lecture on how ‘illicit’ sexual acts could become an obsession, taking over our entire bodies; how this domination could begin remotely, in small acts, such as taking pleasure in a picture or the sight of a particular person, leading to a nocturnal emission. In other words, while we were not responsible for acts performed in our sleep, or ‘twilight’ state, we might well be responsible for them as a result of something we had done, or failed to do, during our waking hours. It was these waking
causes
, he said, ‘that would become a grave sin, if performed in full knowledge of their outcome.’
Throughout his lecture I had a growing urge to tell him about the man at South Kensington. Why did priests speak of sin, I wondered, only as a personal fault of the penitent rather than things done to the penitent? But he gave me no opportunity to broach the matter.
‘Let’s be practical,’ he said cheerfully at last. He was going to presume that I had committed a mortal sin on Christmas morning, and that I had not been honest with Father Hemming, which amounted to a second mortal sin – making all my Communions sacrilegious ever since. He would now give me absolution for everything in so far as it was culpable. For the future, however, I should be extra vigilant for the
causes
of nocturnal emissions.
‘Practice avoidance of pleasurable tastes, and sights and sounds to build up your spiritual stamina,’ he said brightly. ‘Now in your youth is the time to become an athlete in purity.’
He asked me to be truly sorry for all the sins of my past life, and gave as a penance five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. Then he gave me absolution. As he finished he said: ‘You must place yourself in the safekeeping of Mary, our Mother and our refuge.’
When I got to the refectory the plates had been cleared and I had missed afternoon tea. My headache had vanished, my stomach was more settled, I knew that Jesus loved me truly. But I was conscious of a deeper anxiety that I could not put into words. The thought that I had been in a state of mortal sin all through the term left me feeling spiritually and emotionally numb, as if I was sleepwalking. And the priest had planted the seed of an idea in my mind that could grow, I felt, into something that I dared not think about. I felt a hint of that old terror of ‘he who wanders through the world for the
ruin
of souls.’ I went out into the cold air of Little Bounds, Goodier’s book on Christ’s passion under my arm, trying not to think.
We were allowed on Maundy Thursday to stay up late in order to visit the Blessed Sacrament which was kept in ‘repose’ in the Lady chapel. The high altar was stripped of its altar cloths and candlesticks; the tabernacle doors were wide open, signifying the coming death of Christ. The presence of Jesus in the Lady chapel signified the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.
I spent four hours in the chapel reading Goodier, sometimes gazing up at the altar where the real presence of Jesus Christ resided within a chalice beneath a piece of gold cloth. I was imagining myself among the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane: I could see Jesus sweating blood in his agony. How was it, I wondered, that I had never realised the savagely painful nature of seeking true holiness. How was it that I had not understood that I must make supreme sacrifices to follow him: even to the point of death. I would become an athlete for Jesus. At midnight, Father Doran appeared in a cope and took away the Blessed Sacrament to hide it within the sacristy. The church was now empty of the presence of Jesus in memory of his death.
T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, Good Friday, was a fast day. We were given only bread and tea for breakfast. A cold silent stillness descended on the valley and college grounds. In the course of the long morning, punctuated by the sound of the rattle, the retreat father gave two homilies. He no longer concentrated on our sins, and the penalties for them, but on the terrible price Jesus had paid for our salvation.
The liturgy of the day was long and sombre. Gathering in the stripped sanctuary, the celebrants sang in Gregorian chant the entire account of the Passion by St John. The choir sang the words of the crowds to a setting of Victoria. When the celebrant sang: ‘
Ecce Rex vester
,’ ‘Behold your King,’ the choir responded: ‘
Tolle, tolle, crucifige eum
,’ ‘Away with him. Away with him. Crucify him.’
After this a splinter of what was claimed to be the actual wood of the original cross was venerated in a gold reliquarium. We queued in the aisle to kiss the object, while the choir sang a polyphonic setting of the Lamentations: ‘My people what have I done to Thee.’
The college fell silent again as we continued to fast and to pray and read in private. At the evening homily the Passionist took us through the story of the crucifixion, asking us to smell the sweat and blood of our saviour, to hear the sound of the nails being hammered in, to see his writhing body, taste the vinegar offered on a sponge, and feel the excruciating pain of crucifixion.
That night as I lay in bed looking up at the starless night, the full significance of what the priest had said to me on Maundy Thursday at last dawned on me. I allowed myself to ponder it, and I became engulfed with misery, with despair. Even as I lay there, my penis, to my shock and dismay, was
growing hard and erect. Was it possible that, as the priest had warned, every thought, word and deed, every sound, smell, taste, feeling and sight in the world, could prompt a feeling that would lead to ‘irregular motions of the flesh’, and must I seek out these ‘causes’ and eradicate them, however innocent they were? Taking the cord from my pyjamas I tied my wrists and put the slack around the back of my neck to prevent my hands straying downwards while I slept. My last thoughts were of Our Lady – Our Mother and our refuge.
H
OLY SATURDAY
, I awoke confused at first as to why my hands were tied. Then I remembered. Untying the knots, I prayed to my Guardian Angel. I tried to stop thinking about the priest’s terrible counsel. Surely, I thought, the power of God’s grace existed to keep me safe from sin. I got up and dressed, trying valiantly to be confident in Mary and Jesus.
As I walked in the gardens after breakfast (there was no morning Mass on Good Friday), it occurred to me that the salvation of my soul might depend upon a monastic regime of silence, self-denial and constant prayer, for the rest of my life. Was this not my true vocation? Should I not sacrifice all to seek the face of God and earn heaven?
There were many boys walking along the gravel paths at the front of the house; so I decided to make my way through Little Bounds to Upper Bounds, which appeared to be deserted. I took out my rosary and walked along the pathway above the cinder yard where there was a herbaceous border and a low stone wall. I had gone only a few paces when I heard voices. Sitting on the wall, partly obscured by a bush, I saw Charles; next to him was Bursley. They looked at me, then looked at
each other. Charles smiled and raised an eyebrow. I had caught them breaking the retreat rule of silence. The growing prig in me pitied them for rejecting the spiritual opportunities of the reatreat but, again, I felt a brief pang of jealousy for Bursley.
That night many of us stayed up late, meditating in church or reading in the library until the rattle summoned us for the service of the Easter Vigil. We gathered outside the church where a brazier roared, shedding clouds of sparks in the night wind. We processed up the aisle holding our Easter candles, singing higher and higher: ‘
Lumen Christi: Deo Gratias!
’ ‘Light of Christ. Thanks be to God.’ Finally the Mass of the Vigil of Easter began. The bells were rung, the palls taken away from the statues, and the choir sang a Pallestrina setting of the Gloria. After Mass we gathered to eat sandwiches and milk in the refectory; we were allowed to talk and most of us were making up for the four days we had remained silent. But I went to bed with a dark shadow over my Easter happiness.