Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea
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at the time of mother’s birthday
on September 6, Father Heeren came to our house for dinner.
After dinner he would begin the 500-mile drive to take me
to Mt. Angel, near Portland Oregon, where I would enter
the Minor Seminary with the Benedictine Monks where for
the next six years I would begin my studies to be a priest.
As we sat there for dinner in our humble little kitchen
daddy knew that mother and Father Heeren greatly loved each other
in an agape that sublimated affection, friendship, and eros.
And he knew that mother could think of nothing better for me
than that I become a priest like the priests she had come to know.
He could see how I had identified with my mother’s values
and how I had received a vocation to become a priest and
to serve God and others by greatly admiring Father Heeren.
So we drove a third of the way, stayed at a motel, and
arrived at Mt. Angel in the middle of the day on Monday.
Fr. Heeren who had grown up in Ireland had gone to
the Minor Seminary there and then he came to Mt. Angel
when he decided to be a priest for the Diocese of Boise, Idaho.
He knew Mt. Angel and the monks very well and he and
Father Bernard, who was rector of the seminary, had been classmates.
As we drove, Father Heeren told me about the Benedictine Monks.
He said that their motto was “Ora et Labora” and with them
I would learn “to work and to pray” and most of all I noticed
the spiritual atmosphere of the monastery and the seminary,
which at one time had been sacred to the Indians as Topalamaho.
I was familiar with the world of the spirit since my father
lost his father to that world when he was five and my mother’s
mother and father both learned of it when they lost a parent when young.
I,1.2 Our alma mater’s Intellectual Nourishing
As we drove up the hill a flood of feelings came over Father Heeren.
He pointed out to me the Stations of the Cross there among the trees.
Father Heeren was coming home to his nourishing mother whom
he loved so much and he was happy and proud to be bringing me.
We parked in front of the seminary, went in and found Father Bernard
who was so glad to see Father Heeren and so welcoming to me.
We were taken to the first- and second-year dormitory with my bags.
Father Heeren said goodbye to me, went with Father Bernard, and I
would not see him again until I went home for Christmas vacation.
From day one we got into the routine of seminary life arising
as 5:30 a.m. each morning and going to bed each night at 9:30 p.m.
We had the great silence from 7:10 each evening until
breakfast the next morning and we did not even look at each other.
There were many spiritual exercises beginning with daily Mass
each morning in the crypt where we would receive holy communion.
Then there was the sung Mass after breakfast with the monks.
During the day we recited Lauds, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline.
We had spiritual reading each day before lunch and Father Bernard
gave us a spiritual talk five days a week in the evening.
But the intellectual life was just as important as the spiritual life
in terms of the time we spent in classes and in the study hall.
In our freshman year we had seven courses: Religion I, English I,
Latin I, General Science, World Civilization, Algebra I, and Chant I.
From Monday to Friday when we were not taking classes and during
the evening we had study hall and would work on our assignments.
Learning all the vocabulary and the grammar for our Latin class
was the most difficult task and it really trained our memory.
Father Louis was our first-year Latin teacher and learning grammar
helped us not only with English but with all the liberal arts
of reading, writing, speaking, and listening because we came
to reflect upon all the grammatical ways of our language.
I,1.3 Our alma mater’s Vital Nourishing
“I came to give you life and to give it to you more abundantly.”
Those words of Jesus were the basis of our life at the Angel Mount.
Spiritual love, intellectual light, moral life, and physical logos
all fit together in such a way so as to contribute to each other.
Like tributaries of the same stream that contribute to living waters
theological, intellectual, moral, and physical virtues were forms
of excellence nourishing the fresh seeds in that seminary seedbed.
Those moral virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance
were very important for future priests for they would have to be
excellent examples of those virtues that their people might imitate them.
The exercise that was most focused on growth in moral virtue
was our practice of weekly confession with our own confessor.
The virtue of temperance or self-control was central to confession.
Week after week I would tend to confess the same vices or sins,
of getting angry, swearing, or indulging in uncharitable thoughts,
words, or deeds and I just did not have consistent self-control .
We learned of a self-realization ethic that we could be happy
if we were virtuous for virtues are means to happiness.
This self-realization ethics for seminarians also aimed at
an other-realization ethics for priests loved as good shepherds
attempting to bring their flock to a healthy, happy, holy life.
We had to grow in vitality that we might help others do the same.
People tend to be so incompatible that they cannot be happy
and be at peace together and living closely with one another brought
many opportunities for disgust at each other’s strange tastes.
We were often told about the battle between the flesh and the spirit
in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians in which he wrote:
You cannot belong to Christ Jesus
unless you crucify
all self-indulgent passions and desires.
We