Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea
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saying of Dmitri from The Brothers Karamazov
“I don’t want millions, but only an answer to life’s questions.”
I mentioned this quotation to Father Ambrose and he told me
that I already seemed to be a philosopher with all my questions.
I,1.7 Father Anthony and the Vital
Father Anthony was both my confessor and my science teacher.
As freshmen he introduced us to chemistry, physics, and biology.
We put water in a container and after a few days looked at
a bit of it under the microscope and pretty soon bacteria began
to appear and after a couple of weeks it was loaded with many
kinds of little swimming critters visible only with the microscope.
We would remember forever how quickly germs could multiply
in water or any sort of unrefrigerated thing such as meat.
We were each growing rapidly and he kept a record of
each of our growth in weight, height, leg length, and even
the size of our muscles when we flexed our biceps, and we
each went individually to the laboratory for these measurements.
One day as he was measuring the inside of my leg his finger
touched my testicles and he asked me if I was missing one.
I asked him what he was talking about and he told me that
one of them felt diminished and I said to him: “I wonder why?”
He asked me if I ever played with myself and he said that
masturbation could momentarily cause the testicles to shrink.
I said that I had recently played with myself and he said
that I should confess that and break the sinful habit.
I told him how in the seventh grade some eighth-grade boys
had told me about it and I tried it and occasionally continued.
He explained to me how just thinking about a girl sexually
or how just touching myself for the pleasure of it was a venial
sin but ejaculation was a mortal sin and I should not
go to communion until I confessed it and amended not to repeat.
He did help me to become honest and to try to stop my self-abuse.
I did get the sin down to a few times a year and he told me
that there was a relation between my lust and my anger.
I never could understand what he meant but I tried to move
from self-abuse to self-realization and to increase my vitality.
I,1.8 Father Louis and the Physical
When I was a first-year student in grade nine and the minor
and major seminarians were still together in one building
the three administrators were Fathers Bernard, Ambrose, and Louis.
Father Bernard, the rector, primarily concentrated on the spiritual.
Father Ambrose, the vice rector, concentrated on the intellectual.
Father Louis, the prefect of discipline, concentrated on the physical.
He was very convinced that a strong mind in a healthy body
was essential if one were to live a long, happy, and productive life.
His conviction was convincing to us and each year our physical
exercises became more pleasant, significant, and deeply habitual.
Down by the football field there were two hardly used tennis courts.
Father Louis had some tennis rackets and said we could use them
whenever we wanted and he taught a few of us how to serve,
hit backhands, forehands, and to keep score and he said
that learning hand-eye coordination was valuable for any sport.
I believed him and saw a relation between the arts of fly-fishing,
wing-shooting, and tennis playing and I looked forward to more tennis.
However, as the prefect of discipline, Father Louis
not only got us into the physical exercises of sports
but we also did physical work especially on many Saturdays.
The monks had a very large farm with acres of hops below
the hill and various kinds of orchards and even a pig farm.
Brother Fidelis, a saintly little monk with a white beard,
took care of the pigs for years and we liked to help him.
The fathers all spoke of him with great praise for his life
of obviously sweet prayer and work and we were told how
he prayed all the time as he was taking care of his dear pigs.
In the seminary there was the activity of working on “The Chain
Gang.” If someone broke a rule Father Louis would assign him
to a Saturday morning of digging a ditch, or shoveling snow,
or some fairly strenuous type of hard, physical labor.
I,1.9 From Money—to Death—to Sex—to Religion
My father had always stressed that each of his five children
should get a college education so that we could get good jobs
and have happy lives without all the difficulties he suffered.
He made sure that we each did well in grade school and that
we worked and saved our money to pay for our college tuition.
But when I decided to become a priest the motive of money
was put into a new perspective and was no longer a priority.
Instead I began to move into the realm of the three great secret things.
Sex, death, and religion became more and more the center of my life.
Religion comes from the verb ligare, which means to bind
and re-, which means again, so religion is a binding of oneself
to God over and over again in the spiritual, intellectual,
emotional, and physical ways that made up our seminary life.
Prayer was the primary way in which we kept binding ourselves
to God again and again and prayer is rooted in a love that is
stronger than death, which my father learned when his father died.
With his mother and sisters he went through the mourning process
in a successful way by learning how to pray for his father
and his family by asking his father to pray for them.
He learned to converse with his guardian angel and Mary
the Mother of God and Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit.
When I was five he taught me to do the same and I prayed
especially with my mother as she too bound herself to God
over and over again in her prayer and by all that she did.
In