Joseph wished he could witness this miracle every day. Instead, he had to wait several months between visits, which made every moment more precious. Seminarians weren’t permitted to leave the college alone, and Joseph’s walking companions didn’t share hisfondness for Saint Teresa. One student dared to criticize Bernini: “That nun is far too young and beautiful. When she experienced this vision, Saint Teresa was nearly fifty. The angel’s instrument of Divine Love should be a spear, not an arrow; and both should be ‘afire.’”
“But the other nuns who witnessed Teresa’s death reported that it was equally miraculous,” Joseph argued. “They said she became young again. I think Bernini is combining that moment with her Transverberation.” The sculptor had captured Teresa’ssoul, her “mystical union” with Christ. Teresa had died not of infirmity but of love—she had perished in ecstasy.
Sometimes, Joseph’s meditations at the chapel were interrupted by visitors with even less respect for Bernini’s genius. Two separate men had peered into the altar niche andsniggeredat Saint Teresa and her angel. Once, a grey-haired woman had glanced at the statue with disapproval, at Joseph with censure, and then scurried from the church.
He didn’t understand why. Was it because Bernini had sculpted a nipple on the young angel, where his robe fluttered low? He did look somewhat pagan; that smiling face surrounded by curls seemed more appropriate for a faun. The visitors could not find anything indecent about Saint Teresa herself. The nun was so swaddled in her habit that only her feet, hands, and face were uncovered. In-between, she hardly seemed to possess a body at all, or at least it had become weightless, her head back and mouth open in rapture.
Saint Teresa inspired him. Her own patron had been Saint Joseph, and Teresa even had tainted blood. In her time and place, sixteenth-century Spain, that meant she was the granddaughter of aconverso, a Jew who had converted to escape the Inquisition. Teresa too had been tempted in her youth—again and again in her writings, she called herself a “broken vessel” and a “wretched worm.”
Yet no saint he knew had given herself so completely to God. Teresa wished she were all tongues, so that every part of her could praise the Lord. How He rewarded her, what visions He granted her: of Hell, yes, but also of Heaven. What must it be like to experience such ecstasy, to be freed from your body and find union withSomeone greater? Saint Teresa had made herself so empty, so open to God’s love, she had actually levitated.
In Bernini’s sculpture, Saint Teresa seemed like a bridge between Heaven and Earth, just as a Priest was supposed to be. She hovered behind the rail and above the altar of the chapel. Joseph longed to reach out to her—to touch that exquisitely shaped bare foot. What might such contact transmit, what glimpse of the divine like a lightning bolt through his soul?
In the streets of Rome, Joseph’s thoughts were rarely directed toward Heaven. His explorations of the city became gauntlets to run, tests he always failed. The College of the Propaganda bordered the Piazza di Spagna, and his walking companions frequently wanted to climb the Spanish Steps. Joseph dissuaded them whenever he could. Perhaps the other seminarians could pass that way without sinning, but Joseph could not. On that wide sweep of steps lurked pairs of lovers and beautiful models hoping to catch the eyes of artists.
Joseph met thousands of pilgrims come to this center of Christendom. He would direct the visitors to St. Peter’s Square, St. John Lateran, or St. Paul Outside-the-Walls. The husbands and fathers would pretend they hadn’t needed any help, while the daughters and mothers would smile with relief and bless Joseph. The mother would pat Joseph’s hand and tell him he would make a fine Priest. But he would know the truth: he hadn’t offered to walk with them because their destination was close or because he was going that way already—he had lingered because the daughter was pretty.
More than once, a girl had leaned close and confided, “We would have beenlostwithout you!” His pride—and another part of him—would swell at such feminine attention. Before Joseph could stop himself, he would imagine how that flushed cheek might feel beneath his fingertips, even what a few opened buttons might reveal. He could not control these thoughts any more than he could keep his voice from becoming baritone, like his father’s.
Whenever he could, Joseph visited the Scala Sancta to do Penance. The antithesis of the Spanish Steps, the Holy Stairs had been brought from Jerusalem by Saint Helena. His head bowed inshame while he climbed the twenty-eight marble stairs on his knees, Joseph would rememberhisHélène. He must imagine that each of those lovely pilgrims was his sister.
Joseph would meditate on Christ’s Passion, how He had ascended these very steps on the way to His terrible death for Joseph’s sins. Christ had been a man once too; he had had a?—
He had also been tempted, but He remained pure. When Joseph’s knees started aching, he would remind himself what he purchased with this pain: nine years’ indulgence for every step he climbed.
He spent only a few minutes in the company of those pilgrims. He would have many more occasions to sin against female parishioners. He’d been an arrogant fool to believe he could achieve purity. Not with this black blood coursing through his veins, the very color of sin. In one of Saint Teresa’s visions, when a demon appeared to her, he resembled “a horrible little negro.”
At seminary, they received the Sacrament of Penance face to face; he could not hide in the anonymity of a booth. Now Joseph’s confessional was often a garden. During the summers, to escape the heat in Rome, the students stayed at the Propaganda’s villa. His confessor, an elderly Tuscan named Father Verchese, had managed the grounds there for almost forty years. But with every passing day, the Priest’s arthritis made it more difficult for him to do the manual labor.
So Joseph became the old man’s hands, as he would soon become God’s. His confessor warned him to take utmost care and wear proper gloves. “To lose the use of my hands after a lifetime of service, that is one thing,” Father Verchese explained. “But ifyouwere to damage your hands, my son, you could never be ordained. Those hands will perform Sacraments. They must be without blemish.”
Joseph promised he would remember. But sometimes, when he was alone, he willfully disobeyed. He could not resist the temptation to remove the hot, restricting gloves and trace his fingertips up some tender shoot, across the satin petals of a blossom, or even through the richness of the earth.
At home, Henry had done the hard work in both their kitchen and ornamental gardens. Now, Joseph found he enjoyed teasing life from the soil. Even the way the labor drained him was a blessing. In time, perhaps he could work out his salvation and exhaust his lust by hauling water and carting manure. He could be a gardener in a monastery too—where he would be safe from women altogether, and they from him.
As he watched Joseph turning the soil, his confessor reminded him: “You attend the College of the Propaganda—for the Propagation of the Faith. Four years ago, when you accepted a place here, you agreed to become a missionary, not a monk.”
Joseph frowned at the disturbed earth. “Sometimes they grant dispensations, don’t they?” In a monastery, he could even change his name.
“My son, you must ask yourself: ‘Whydo I want to join an order?’ A monastery may be a fine hiding place, but cowardice is a sin. A desire to disappear into Christ is laudable. A desire simply to disappear is not.”
Joseph remained on his knees, listening to the trickle of the fountain behind them. “I can do a great deal of good in a cloister, with my prayers.”
“You can domoregood in the mission field, and you know it.” Father Verchese tapped his shoulder.
Though it was difficult with his gloves, Joseph accepted the mustard seeds from his confessor’s gnarled hand. He accepted the truth more slowly, as he sprinkled the seeds. One of his other professors concluded every class with the cry:“Souls are waiting!”Souls who wouldtrulybe lost without him.
“Didn’t you promise your Bishop you would return?”
Immediately Joseph felt the stab of guilt, and he nodded. He was here only because of His Lordship. Joseph could not betray him. But Bishop England did not have to battle black blood. Joseph stood, grasped his hoe, and hacked too hard at the soil to cover the seeds. “I’m not strong enough to live in the world, Father. I don’twantthese impure thoughts. I beg God to take them away, but?—”
“Do you doubt Our Lord?”
“O-Of course not.” Joseph stopped hoeing.
“He is refining you, my son. We all endure that refinement, and itmakesus strong. When you are ready, at your Ordination, He will reward you with His grace—like a suit of armor. Remember what Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians: ‘God will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able; but will make also with temptation a way to escape.’”
“How do I escape from my own mind, my own body?”
