Necessary Sins

by Elizabeth Bell

  Sarah approached then, carrying a salad she’d made with the radishes. “We’re almost ready.”

  Wallace opened the door for her, then called toward the barn: “Andrew! George! Come help your mother!”

  The Priest’s sons obeyed their father promptly. The Church considered such children a special class of bastards, born “from a damned union.” The warnings of Saint Alphonsus rang through Joseph’s mind: “In a word, the Church regards as a monster the priest that does not lead a life of chastity.”

  The monster passed him carrying a plate of cornbread.

  They sat down to supper. Wallace blessed the meal. Andrew began telling his mother and brothers about his day. Joseph had little appetite.

  Wallace noticed. “If I might venture a guess, Joseph: you’re imagining everlasting hellfire?”

  Joseph didn’t need to answer.

  “Remember, Joseph: it is not the Church that will decide who is saved and who is damned. Only God can do that.” He gazed at his concubine. “What I feel for Sarah, what she feels for me, it is love. I cannot believe that offends God. What Saint Paul talks about in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, how we are nothing without love—the Church has forgotten that. It has become a ‘sounding brass’ and puffed itself up with rules that have little to do with God and everything to do with control. That’s what celibacy is about. The Church tries to terrify us into submission; it claims we endanger our ministry and forfeit our souls if we fulfill the needs God Himself implanted. One day, Joseph, all the false trappings will fall away, and only the perfection of God will remain. If we are wise, if we listen to Him alone, we can glimpse that perfection here on Earth. ‘He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is love.’”

  That was the First Epistle of John.

  “I know what you’ve been taught: that if a man loves a woman, ‘his heart is divided,’ that only ‘he who is free from the conjugal bonds’ can belong to God.” Wallace was quoting Saint Alphonsus. “But before I knew Sarah, my heart was considerably more divided than it is now. I was in far greater bondage to lust than I am to love. I spent hours and hours battling my attraction to women, punishing myself. Now, all of that wasted energy is fulfilled with Sarah or redirected into my ministry. My feelings for her strengthen me instead of exhausting me. I am a better Priest because of my family, not in spite of them. Being a husband to Sarah has made me a wiser confessor. Being a father to my sons has made me a wiser pastor. I was lost, alone in the darkness. But I have found my guiding stars.”

  After supper, George and Andrew played their violins. Already rubbing his eyes, James crawled into his father’s lap. Afterward, when Sarah tried to dislodge him, James clung to his father’s neck and murmured drowsy protests.

  Wallace whispered: “Let him stay. I’ll carry him upstairs. Very soon, he’ll consider this unmanly and he won’t let either of us close enough to kiss him. ‘Now the time is most precious.’ Just hand me my breviary, would you, my love?”

  Sarah smiled and relented, kissing both of them while she still could.

  With his youngest child slumbering in his lap, Wallace read the Divine Office for the day—keeping one promise he’d made at Ordination, at least.

  Seven and a half years ago, if Joseph had married Tessa instead of Holy Mother Church, they might have had a son like James.

  Joseph’s bedchamber shared a wall with Wallace and Sarah’s room. Fortunately, as far as he could tell, they managed to restrain themselves that night. Perhaps they’d relinquished each other for Lent. He heard only companionable murmurs and once, muffled laughter.

  The next morning was Sunday. Joseph suspected Wallace did not have permission from his superior to celebrate Mass in his home; but he did it anyway. He asked Joseph to assist. After silently begging God’s pardon, Joseph conceded.

  As he fastened his amice, Wallace observed: “I see I have not yet convinced you. Allow me to play Devil’s Advocate, then. Even if I were in a state of mortal sin, remember that every Sacrament I administer remains valid. We have the authority of Saint Thomas Aquinas on that.”

  They had the authority of Saint Alphonsus and Saint Teresa as well—though both of them shivered in terror for the soul of any Priest who so offended God. “We defile the body of Christ whenever we approach the altar unworthily,” wrote Alphonsus. The mere violet of Lent did not seem sufficient Penance. They should be wearing sackcloth.

  Wallace interrupted: “We’re not meant to be sinless, Joseph. In his Epistle to the Hebrews, Saint Paul talks about how ‘every priest…can have compassion on them that are ignorant and that err: because he himself is beset with weakness.’ And surely you are familiar with the felix culpa paradox?”

  The “happy fault,” the “blessed fall,” depending on how you translated the Latin. Reluctantly, Joseph nodded. Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Francis de Sales all discussed it. Each Easter eve, in every Catholic church across the world, a Deacon or Priest sang the paradox aloud:

  O truly necessary sin of Adam, which has been blotted out by the death of Christ!

  O felix culpa, which has merited so great a Redeemer!

  “Indulge me, please,” Wallace urged. “Pretend I am one of your students: Why did God place the Tree of Knowledge in Paradise? Didn’t He know Adam would eat the forbidden fruit?”

  Joseph stared down at his stole. Like most of his vestments, it had a cross embroidered at its center. Against the violet of Penance, the golden cross was particularly striking. “Of course God knew. But if mankind had never fallen, Christ would never have died for us; and if Christ had never died for us, we would never have understood the depth of God’s grace and His love.”

  “In the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas: ‘God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom.’” Wallace donned his chasuble. “Innocence is not perfection, Joseph.”

  After they had broken their fast, Wallace and his eldest son saddled Prince. When his things were packed and Joseph had mounted, Wallace patted the horse’s neck and smiled up at him. “I cannot tell you how or when, in your situation or in mine; but I can tell you this, Joseph: ‘Sin is necessary, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’”

  Joseph thought he’d heard those words before, or part of them. He did not remember “Sin is necessary.” “Who are you quoting now?”

  “God”—Wallace grinned—“by way of Mother Juliana of Norwich. She was a fourteenth-century anchorite and mystic.” He held up his index finger. “Grant me one minute longer.” Wallace dashed up the porch steps and disappeared into the house. When he emerged again, he carried a slender, leather-bound volume. Wallace handed it up to Joseph, who opened the cover and read: Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love: Shewed to a Devout Servant of our Lord. “‘All shall be well’ is part of Juliana’s Thirteenth Revelation.”

  Thirteen seemed appropriate.

  “Keep it, please. Something to remember us by.”

  As if Joseph could ever forget.

  Chapter 50

  I and my bosom must debate awhile…

  — William Shakespeare, Henry V (1600)

  Joseph returned to Charleston differently than he had come, so he could minister to other parishioners. The way these people greeted him, the way they honored him—as if he were an angel, or Christ in their midst… They thought Joseph holy and pure; they thought he desired only God. How could he ever bless them with hands that had groped a woman’s breast?

  Saint Alphonsus had much to say on the matter: “The priest who, while he is defiled with sins against chastity, pronounces the words of consecration, spits in the face of Jesus Christ; and in receiving the sacred body and blood into his polluted mouth, he casts them into the foulest mire… Such priests are worse than Judas… How horrible to see a priest that should send forth in every direction the light and odor of purity, become sordid, fetid, and polluted with sins of the flesh…”

  And yet…these were abstractions. Was Tessa sordid, f
etid, or polluted? Was her perfect mouth a foul mire? How then could touching her defile him? Surely God understood that Joseph wished only to honor Him, only to worship the beauty He had created?

  Joseph closed Dignity and Duties of the Priest and opened Juliana of Norwich’s Revelations. In many ways, she reminded him of Saint Teresa; yet Juliana was different from any theologian Joseph had ever read. The God who had spoken to her would never condemn an unbaptized child to Hell.

  Juliana wrote: “I saw verily that Our Lord was never wrath, nor ever shall be: for He is God, He is good, He is truth, and He is peace… His love excuseth us, and of His great courtesy He doth away all our blame, and beholdeth us with compassion and pity… I shall do right naught but sin, and my sin shall not hinder His goodness working…”

  Before he entered Charleston, Joseph paused at St. Patrick’s Churchyard to visit Hélène. He stood inside the Lazare mausoleum and placed his palm on the cool limestone that held his sister’s name and her body, but not her spirit. “I’ll never forget you, Ellie,” he whispered. “I couldn’t even if I tried.” He prayed her sojourn in Purgatory would be brief. “If you’re already in Heaven, will you pray for me, sister?” If he followed her advice, if he accepted her gifts—the lamp and the key—it would be almost like she was still with him.

  He knew now that he would remain in Charleston as long as he could. Their next Bishop might very well make Joseph a mission Priest; but these two weeks on the road had proven he would be a poor one. He would yearn not only for Tessa, his mother, even his father’s company—Joseph would miss the ocean, his garden, and his library too.

  Joseph would miss returning to his own bed every night, however humble that bed. The night before his sister’s surgery, he’d stopped sleeping on the floor and stopped using the discipline. He’d decided Hélène deserved more than a pale shadow of her brother. He did not resume these mortifications now. His head was clearer without them.

  Furthermore, despite Prince’s smooth action, Joseph had developed saddle sores on his journey. They were worse than any wound from the discipline. He refused to remove his trousers and drawers for his father, but Joseph described the sores. While trying not to chuckle, his father mixed him a balm that proved blissfully effective.

  Joseph tried to find out more about Juliana of Norwich; but she had largely been lost to history. The Church had not canonized or beatified Juliana, but neither had it condemned her.

  Joseph longed to wrap himself in the promise Christ had made her: that whatever choices Joseph made, whatever sins he committed, God would forgive him; God would forgive Tessa; and all would be well. Joseph wanted so much to believe those words were divine revelation. But in the Gospel of John, Christ commanded the adulteress: “Go, and sin no more.” How could the same God have said “Sin is necessary”? And yet…Christ forgave the adulteress when no one else would. He made the Pharisees see they were all sinners.

  Joseph had been neglecting both the Biblical garden and his parents’ garden. He took up his tools again. Tessa was often visiting his mother. She must understand how isolated his mother was, especially since losing Hélène. On this side of the Atlantic, only a handful of people knew his mother’s language; but Tessa was one of them. This kindness made Joseph love her all the more.

  He was careful not to linger near Tessa. He would smile at her in passing, but he was determined not to touch her or speak to her again till he had made his decision. Tessa had the perfect way to reply without saying a word. When she was certain only Joseph could see, she pressed both hands to her heart. She was signing: I love you.

  Joseph retreated to his father’s empty office—not to stare at the Blessed Virgin’s bare breast or at Mary Magdalene reaching for the half-naked Christ but to meditate on the painting that had been here the longest: Saint Denis picking up his own severed, haloed head. This third-century martyr had lent his name to Joseph’s great-granduncle Denis, who perished during the Terror, and to Joseph himself at his Confirmation. His great-granduncle’s presence at an Ancien Régime salon had inspired the famous exchange between the Cardinal de Polignac and the Marquise de Deffand. When he was a child, Joseph’s great-grandmother Marguerite had passed the story on to him.

  First, Cardinal de Polignac had described Saint Denis’s martyrdom: even after pagans beheaded him, Denis remained undeterred. He was a Bishop, and his work was not yet complete. His decapitated body stood up and reclaimed his head, which preached a homily as he walked. Denis refused to die until he’d finished this homily. By that time, he’d carried his head an entire league.

  “Some say it was two leagues!” Cardinal de Polignac had exclaimed.

  “The distance doesn’t matter,” the Marquise de Deffand had observed. “It is the first step that is difficult.”

  Joseph forced himself to finish rereading Dignity and Duties of the Priest. “Let us tremble: we are flesh,” admitted Saint Alphonsus. He related: “Blessed Jordan severely reproved one of his religious for having, without any bad motive, once taken a woman by the hand. The religious said in answer that she was a saint. But, replied the holy man: ‘The rain is good, and the earth also, but mix them together and they become mire.’”

  No, Joseph thought, as he watered the soil around his pomegranate tree and admired the scarlet buds. Mix rain and earth together, and they become LIFE and BEAUTY.

  As long as there was not too much rain. That was the key. Even Father Wallace had assumed Joseph and Tessa would not fully consummate their union. “You’ll find a line and you won’t cross it,” Liam had said. Joseph would never ask Tessa for more than she wished to give him. He would take nothing at all.

  On the Feast of Saint Joseph, the day he completed his thirty-first year, he returned to his father’s house and climbed the stairs to his sister’s dressing chamber. He opened the drawer of her wardrobe and found the key to Tessa’s garden still nestled inside, like a seed awaiting planting. Joseph searched Hélène’s jewelry-box for a long silver chain. He threaded the key onto it and fastened the chain around his neck. He undid his choker and tucked the key beneath his shirt. No one else would know the key was there. But he would know.

  He resisted the temptation to try the key in advance; yet throughout Passiontide, Joseph haunted the corner of Church Street and Longitude Lane, watching for the blue lamp. He would not answer till after Lent, but he wanted the assurance that Tessa would still welcome him.

  On Good Friday, Joseph finally saw the lamp in the right-most window on the second floor, just as she had promised. Even across the front garden and through the wrought iron fence, the double-burner lamp shone like a beacon. Calling him into her bedchamber.

  Joseph could not answer it—not on Good Friday, even if this was his last chance. It might well be. Surely Tessa’s husband would return from Stratford-on-Ashley tomorrow. His appearances at the cathedral were erratic, but he’d always managed Christmas and Easter. After that, Edward might remain in Charleston till the fall. It was already the middle of April, and planters never spent summers at their plantations—the risk of fever was too great. By fall, they might have a new Bishop, who might send Joseph to a faraway parish. He might never see Tessa again.

  Fear descended instead of sleep. Joseph’s total fast made it no easier. He would consume nothing but Christ until after Easter Mass. At Lauds the next morning, his breviary directed him to pray Psalm 62: “For thee my soul hath thirsted; for thee my flesh, O how many ways!” Joseph wondered if King David had meant those words only for God, or for Bathsheba, too.

  For reasons that were not entirely clear to Joseph, over the centuries the timing of the Easter Vigil had shifted to earlier and yet earlier on Holy Saturday. Once, the long rite had begun late in the evening and reached its climax at midnight Easter morning. Now, they lit the Paschal Candle and celebrated Christ’s nighttime resurrection when the sun had barely risen Saturday morning. This was the greatest moment of the Christian year; by the end of the Mass, it would be Easter, liturgically. But most of Josep
h’s congregation waited till Sunday morning to celebrate. Only the truly faithful gathered in the Biblical garden for the Easter Vigil.

  Tessa was amongst them. Even before her Confession to him, he’d been careful not to look her way during Mass. But his eyes were starving for the sight of her even more than his stomach was aching from his fast. It took Father Baker a few moments to kindle the New Fire with a flint. While they waited, Joseph allowed himself a glance at Tessa.

  She wore a simple white cotton dress, adorned only with pleats. She made it breathtaking. Framed by her mantilla, her own eyes remained intent on Father Baker; she did not look to Joseph. She held her hands just below the point of her bodice, yet they were not clasped in prayer. In fact, her small motions seemed out of place. Tessa had extended the first two fingers of her right hand. Again and again, she pressed them into her cupped left hand and rotated her extended fingers as if she were turning a key.

  For a moment, Joseph forgot to breathe. Beneath his clothes, the key to Tessa’s garden felt as if it were burning his chest. His mother was standing behind Tessa; she couldn’t see Tessa’s hands. The sign was for him. Safe! Tessa’s hands cried. Or perhaps she meant the pantomime more literally: Use the key! Either way, it was an invitation. Edward must have remained at the plantation. But how could she know he wouldn’t return before nightfall?

  Joseph dared not risk confirmation. He dared not look back at Tessa. His part of the Easter Vigil rite had come. He discarded his violet vestments of Penance, melancholy, and sacrifice. In their place, he donned white vestments of purity and joy—light breaking through the darkness. If he’d looked down to see their key glowing bright through the linen and silk, he would not have been surprised.