The Rule of Sebastian

by Shelter Somerset

  Sebastian found Casey trailing him around the abbey, like Delores following Brother Micah in the kitchen, sweet. Of course, there was nothing he could do about it. Temptations meant nothing to Sebastian. He had lived with unfulfilled yearnings his entire life. Why should he give in to them at a monastery, of all places?

  The eldest of six, Sebastian had kept his homosexuality secret since he’d first realized his attraction to boys in the sixth grade, while playing shortstop at the Berks County Catholic Summer Sports League. Although he’d proved himself a capable athlete, keeping his eyes off the other boys in their tight baseball uniforms had proved difficult. Especially considering he’d gone to Catholic school until the twelfth grade and then on to a Catholic university in Philadelphia, and he’d interacted with few girls other than his two sisters and mother and a handful of sourpuss nuns.

  He had played “games” with a few of his friends, but no one had ever mentioned homosexuality except in a negative way. “Homo” was the preferred word choice whenever any of them did something the others discouraged, like missing a ball between the legs that should’ve been easily scooped up in the infield dust.

  He was certain his family suspected, yet he never came out to any of them. A few times his father and a few of his siblings had expressed through innuendo that if they knew anyone gay, they wouldn’t mind. No matter. He rarely dated and could recall only once bringing home a “beard” for the family to meet. Sebastian, a captain of the guards, sheltered his private life. Gregarious and friendly to a fault, colleagues had told him, though he preferred people never get too personal.

  During college he’d had three boyfriends, but they’d dropped him after a few months. Sebastian had assumed they’d lost interest, misunderstanding his introspective side. With a shrug, he’d given up on the notion of dating and relationships, graduated with honors, and taken to the real world. Until his life shattered and his only refuge was inside Mt. Ouray.

  He finished breakfast with Casey’s furtive glimpses lingering after him, washed his dishes in the kitchen sink, and went to take a quick shower before Lauds. Casey trailed him into the shower room. Seemed he always showered whenever Sebastian did. Or was it the other way around?

  Casey never made eye contact with him while they slipped off their bathrobes and stepped into the separate stalls before yanking the curtains closed. Never indicated any awareness that Sebastian spent extra time under the steaming jet, waiting to fall flaccid before stepping back onto the clammy floor mat.

  Sebastian tried to avoid glancing at Casey. Once or twice he couldn’t help but look. Supple and smooth. His hair, shiny like onyx, falling over his forehead. Perfect. His type. Casey, as usual, maintained a casual posture, his eyes averted, as if Sebastian weren’t there. Sebastian suspected Casey deliberately posed for him.

  Dried and dressed in a fresh tunic and white cowl, Sebastian stepped into line outside the chapel for Lauds with only a few minutes to spare. They waited for the abbot’s lead forward. With his hood covering most of his peripheral vision, he spied Casey, smelling of Ivory soap, edging behind him. Father Paolo entered the corridor and motioned for them to follow.

  Their hands left the folds of their cowls long enough to reach for the holy water and cross themselves. Heads bowed in silent prayer, they took their positions in the pews. Scents of burning candles and dry wood met Sebastian’s downturned nose. The rising sun would normally ooze through the arched stained glass windows, aligned precisely so that the morning sun’s rays would bathe the crucifix hanging on the high altar. That morning, the snowstorm shrouded the chapel in murky shadows.

  While they recited Psalms 148 to 150, Sebastian noted the wandering eyes of the brothers, which peeked from above their psalmodies toward the side door closest to the infirmary. Even the most devout would have difficulty concentrating on prayer without speculating about the stranger. The brothers’ expressions altered little while Casey read from the Gospel and they followed with the responsory.

  Hallowed and haunting, their melodic voices reached to the high wooden beams. The singing of the Canticle of Mary was perhaps the most chilling for Sebastian. Magnificat anima mea Dominum…. Briefly, Sebastian lost himself in the poignant hymn, and even forgot about the stranger. But only for a moment.

  As the brothers’ voices eased to a stop, he opened his eyes and imagined the young man lying unconscious in the infirmary, near death’s doorstep. Sebastian prayed for his speedy recovery. He also prayed that his presence might signify positive change for the abbey, apart from the odd and ominous sensations indented on Sebastian’s soul.

  They recited the Lord’s Prayer and the closing, led by Father Paolo, after which Sebastian retreated to his cell to engage in lectio divina. Glad to have parted from the others, he hoped that immersing himself in divine reading might steal away his incessant concerns about the stranger and the other irritating thoughts that never seemed to leave him.

  By Mass, the abbey rumor mill suggested the young man’s condition had yet to change. For the first time in many months, Sebastian wished for a quick passage of the Eucharist so that he might learn something. He mumbled the words of the Gospel with a painful knowledge that what lurked inside his mind was not marvel for the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s suffering and resurrection, but fear and worry.

  With the communion wafer still stuck to the roof of his mouth, the Grand Silence ended, and Sebastian shuffled to the sacristy to fashion rosaries alongside Brother Eusebius, as he had each winter for the past two years.

  Chapter Three

  CASEY worked at his station in the abbey office, doing whatever administrative tasks Brother Lucien or Father Paolo requested. At present, he answered phone calls and e-mails for prayer requests and inquiries into monastic life from prospective postulants. Because he’d graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English, the abbot fancied utilizing Casey’s writing skills.

  Reading a short inquiry from a curious high school senior in Minnesota, Casey recalled his own letters to Mt. Ouray when he first recognized the nudging call to join the monastic vocation. His mother had clutched the curtains to keep from collapsing after he’d informed his parents about his decision to join the Trappists. His stepfather had stared at him as if he’d flown into the living room on wings. “Why did I waste all that money on your college education?” he’d said once he’d shaken off the initial shock.

  He never expected his parents to understand his choosing life inside a monastery. They knew he was gay (he’d come out to his family when he was twenty), and that had made it all the more confusing for them to grasp, he supposed. He imagined their roller-coaster ride of emotions—first learning that their son was gay, followed by the jarring news that he wanted to join an austere religious order.

  Casey never bought into the Church’s condemnation of homosexuality. From his personal experience, the Church was loaded with gay men. At college he’d experienced numerous come-ons from the Jesuit students and faculty. And there was that time he’d overheard a friend of his mother’s divulge her embarrassment at finding Internet porn on one of the priest’s computers at the local Catholic parish office, where she worked as a secretary. “Priests are men,” was his mother’s thin reply while they’d sipped coffee at the dining table. Casey never did learn what type of porn his mother’s friend had found, but he couldn’t help but assume the pictures were of men.

  The Church drew an odd alliance of men, attracted by the desire for a family they feared they’d never find in a society that viewed them as outsiders. Focused on ancient rituals in a world of cascading velvet and satin, flowing robes and brilliant stained glass, swirling incense and glittering gold, monks and priests came together for a new kind of brotherhood. In the Church’s open censure of homosexuality lay a tacit endorsement.

  Father Paolo and Brother Lucien’s close relationship was silently accepted inside the monastery. At the moment, they convened in the abbot’s private office, discussing whatever issues they deemed important, the stranger mo
st likely, or doing whatever else they did in private. They spent many hours inside his office, sharing a bond tighter than that of husband and wife. Lately, Casey sensed their relationship hovered near the skids, like any long-term relationship might.

  Casey had little doubt Brother Sebastian was gay. He’d concluded soon after his arrival in October as a postulant that Sebastian had sought monasticism for much the same reasons as he and the others had. Of course, a handful of the monks, homosexual or not, led devout lives, fixed to their vows. Sebastian hadn’t intimated his sexual orientation to Casey, or expressed any interest in him beyond a naïve and needy postulant. He hadn’t crossed an improper line, as the father had done once. Still, Casey knew. He always knew.

  The tall brother with the shiny russet hair and soft blue eyes that captured the abbey’s dim lighting like a gold chalice had attracted Casey his first day as a summer retreatant. So often he’d fantasized seeing those bright eyes gaze down at him while he lay alone on his simple twin bed, in his cell that always smelled of old houses. Loneliness at the abbey could sometimes seize him, especially at night during Retire when lights went out and silence was enforced.

  Casey hadn’t professed his solemn vows, but if all went well, he foresaw lying prone at the abbot’s feet within the coming years, while his family, disbelief marking their faces, watched. A lifetime of consecration wouldn’t be so bad, not with Brother Sebastian to share it.

  His “real” family had failed to provide Casey with the love he sought. An amalgamation of individuals with nothing more in common than a shared roof over their heads. Less even than what he felt with his fellow Trappist brothers.

  A biological father he had never really known, a stepfather too consumed with his aerospace job, a mother so focused on building her social stature in the community that she never held his stare longer than five seconds, a younger brother who never seemed to go anywhere without an iPod attached to his ears, and his younger sister, a junior at Casey’s alma mater, always peered at Casey as if he were a complete stranger. He couldn’t even remember holding a conversation with her.

  His eldest brother, a graduate student at Kansas State, had expressed the most interest in Casey one afternoon in Casey’s bedroom, after he’d learned of his discernment. Trenton, as if personally wounded by his decision, had pressed Casey as to what he expected to find at a monastery.

  “It’s where I should go,” Casey had told him with a shrug. The typical uncomfortable lulls had reared between them while Casey pretended to study at his desk. “It’s hard to put into words.”

  Casey wasn’t running from himself, as Trenton had alluded to that afternoon, the sharp sunlight piercing his bedroom window. No, Casey had answered a call he was certain God had placed to him. You will find love and beauty inside a monastery, the voice had whispered one night while he’d lain in bed.

  His baby brother hadn’t even hugged him good-bye when he departed for Mt. Ouray. Only his mother had given him a cursory embrace. John, his stepfather, had supplied the obligatory firm handshake. “Try not to get into trouble,” was all he’d said before Casey stepped onto the Greyhound in downtown Hutchinson for the sixteen-hour trip to Telluride, flute case sturdy by his side.

  He’d had a special relationship with his maternal grandmother, but she had passed away two weeks after Casey’s fourteenth birthday. He sensed Grandma had stood behind him with her hand on his shoulder when he’d climbed onto the bus that day. After her death, about the only demonstrative affection Casey experienced came in the form of dreams.

  The monks at Mt. Ouray loved and accepted him. Or at least they professed to. They had little choice. St. Benedict, in his fifteen-hundred-year-old Rule, ordered that all monks love and embrace one another as their true brothers. More than what he experienced from his immediate family.

  Casey never once imagined that someone might come along and compete for Brother Sebastian’s attentions. What if Brother Giles’s inane ramblings proved true and the stranger in their infirmary chose to remain at Mt. Ouray? Casey couldn’t live without anyone loving him, thinking him special.

  He wished he’d never spotted that strange man lying in the snow. Horrible to think such things. If not for Casey, the snow would’ve buried the man alive, keeping him undiscovered until the spring thaw. Even if Brother Sebastian had an interest in Casey, what might come of a mutual attraction? Sebastian, who had entered the abbey three years prior to Casey’s coming to Mt. Ouray, stood on the cusp of taking his solemn vows. For all Casey knew, Sebastian had no intention of breaking that promise.

  Sighing, he mulled over what to put in a nice letter to the confused high school boy from St. Paul. He glimpsed at the “how to write to postulants” note Father Paolo had tacked to the bulletin board beside the computer. Over time, Casey had learned to disregard most of it. A short response would be best. He typed the e-mail in thirty seconds and pressed “send.” The father would follow up with more letters if the boy was serious enough to write back.

  He mentally shook his head when Brother Lucien stepped outside Father Paolo’s office, with a stronger stench of juniper incense wafting after him. Face flushed, he dashed about the office, shuffling papers, opening and shutting cabinets. His brushing Casey with his tunic sleeves while he hovered about only rubbed Casey’s emotional sores all the worse. The abbot’s right-hand man, Brother Lucien had exhibited an odd contempt for Casey.

  The worst came one week after his arrival in October, when Father Paolo had insisted on instructing Casey with private chanting lessons in his office. The fireplace was lit on each occasion, and chocolates and wine sat ready for him on the round table. God might have blessed Casey with polished writing skills and sensitive flute-playing lips, but singing would never be his strength. Nonetheless, the father had continued to praise him. “You own a wondrous voice. A great gift from the Lord.” After five lessons, Casey had begged off.

  He wondered if Brother Lucien’s animosity toward him derived from the same reason Casey felt scorn for the stranger.

  Once Brother Lucien disappeared again inside Father Paolo’s private office, Casey breathed a bit lighter. He grew bored. The phones remained silent. He wished he could get onto his favorite websites, but Father Paolo had blocked everything but the abbey’s homepage. Not even his favorite weather site was accessible.

  Only Brother Hubert, who administered the abbey’s public website, had privileged and unlimited access to the “off limits” computer on the other side of the room. Father Paolo had given a strict order, forbidding anyone else from using it. If he found out, he would intern the offender in his cell, without exception save for toilet needs. Casey could not tolerate solitary confinement. Not when he was battling for the attention of Brother Sebastian.

  The few times they’d shared the office, Casey had spied Brother Hubert typing in a special password. From his desk, Casey had noticed the brother scanning different websites or making much use of Google. “Research for the website,” Brother Hubert had once told him after he’d caught Casey staring.

  And much of what Brother Hubert had said was true. Upon Father Paolo’s requests, Brother Hubert would supply Casey with notes he’d compiled from his Internet research and ask that Casey write up a new entry to lure young men considering discernment. The father would edit his entries with a pointed eye for detail. “We’re seeking healthy, virile young men,” he’d once said as he added the extra words on the printout copy with his sharpened red pencil. “Not just men.” And sure enough, the new language went into the page headed, “Interested in Becoming a Monk?”

  Flustered, Casey focused on his work again. He read several e-mailed prayer requests, one from a woman in Colorado Springs. Her twenty-six-year-old son suffered from lymphoma. Would the monks please say a special prayer for him? Casey printed the request and placed it in the “prayer tray.” He wrote a simple reply that the brothers would pray for the woman’s son and for her to find patience and understanding in God’s love. The other prayer requests appeal
ed for the same. Either a friend or family member suffered from a disease or drug addiction or depression, and they sought whatever help they could. The brothers took the requests seriously. During Vespers, they would read aloud each ailing person’s name and beseech God’s mercy.

  Casey printed the latest of the prayer requests and considered a few of his own he wouldn’t mind adding to their pile that morning.

  Worktime passed, and Casey, along with the other monks, entered the chapel for Sext. He’d hoped to hear something about the stranger. But not until late afternoon did abbey hearsay report that the stranger had stirred from unconsciousness. “He hasn’t opened his eyes or spoken,” Brother Rodel had whispered to them while they filed into the dining hall to take dinner, “but he’s alive and kicking. Should be better in a few days.”

  Heavy sighs had flowed from the grinning brothers. So what? When would they learn the reason for the man’s arrival at Mt. Ouray or how he’d ventured so far in such impenetrable weather? In a few days, when he’d regain full consciousness, like Brother Jerome had said? Brother Sebastian seemed the most faraway when he’d heard the news, and Casey feared he was thinking of the young man’s flexing muscles.

  They had sacrificed much to care for him. Like they did for the aged Brother Augustine, he knew Brothers Rodel and Jerome had cleaned the young stranger whenever he needed it, ensuring he slept on fresh sheets. The annoying envy had glowed in the other brothers’ faces, including Brother Sebastian’s. The entire abbey buzzed about the “angel come to them on gilded wings.”

  Later that night after Compline, with news from the abbey grapevine affirming the stranger continued to mumble and squirm and kick at his sheets, Casey prayed by the foot of his twin bed in his lonely seven-by-ten cell, asking God to forgive him. Over his folded hands, he peered at the statuette of the Virgin Mary the abbot had given him his first week as a postulant, and mouthed Psalm 119.