WHIPS AND NAILS Jesuit novices of 72 years ago got to Palm Sunday in their Long Retreat meditations and then came a second break day, 17 or 18 days into the retreat. Now the Third Week . . .

. . . on the passion and death of Christ—Mel Gibson stuff, imagining it all in detail.

When Gibson’s movie came out, I was not tempted to see it and did not, having already spent a week immersed in this gruesome denouement.  Shades were drawn again, mood turned somber, laughter disappeared, the novice master did not smile. 

For five or so days, we went chapter and verse, line by line through the grim tale. We imagined details—whips, nails, betrayal, agony of prayer, submission to the will of the father, burlesque-like denial by Peter, the sorrows of the mother, the loyalty of the women friends. 

We knelt four times a day for 45 minutes at a time, after a half hour of listening to the master.  If there was hell to deter the tempted, there was now also the idea of betraying our leader. We saw Jesus in the garden of olives as bearing the sins of the world, ours included, which he was expiating.  We saw ourselves as contributing to his suffering.  Focusing on that, we prayed for forgiveness and pledged fidelity.  Jesuits of that time engaged in such gut-wrenching.  They would in various degrees adopt intellectuality—the philosophical mind was coming—but at the start they engaged their feelings to the utmost.

Meditating on passion and death with shades drawn, as we had on death and judgment, we inhabited a sort of spiritual steam room.  Rising and praying, keeping silence all day, we would look forward to the conference, when we didn’t have to work but could be talked to.  The master was engaging.  He sat at his little table, the soul of control and focus.

MASTER OF MEN Apart from his role as retreat master, he was also there when you needed him.  I knocked on his door once before the retreat, when I’d had a very bad day, had gotten tired out playing too much baseball on a sub-tropically hot and steamy day and trying too hard on various other things.  I was played out and feeling very sorry for myself.  Opening his office door, he took one look and knew I was careening toward trouble.  His face softened visibly.  “Carissime,” he said, using the novice’s title—Latin for “dearest,” or even “dear friend”—not my first name as he usually did, “the Lord wants you here.”  He had read me perfectly, having probably seen dozens of faces like mine, strained and contorted.  And he knew just what to say.  I was stopped in my tracks by his combination of empathy and conviction.  I stayed.

Staying was a big issue, to be sure.  We were told not to doubt our vocation.  Leaving was a very bad thing.  This was underlined by procedure.  Those who left the novitiate (“checked out” or just “checked”) just disappeared.  No notice was posted.  The manuductor, a novice appointed as a sort of trusty who met daily with the master, would be informed.  He had to know if someone was no longer available for various jobs, from dishwashing to helping in the garden.  The word would get out, of course, if only from those in his dorm who saw an empty cubicle and knew no one had died or been stricken. 

Years later, leaving the Jesuits, I said goodbye to five or six contemporaries at a high school loading dock before driving away in my rental car for my first ex-Jesuit job.  It was not like that in the 50s.  You left in the dead of night or at least when almost no one was looking. 

During the retreat the master was almost our entire contact with the world outside ourselves.  He was a deeply conscientious man, intense but endowed in my opinion with adequate common sense.  He could shoot down excessive mortification plans with a wry look, so that the novice who was overly interested in saving on tooth paste or socks (ours was a small world with big goals) would think twice about it.  He enjoyed life.  The ready grin was not shown to make points; among his peers, he would sometimes laugh so hard he could hardly stop, we heard.  He also could look very serious and stern without half trying.  By and large, in my opinion, we were in good hands, though some resented him as harsh and out of touch.

Penance and mortification got closer than usual attention in the third week.  As we contemplated suffering and death, we heard or read about “rules to be observed” as to eating and drinking.  The one that stayed with me is the last, that in deciding how much to eat and drink, the time to decide is after a meal not before it.  When you’re fat and happy, you see things differently, of course.  If you found you were giving in too often, then you were to eat even less.  Go against yourself.  In Latin that’s “agere contra,” to go against.  It was a byword in Jesuit ascetism.

Next, Alleluia Time, He is risen! The last of the 30 days . . .