Back to the chains of events that led me to the project of entering dominican order in autumn 1960.
The second major event.
From the sink to my bed
It happened on an ordinary evening of one of my last school years in high school. I cannot say exactly which year. I was in "second" or in "first" but I was certainly not in "terminal".
This was the time when I secretly hoped that everybody had forgotten this etiquette of little-boy-who-will-enter-the-seminar; I avoided carefully to speak of it since I rather dreamed to do sciences, a matter where my results were good.
Just before going to bed, I am washing my hands in the sink of the kitchen (in the corner of the room, behind ++453++ on the photo below). My mother, in my back, says she did a visit to ++479++, the chaplain in high school. She says they talked about the future of her boys. When they spoke about me, she says that her words were exactly the following (I quote according to my memory) : "It would seem that his project is to enter the seminar" and she insists on "it would seem".
What my mother says has the effect on me of a very nasty shock.
Without saying any word, I finish washing my hands and go directly to my bed in the room where my two brothers and me sleep every night. While I am in the sheets, mother, certainly surprised by my silence, comes near my bed and asks, with some anxiety where one can guess dissatisfaction, whether I would have preferred that she did not speak of the seminar to the chaplain. I answer shortly "no" and, knocked, my mind does not find another thing to say.
During the days that follow, there is a course of religious instruction which takes place, I remember it well, in the room where we had our courses when I was in "third". I am intentionally late, willing to avoid a direct contact with the chaplain. The course is already running in front of a little group - we are never numerous if the subject is not catchy. I guess what is to happen and I have a stage fright. What I dreaded happens; the chaplain interrupts his speech and says to me that he wants to talk to me after the course.
So, after the course we talk, walking under the long glass roof which runs all around the immense and desert playground. "I was happy to learn that ..." I think he did not finished his sentence.
This first talk contained generalities. The chaplain says that becoming a priest brings great joys but also great sufferings. He asks me what kind of job I foresee. I'm completely taken by surprise. I answer the first thing passing through my head : "Like you, chaplain in a high school." But he replies quickly that his case is particular. In fact, I regretted immediately having said that. This is not at all my wish.
This is certainly on this evening that it was decided not to change anything in my situation before the second A-level.
And at no moment did come to my mind the idea to decide something else than to leave running this kind of machine which was triggered without my opinion. Because in fact, it is a matter of vocation, not of my opinion. "Vocation" that is to say "call by a high spiritual authority".
This is the answer to the question "Why didn't I strongly reacted explaining all around that this is an error, that I changed my mind, that I want to become an engineer and marry a girl ???"
A 500 pages book would probably be needed describing carefully the part of the society which was strongly impregnated by catholicism at that epoch. It would be necessary to describe the spirit - mystic and sentimental at the same time - which surrounded the word "vocation" and which was manifested by the seriousness and even fear that people had when they speak of a boy who will "become priest" or "enter the seminar".
And it would be necessary to speak about me, in the end of adolescence, enough informed of vilenesses of earth. The official teaching in high school did not have any word about the why of world and life. History courses are only description of events without ideological content. Literature shows many authors through their works but never presents them as masters of thoughts.
And for me, Catholicism always obviously remained the only society that reasonably works for the salvation - the difficult salvation - of mankind. Other religions ? I don't see the seriousness of christanism in notchristian religions. And protestantism is certainly the result of a misunderstanding which a bit of good will would certainly dissipate.
And what I hear, through the words of my mother on this evening, is : "Earth is full of miseries, sufferings and contemptible behaviours; your duty is to go and participate, in the structures of Catholicism, to its action of spiritual elevation, even if you would prefer to do something else." One probably would vainly look for a word or a gesture which explicitely made me understand this; however this is what I understood on that evening, in a fraction of a second.
A remark must however be added. The lines which precede are the echo of the rational plan and one can think from them that I see myself like a person who has a thing to do; however, the 500 pages book should certainly highlight it, I am rather inhabited by feeling that I must be, that I must become a character; this is my mission. And this explains my passivity. I "will let them equip myself".
Other essential notice, my religion is not at all nourished by images which Catholicism uses; I do not have the least phantasm on Jesus, the Virgin or the saints. My prayers are addressed to a remote God whom I think to honour the best by concentrating me on the meaning of each word that I pronounce. The idea that, for me, the project to enter the orders would have nevertheless the attraction to experiment some intimacy with an interior image is completely false.
P. M.
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