Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea

the sacrifice of the mass twice a day we reenacted

      the death of Jesus and we were bound together in communion.

      You cannot take your money with you when you die and

      religion with its crucifixion and resurrection can make sense

      of death so that we can pray: “Oh death, where is thy sting?”

      and as I tried to pray with purity sex began to take me

      through various transformations in the religious life.

      I,2 Growing Spiritually in that Seminary Seed Bed

      I,2.1 Nourishing Agape for All Persons with the Liturgy

      Already during our first year in the seminary we began

      to practice the spiritual, intellectual, vital, and physical exercises.

      We all knew that as future priests the spiritual were the most

      important and that the others were for the sake of the spiritual.

      At the center of our spiritual exercises was our praying of

      the mass twice a day and all of our prayer was a practice

      of agapeic love by which we would love God more and more

      with our whole heart, mind, and soul and our neighbor as ourself.

      The mass consisted of two parts: the liturgy of the Word and

      the liturgy of the Eucharist, and Father Bernard in his teaching

      focused most of all in relating Jesus and his love to both of these.

      The church’s year of grace was organized around the main events

      in the life of Jesus so that the seasons of Advent, Christmas,

      Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost each had a buildup of lessons

      in the readings from the Hebrew Bible, the Epistles, and the Gospels,

      which let us pray in detail about each moment of Jesus’ love.

      This first half of the mass in its liturgy of the Word also

      included the beautiful prayers, “I will go up to the altar of God,”

      which, as an altar boy in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades,

      I had said in Latin with Father Heeren, and the Kyrie or Lord

      Have Mercy, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, and The Creed.

      This liturgy of the Word prepared us for the liturgy of the Eucharist

      with its three main parts of the offertory, consecration, and communion.

      We brought all of our thoughts, words, and deeds, all of our praise

      repentance, thanksgiving, and petition, and offered them up

      with the bread and the wine the priest offered to God.

      And then with the bread and the wine they became the body and

      the blood of Jesus, which were separated in the consecration

      so that the sacrifice of the mass is the center of the priest’s life.

      Then there is communion in which the resurrected Jesus lives on.

      I,2.2 Nourishing Agapeic Affection with the Liturgy of the Word

      Love and personal growth in the seminary had to do most of all

      with cultivating the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

      Loving everybody is a very unnatural sort of thing for people are

      so different that they irritate each other very frequently with

      negative reactions that are habitual and that they often express.

      Even our family members who are closest to us might be of

      different body types and have tastes that tend to disgust us.

      The whole seminary lifestyle with its lengthy silence and all

      of its spiritual exercises aims at a self-overcoming so that we

      could come to affirm all others constantly even with a loving affection.

      Father Bernard helped us to see how the liturgy of the Word

      operated on three planes at once: the historical, the plane of grace,

      and the eschatological plane involving us in past, present, and future.

      During the six seasons of the year the liturgy of the Word told us

      the story of salvation as it was foretold by the prophets and lived out

      by Jesus from his birth to his death and resurrection and his Spirit’s coming.

      But all of this historical reality offered us grace in our present life.

      It was our task to appropriate it and love with the love that Jesus

      loved as he came to teach love and to live it out in suffering joy.

      And finally the liturgy of the Word was always preparing us for

      the life to come when we would die but resurrect in glory with Jesus.

      So the liturgy taught us faith in the past, hope for the future, and a life

      of love for all in the present so that all the readings during mass

      with new stories each day brought us to reflect upon and understand

      the mass that as priests we would pray each day and teach to others.

      We came to see how certain Saints like St. Francis especially

      imitated Jesus in his affection as Francis would love brother moon

      and sister sun and have affection for all persons and living beings.

      The monks loved us with a certain affection that we could hear

      in the tone of their voice and they began to teach us the history of

      this special agapeic affection that would last forever as we lived it now.

      I,2.3 Nourishing Agapeic Friendship with the Word’s History

      Affection and friendship are two different kinds of love and the liturgy

      of the word taught us of each throughout the history of the Hebrew Bible

      and throughout the twenty-seven books of the New Testament

      and on into history.

      For besides the Sunday masses, which took us into a prayer life

      of the development of the seasons of the year, there were also

      the feast days of the saints who exemplified the kinds of love.

      We knew of the affection of the family life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

      We also came to know of the friendship between David and Jonathan.

      Affection seemed special because it was a felt sort of warm kindness

      within a family and you would not feel that familial love for all.

      Friendship also seemed to be a special kind of shared interest

      between two or a few and it could be quite exclusive of others.

      In fact, in the seminary we were warned about the dangers

      of special friendships in which two seminarians would spend

      much of their time together and even want to exclude others.

      There is a self-love in the natural loves of affection, friendship,

      and eros insofar as I have a special preference