10: The Hijacked Letter

"Superiors and the Novice Master must always show towards the novices evangelical simplicity, kindness coupled with gentleness, and respect for their personality, in order to build up a climate of confidence, docility, and openness in which the Novice Master will be able to orientate their generosity toward a complete gift of themselves to the lord in faith, and gradually lead them by word and example to learn in the mystery of Christ Crucified the exigencies of authentic religious obedience." [from the Second Vatican Council, Instruction on the Renewal of Religious Life, 32. (2)]

The above was part of many materials given to me for my religious formation, but was not, I'm sad to say, a healthy reflection of my actual experience with my Novice Master. Rather than encourage my confidence and show me kindness, gentleness, and respect, he instead treated me too often like an unwelcome stepson forced upon him against his wishes. When he was exceptionally kind and friendly with me, it always felt fake and forced, and when he corrected me in private while I was inside his office, it was far too often done with a terrible kind of unholy judgment of character, sometimes even to the point of beating me down emotionally until I was crying, pleading with him to stop.

I'll have much more on my Novice Master in the blogs to follow, including–believe it or not–a passionate defense of his character. He certainly was well within his rights to chastise and correct me on multiple occasions for starters, but besides that, two major life events shook the man, one right before I met him, and the second one soon before I professed vows, and I believe those life-shaking factors greatly affected his brain and psyche.

My Assistant Novice Master and I, conversely, mostly got along very well, but on some rare occasions, significant friction built up between us, never more so than on the day I'm going to tell you about right now.

There was always a world of unspoken thoughts forever hiding just beyond his happy eyes, which I generally understood to be the great gift of his many years of psychological training and experience. He was the head of the high school's guidance department, and as such, he was extremely well versed in how to get someone to open up, sometimes by simply appearing more relaxed and nonchalant than he really was.

On this particular day, he asked to see me in private, and as I recall, the meeting was to be in his office in the Guidance Department over in the high school, about a one-minute walk from my bedroom in the monastery. I had no idea what he might want to discuss, as everything was going pretty well for me up to that point. He and I never had any problems before then either, so it all took me by surprise.

In between his hands once I sat down in his office, he held an open envelope with a letter folded up inside. To my complete shock as I sat there watching him hold this thing, he began explaining to me that this was a letter a friend of mine had written to me, mailed to me and me alone, but one which he had already opened up and read in its entirety.

Just sit with that fact alone for a moment before I continue...

One of your best friends since grade school has written you a private letter, and one of your new religious superiors has opened it up and read it without your permission. He's not even handing it to you. He's holding it in his hands on his side of a very large desk, and he's looking extremely serious, like you're the one who has done something wrong.

I was dumbstruck that this was even happening, and I still didn't know what the contents of the letter might be, or why my Assistant Novice Master was looking at me so seriously. He knew this friend of mine fairly well too, by the way, as my friend was a recent graduate of Chaminade High School, so this moment was beyond crazy. My two very separate worlds, my past as a high school student and my present as a monk, had just crashed full-speed into one another in a reality-shaking moment of confused and utter chaos.

He went on to read a line or two out loud to me from the letter, and as I listened in horror, I began to realize the gravity of the situation. My friend and I had exchanged a few letters by this point (some excerpts of which will be in next week's blog), but for the very first time, he had apparently written something extremely critical about my Assistant Novice Master, the man sitting across from me still casually holding the letter as if it was addressed to him.

I must have turned beet red, not from any sense of guilt, of course, but simply because I felt awful that this storm cloud I had nothing to do with was being thrown in my face as if I was somehow worthy of receiving the blame.

As over 26 years have passed since that day, it's much easier now for me to see clearly that of the three people involved, my Assistant Novice Master, my friend, and me, I was literally the only innocent party.

My friend should have held his temper, at least in a letter he was sending to me in the monastery, but much worse than that, my religious superior had opened my mail without telling me, and was trying to put all sense of deserved blame on me, the only one who still hadn't even read the damn thing*. He didn't try to make me feel bad, actually. He successfully did. He made me feel like I'd just done something truly horrible, and he sat there staring back and forth between the letter and me as he told me how hurt he was by it all.

I see now that he was taking advantage of my youth, inexperience, and gullibility so as to emotionally beat me into apologetic submission, all while somehow completely deflecting everything away from the fact that he'd just read my mail without my permission.

From the Rule of Life of the Society of Mary, found on Marianist.org

It's spelled out very clearly right there in the Rule of Life for the Society of Mary. "The right of each individual to meet these fundamental human needs must be respected." My Assistant Novice Master and I, as I said before, mostly got along pretty well, but on this occasion on this day? He crossed a line. He certainly didn't help me in any way, if that's what he thought he was doing. He scared me, actually, and that fear hurt me much more than it ever helped me grow as a monk or as a human being.

Obedience means a lot of things, but at this point, I was still only an aspirant, not even a vowed religious, and this man I looked up to as my religious superior? He'd just broken the law, and pretty much revealed that he'd been breaking the law multiple times without my knowledge even before this point. After all, what are the odds that he only opened the one letter I ever received that happened to mention him?

The whole situation haunts me to this day as I think about it. I never once trashed him or anyone else to my friends. I had instead given my life over to God in service of the Blessed Mother, and he made me feel as if I was the one who had written the letter he wasn't ever supposed to open up and read.

I've come to see, over time, that he was a product of his environment, just as I was, and certain tactics were simply taught to him so much over the years that he came to believe that opening someone else's letters and reading them was somehow a defensible act of Christian charity.

I don't hate him, and I'm long past the real hurt of the situation. I simply share the story here without cross-referencing his name because this was a pivotal moment in my first year as a monk. His goal, I believe, was to push me further away from my friends outside the community, and it unfortunately worked. I stopped speaking to that friend for several months afterward, and I was much more careful after that in all of my written communications with other people too.

In next week's blog, I'll share portions of the letters my mom and dad each sent me that first summer, as well as some pertinent parts of the many cards and letters I exchanged with my friends. As we begin delving into all of the actual material memories I have from my first year in the monastery, you'll begin to see how it really felt for all of us.

I was starting to see the world around me as if I was an alien on the outside, viewing everything from the inside of the monastery walls, and they were barely guessing what life might be like for me in there, sending me messages from the outside in. I can only guess how many of those letters I received were secretly opened without my knowledge, but regardless of what privacy I did or did not have, hearing from my friends still meant so much to me.

Chaminade High School's main campus. Attached Brothers' house forms an upside-down L on the left.

Coming Next Week: You've Changed So Much


* For the record, I've looked all over, and can't find this letter anywhere in my records. I can't recall if he ever gave it to me, or perhaps he made me throw it away as soon as I'd read it. I can't remember.