It was nearing dusk, and the presbytery was characteristically quiet. A dim lamp from the reading table was on as Father Albin entered through the plain wooden front door. He was still wearing his alb and chasuble vestments, as he almost always did after the Sunday evening mass. One of his favorite moments has always been to lay still on top of his bed, with his vestments still on, close his eyes, and mentally review the mass he just delivered. This moment created a kind of calm ecstasy for him. He sometimes felt a sense of guilt or impropriety about it, but it was an addiction he couldn't shake, and had stopped trying to.
After several minutes of reflection, he hung his white alb and chasuble in his closet. The chasuble was special to him. Like most priests, he had chasubles of different colors to reflect the various liturgical seasons and moods. This was his everyday garment, primarily colored a deep emerald green and bearing beautiful gold embroidered arabesques. Inside several of the circular arabesques were royal blue accents, which were unusual in such an everyday chasuble, and part of the reason that Father Albin liked this one so much.
Having grown up near Indianapolis, he wanted to stay close to his family after being ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church. The years away at St. Louis University studying theology had kept him just far enough away, and just long enough, to strain the relationship with his aging parents. He was excited when the archdiocese approached him about the opportunity to take over for Father Williams at St. Joseph's in Lublin. Lublin was a small town, but it was a short drive from his parents, so he could visit them when his liturgical duties waned.
After hanging his vestments, he sat in his plush faux-leather reading chair, and picked up his cherished copy of Joseph Campbell's "Myths to Live By". It was a first edition that his mother had gifted him after high school graduation. He had read it many times before, and each time he went back to it, he found new perspectives and new learnings in it. He had started to push himself to read it regularly, once every year or two to help gauge his changing perspective.
His time at St. Louis was never far from his mind. Catholic guilt had followed him most of his life. From his younger days trying to impress the neighborhood girls, to his later years where his vices and faults began to control him - he always felt the constriction of personal guilt. Once, as a teenager, he had allowed an older neighbor girl to tie him to a kitchen chair, and taunt him with her sexuality. He was fraught with confusion over this incident. What did it mean? She wanted him? She wanted to control him? He remembers masturbating furiously to the scene later that night. The only relief he could find from the tension it created.