to train us in the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
In our first year Father Louis taught us Latin and in our
second year Father Ambrose started us with German while
we continued with Latin and we studied English in both years.
So we began to get a very good training in the basics of grammar.
During our third year we were also being trained in the rhetorical arts
of expressing ourselves in both writing and in public speaking.
In English we learned to write an essay with an introduction, a body
with three parts, and a conclusion and we talked about defending
a thesis with demonstration, definitions, distinctions, and dialectics.
We were also introduced to public speaking and down in the Little
Gym we began to see fourth-year students address an audience
in a speech contest and we knew that next year we would do the same.
We would not study logic in depth until our sixth year
but we knew and were friends with the logicians and looked
forward to learning both the traditional and the new mathematical logic.
We came to understand how our study of algebra, of geometry,
and of trigonometry was already introducing us to logical thinking.
When we got our report cards in November of my second year
I received 89 in Latin II, 84 in German I, 81 in Geometry
and 84 in Chant II, plus 95 in Religion II, 95 in English II,
and 98 in World History and when Father Ambrose gave me my
report card he said I could do better and I believed him.
I,3.2 Nourishing Agapeic Affection with Grammar
That conversation with Father Ambrose about my report card
started a mysterious new phase of my life in the seminary.
In January I got basically the same grades and I even fell
from 84 to 81 in German, which he was teaching me.
But he must have inspired me to a New Year’s resolution
because by June all my grades were much higher and
I went from 81 in German to 92 and he was pleased.
From then on I got good grades and I continued to talk with
Father Ambrose and I told him about my troubles with celibacy.
In my third year we decided together that he would be my confessor.
And so once a week I went to his office, knelt before him,
and confessed my sins and somehow as long as he was my
confessor and spiritual advisor I never committed another sexual sin.
He was as affectionate to me as was my own father who,
when I was in the third grade, worked hard with me to keep
my grades up and it was as if they were parallel events.
It seems that Father Ambrose with his celibate life had sublimated
his erotic passion in such a way that it even gave him the power
of a sublimated agapeic affection and a sublimated friendship.
Because Father Ambrose was celibate with no wife or children
of his own he could be affectionate and friendly toward each of us.
Somehow the power of his celibate agape even let me be
celibate and to become a much better student with that new
concentrated and passionate energy channeled over from
the black horse to the white horse and the charioteer.
Father Ambrose was my German teacher and all the intricacies
of grammar were becoming clear to me as I declined nouns
and conjugated verbs in both Latin and German and started
learning the tenses and voices of the verbs and the nominative,
genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative roles of the noun.
Growth in attention to grammatical structures increased loving attention.
I,3.3 Nourishing Agapeic Eros with Rhetoric
Perhaps Father Ambrose’s sex drive was quite strong and thus
the sublimation of his eros into agape could be so powerful
that I could identify with it and be graced with celibacy myself.
Up at Sun Valley where I worked during the summer and Christmas
vacation there was a beautiful waitress by the name of Myrna.
I remember wishing that she and Father Ambrose could meet and marry.
She was a very devout lady who would go to daily Mass each
Tuesday and Friday and I felt a reverent love for her myself.
My continued study of grammar helped me with reading and
listening so that if I heard any incorrect grammar I would
silently notice it unless it were from my brothers whom I corrected.
In certain classes such as English we would be called upon
to read out loud and being able at once to spot sentence structure
with its phrases and clauses helped me to be a good reader.
Constantly working with grammar gave me a familiarity with
language and that familiarity became an affection for speaking,
which encouraged me to always speak with affection to all,
as Father Ambrose and the other monks would always speak to us.
Before Father Ambrose became a monk his name was Joseph Zenner.
Perhaps he chose the name
