“The Tridentine Mass was not simply an act of devotion. It was a formula—refined over centuries, its Latin cadence sharpened to a blade. It did not merely invoke divine presence; it compelled it. The faithful saw only beauty. Those who stood at the altar saw its power.”
—from “Calix Sanguinis: The Forbidden Sacrament,” Author Unknown, Vatican-Banned Manuscript, circa 1970, sealed by Papal Decree
Early April was as quiet as New Orleans ever got.
Mardi Gras had come and gone, leaving its usual wake of beads, broken shoes, and beer-slick asphalt. The St. Patrick’s Day parades had done their part to disrupt the solemnity of Lent, flinging cabbages and potatoes with joyful abandon. Now the city had recuperated—just a little.
At the edge of the Notre Dame Seminary campus on Carrollton Avenue, trees swayed in the breeze while the air carried the faint scent of spring flowers and bus diesel. Inside the lecture hall, a dozen men in black shirts with crisp white roman collars. sat at folding tables, eyes on their notes, their future drawing steadily closer. Anyone seeing them on the street would think they were priests, but they were not. Not yet.
By this point in the year, all the seminarians had been ordained as transitional deacons. They’d spent their summers serving in parishes across the archdiocese, and now, in their final stretch of training, they were preparing for ordination to the priesthood. Their studies focused on the three priestly duties still off-limits to them: hearing confessions, anointing the sick, and most central of all, celebrating the Mass.
The theology was familiar. So was the terminology—transubstantiation, real presence, accidents and substance. Words that could pass for philosophical jargon until you stood at the altar and said them aloud. Until you called down a miracle and meant it.
Gerard Gaudet had been practicing since he was a child. He didn’t just want to be a priest. He had always expected to be one.
He was tall without seeming imposing, with the kind of lean frame that made him look hungrier than he probably was. Like many Cajuns, his dark, slightly wavy hair never stayed where he combed it. There was always a shadow of tiredness under his eyes, even when he smiled. He carried himself with quiet certainty, but it wasn’t confidence exactly. It was something older, trained into him over years of altar service, Latin drills, and the soft, relentless pressure of being expected to become a good man. He’d been called handsome more than once, always with a half-smile or a raised brow. It was well known among the kids he grew up with that he aspired to the priesthood. In his teen years at parish dances, girls used to whisper jokes when they thought he didn’t hear, ‘Father Whatawaste.’ And he had pretended not to.
In conversations with Protestant friends over the years, he’d grown used to the skeptical tilt of their heads when the bread and wine of Holy Communion came up. Surely it was symbolic. Surely no one believed it literally transformed.
Gerard did.
And then he heard Father Thomas call his name.
“Gerard, would you please come up and say the consecration?” Even after months of practice, the request still stirred something in the room. No bread. No wine. Just a folding table and a set of words that still felt forbidden in the mouths of men not yet ordained.
Gerard stood without hesitation. He stepped forward, lifted the imaginary host, and began.
“For on the night he was betrayed, he himself took bread…”
His speech was smooth, his cadence practiced. At the pivotal moment, he paused, long enough to center himself, and spoke the words:
“Take this, all of you, and eat of it…”
Dinh, the Vietnamese seminarian with perfect posture and a talent for liturgy, rang the bells. A cluster of tiny chimes broke the silence. He was always precise about it—never too early, never too loud. Gerard liked that about him.
Gerard genuflected, lifted the imaginary chalice, and continued.
The air always felt heavier when he said those words aloud.Probably nerves. Or the weight of the moment.
He finished the prayer. Dinh rang the bells again.
“Okay, gentlemen,” said Father Thomas, clapping once. “That’s about all we have time for today. On Monday, we’ll be going over Eucharistic Prayer IV.”
“Okay, gentlemen, that’s about all we have time for today. On Monday, we’ll be going over Eucharistic Prayer IV.”
“No one ever does EP IV!” Came a shout from the back of the room. Laughter filled the hall.
“Well, we are. Monday,” Father Thomas replied, dryly. “Any questions before you go?” The room began to stir with conversation, but Gerard raised his hand.
“When are we learning to celebrate the Mass in Latin?”
The conversation stopped dead.
Father Thomas shifted. “Well,” the priest was hedged. “The Latin Mass will almost never be performed by most of you in parish ministry.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “Even less frequently than EP IV, eh?”
More scattered laughter. But the discomfort lingered.
“You can study it on your own,” Father Thomas added. “Or, if you join an order that uses it, you’ll be trained once you’re ordained. But the Holy Father’s been clear that we are to focus on the vernacular. English. Spanish. Or both.”
Gerard knew the topic was touchy. Interest in the Traditional Latin Mass had become controversial in recent years. He expected the deflection, but not the shift in tone.
As he turned to go, he caught sight of Brother Michael, a Dominican friar in his traditional black hood atop a white tunic, quietly gathering Mass booklets for return to the seminary library. He always moved like he was trying not to be seen, yet somehow managed to be everywhere. Though fully ordained, he still preferred the old title—Brother Michael, not Father. The title was simpler, humbler. It felt like less of a lie.
His beard was neatly kept, his light brown hair just visible beneath the edge of his hood, and his glasses were always slightly askew. His brown eyes missed very little. He was probably in his late thirties and carried himself with the calm weariness of someone who had long since stopped expecting credit for doing the right thing. There was something about his silence that made you feel like you were already confessing.
Gerard collected the booklets from his table and walked them over.
The room was nearly empty now, but Brother Michael leaned in, voice low and deliberate. “Help me take these down to the library. I have something I think you’re ready to read.”
Gerard’s face said that he was skeptical, but he gestured for him to lead the way.
It was late Friday afternoon, the academic buildings had emptied. The library was dim and quiet. “Thanks for your help, Gerard.”
Michael disappeared into the stacks and returned with a slim, black book—leather-bound, no title. Only a gold symbol stamped into the cover: a chalice beneath a teardrop.
Gerard studied the cover. “Thanks. What is it?”
Michael smiled. “It’ll be clear as you get into it.”
Gerard took the book and turned to leave.
“Oh—and pay special attention to page thirty-three.”
Gerard nodded slowly, unsure if it was a warning or a joke. But Michael didn’t clarify. He just turned and vanished between the shelves, like a man who’d delivered his message and didn’t need to wait for the answer.
Hours later, Gerard sat in the small apartment his family had owned since he was a child, the book still heavy in his bag. Spartan and sunlit, it had just enough: a bathroom, two closets, a kitchen that barely deserved the name, and one open space that served as bedroom, living room, and dining room all at once.
His parents had made it work. A full-size bed against the kitchen wall, an overstuffed chair beside it. Two sofas in the corner—one beneath the window, one a sleeper. Somehow, it all fit.
Though they made their lives in Morgan City, his parents had kept the unit at The Georgian, an old brick apartment building on St. Charles Avenue, its front covered from ground to roof with ivy, for decades because they loved it and they loved the city. It wasn’t the square footage that mattered. It was the view.
From the sixth floor, you could see the canopy of live oaks and the green streetcars rumbling along the neutral ground. Not the “median.” Not here.
The apartment next door used to belong to the Millers—Jim and Clarine—who’d lived there longer than anyone. Back when the old side-by-side Otis elevators groaned louder and the ivy hadn’t yet swallowed the brick. Rumor had it they’d joined a one-bedroom with the studio beside it, carving a door between them and turning the second kitchen into a closet. Jim had been a top turret gunner in a B-17, and Clarine sang in the USO—that’s how the story of how they met went.
They were long gone now. Clarine first, then Jim, not long after. As if she’d sung the last verse, and he’d known it was time to go, and simply took her hand and followed her away. Without quite meaning to, the Gaudet family had become the old-timers.
For twelve days every year, the place had been packed—parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, all camped out with king cake and paper plates. They’d slept on every inch of floor and waited together for beads and doubloons.
Over the years, the tradition faded, as all childhood traditions do.
His older brother moved away. Uncle Remy died. The apartment now spent most of the year empty, loaned out during Jazz Fest or Carnival.
Seminarians were free to leave campus on weekends. Most did—visiting family, catching up with friends, or escaping the quiet weight of the empty dorms. Gerard came here instead. He always had.
So, for the weekend, the space was his.
Not for revelry.
For remembrance.
The Mass book was heavier than it looked, and he couldn’t shake the sense that Michael had given it to him for a reason he wasn’t saying. It didn’t read like a gift—it read like a test.
He pulled it from his bag, along with a fried oyster po’boy from Ye Olde College Inn. He’d eat it cold, and by the letter of the law, if not the spirit, it would count as a fast on a Lenten Friday that also happened to be a feast.
The gold symbol on the book caught the light. The pages inside were the Latin text of the Tridentine Mass. Nothing more. Nothing less. Yet the air around it had shifted, just enough to notice.
Gerard’s Latin was solid. He’d studied it for years—long enough to read the Tridentine Mass without stumbling.
He flipped through the first few pages. The rhythm pulled him in.
Then he remembered what Brother Michael had said about page thirty-three.
He turned to it.
The page itself was unremarkable. But an index card slipped free.
In thick black Sharpie, it read:
Chapel. Sunday. 1:00 a.m. (Monday). Alone.
Hastily written. Probably scrawled in the few seconds Brother Michael spent retrieving the book. Maybe he was worried Gerard would misread the timing and had added Monday in parentheses to be sure.
1:00 a.m. A strange hour.
Some might worry about impropriety, and Gerard knew these things happened, even here. But whatever this was, it wasn’t that. Not in the chapel. Not with Michael.
He had the weekend to read. To jog the Saint Charles Avenue neutral ground. To eat his sandwich and sit with his thoughts.
On Sunday morning, he would go to Mass at St. Mary’s Assumption.
On Sunday afternoon, he would return to the seminary.
And when the hour came, he would be in the chapel.
