Page 1 of Biblical Knowledge (Divine Temptations #3)

Henry

* * *

The chair outside Rector Redcay’s office was just comfortable enough to make me think about how uncomfortable I was.

The kind of padded seat that encouraged waiting—quiet, patient, obedient waiting—but my body wasn’t interested in playing along.

My knees felt like they were ready to sprint in opposite directions.

I stared at the muted cream walls, the crucifix above the door, the framed black-and-white photo of the pope, anything to keep my thoughts from spiraling.

The hallway smelled faintly of lemon polish and candle wax, a scent that had seeped into every corner of St. Joseph’s Seminary.

A holy and safe smell. A smell that told you God was paying attention.

But if God was listening to me, He hadn’t been answering.

I’d prayed until my voice was hoarse, until my knees were sore from the pews, until my head felt like it would split in half from begging for clarity.

And yet, here I was, either about to make the best decision of my life…

or the worst. I didn’t have the calling.

Not the quiet certainty the other seminarians spoke of, not the divine pull toward the altar.

Just a hollow ache and the gnawing suspicion that I’d been forcing something that was never meant to fit.

The rector’s secretary sat at a heavy oak desk to my right, tapping away at a typewriter with the steady rhythm of a metronome.

Father Daniel—young, maybe thirty at most, lean under his black cassock—had a face that could’ve belonged to a saint or a villain depending on the light.

Sharp cheekbones, a square jaw, dark hair combed so neatly it looked shellacked into place.

His collar gleamed white against all that black, crisp as if he’d put it on seconds ago.

Every time I glanced over, I swore his eyes narrowed just a fraction, as though my fidgeting was a personal affront to the holiness of the hallway. I stood, pacing a short strip of carpet between the chair and the opposite wall.

Tap. Tap. Tap. The typewriter keys kept their beat.

Father Daniel didn’t look up, but I felt his gaze tracking me like a hawk’s. I sank back into the chair, forcing my thigh to stop bouncing by clamping my hand over it. My heart still galloped, like it was trying to escape before I did.

The telephone on Father Daniel’s desk rang, the sharp sound cutting through the silence. He lifted the receiver, murmured a few words I couldn’t catch, then replaced it with the precision of a man who’d never once slammed a phone in his life.

“You can go in now, Mr. Forrester,” he said, in a tone that suggested the next man to walk through that door would be a priest in the making. Just not me.

I wiped my palms against my black slacks, stood, and crossed the threshold.

Rector Frank Redcay’s office was exactly what you’d imagine if you pictured “Church Authority, Senior Edition.” Dark wood paneling.

A massive mahogany desk polished to a shine.

A tall bookshelf stacked with thick theological tomes, papal encyclicals, and a framed photo of him on a fishing trip, grinning in waders.

Sunlight filtered through the heavy drapes, throwing golden stripes across the rug.

The air smelled faintly of old books and incense.

Rector Redcay sat behind the desk, his silver hair perfectly combed back, his black clerical shirt buttoned neatly under a well-worn Roman collar. He was in his late sixties, with deep lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth that spoke of both laughter and sternness.

“Henry,” he said, his voice warm enough to make my stomach twist. “Come in, son. Sit.”

I lowered myself into the leather chair opposite him, which creaked under my weight.

He smiled at me, a genuine smile that made me feel, for a split second, like I was the only student in the seminary. “What’s on your mind, Henry?”

My mouth opened. Nothing came out. The silence was loud enough to feel like a confession in itself.

“You know you can talk to me about anything,” he breathed.

I exhaled slowly, my shoulders sagging. And then I blurted it out.

“I don’t have the calling. I’m leaving the seminary.”

The smile vanished. His brow furrowed slightly, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and deliberate, like he was picking each word up and weighing it before setting it down.

“Why?”

My voice shook. It came out thin, like a ribbon of smoke, and I watched it tremble across the space between us as if it belonged to someone else. The words started as explanation and curdled into confession.

“I’m certain,” I said. “I don’t have the calling.”

Rector Redcay’s face did the thing it always did when he was listening closely. The smile softened, the lines around his eyes deepened, and he folded himself into patience like a man who had carried more hard things than this and learned how to set them down gently. “Tell me why,” he said.

My throat felt as if someone had tied a rope around it. For a moment I couldn’t breathe; the room narrowed to the dust motes in the sunlight and the little tick of the clock on his shelf. Then the dam broke.

“It started with a crush,” I said, and the confession landed with a ridiculous, traitorous lightness.

“One of the seminarians. I never, um, I never acted on it. Nothing happened. But knowing what I felt, that it was there… I thought maybe that meant I didn’t belong here.

I kept praying to make it go away. Then I kept waiting for that quiet certainty other men talk about, and it never came. ”

He let out a long, soft sigh and shook his head once, slowly enough that there was no scolding in it.

“Henry,” he said, and I heard the careful patience in the way he set the name down.

“Being homosexual is not a sin. Acting on sexual desire outside the sacrament of marriage is what the Church calls disordered.”

I remember thinking, absurdly, about the way he’d taught us about the difference between inclination and act — theological nuance presented at the front of a classroom in his calm baritone.

The distinction should have been comforting.

Instead, it felt like an extra hinge on the door I was trying to close.

Then he asked me, sharp and direct in a way that made my stomach drop: “Have you ever had sex?”

My cheeks flamed, hot and ridiculous. I’d rehearsed every theological argument and every reason for leaving in my head a hundred times, but no one had given me a script for answering that question.

“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

His smile came back, a little gentler, and there was a touch of irony in it I couldn’t quite read.

“Then what is the problem?” he asked. “If you’re called to the priesthood, the vow of chastity protects both the Church and the priest. It’s not about denying who you are.

It’s about promise and service. Desire, in itself, is not the end.

As a priest, you don’t act on those impulses, whether they point toward a man or a woman. ”

His words should have unknotted something in me.

They should have offered a way to patch the torn edges of my doubt.

Instead, what I felt was more complex, like a layered garment I couldn’t shed.

There was relief, the smallest, most treacherous relief, that I had never crossed that boundary, but my relief did not equate to a calling to be a priest. Relief did not turn absence into conviction.

“How can I stay,” I heard myself say, voice thinner, “when I don’t believe I have what a priest should have? I can’t pretend. I can’t spend a life pretending I’m answering a call that never came.”

He paused, the kind of pause that collects a dozen things and weighs them.

I watched his hands — those hands had presided at Mass for decades, had steadied troubled students, had ironed cassocks and written letters of recommendation.

They told stories of their own: a life of practical faith, of steady work.

When he spoke again, it was low and deliberate.

“You are one of our finest minds, Henry,” he said. “You have discipline, charity, intellect. And you would be an asset to the Church. Don’t throw that away on fear.”

The word “fear” landed like a gauntlet. I’d expected anger. I’d expected paternal disappointment, maybe a measured admonishment. Instead, he named the thing I’d been living inside for years. He saw it and called it what it was.

I thought of all the hours I’d spent studying, the way I’d lingered after class to ask questions about the saints, about desire, about sin and salvation.

An image of Rector Redcay passed through my mind at the front of the lecture hall, leaning on the lectern, his voice making the Dead Sea scrolls feel alive.

I admired him in a way that made my chest ache; he had been a lighthouse for me, and now I felt like I was steering away and leaving him to watch the shore alone.

“I can’t be the priest I’m asked to be,” I said finally. “Lying to myself and others is wrong. I respect the vocation, I respect what it asks, but I don’t have the interior peace needed for the priesthood. The answer is no.”

His face was unreadable for a heartbeat, then softened into something like sorrow. “You admire the Church,” he said. “You admire its beauty and its order. That doesn’t mean you have to stand at the altar to serve it. Service takes many forms. What will you do next?”

“What will I do?” I asked. The question was partly literal, partly a howl.

It contained all the small, panicked thoughts I’d been carrying: how to pay my bills, my reputation, the look on people’s faces, the way the other men might talk.

It also contained the dull practicalities — a life that suddenly needed to be chosen.

“A teaching post,” I said, almost before I’d decided I would allow myself to think it. “Theology. Religious studies. Something adjacent.” My voice faltered. Saying it aloud made it feel both braver and lonelier. “I don’t know for certain. I only know that I can’t do this.”

Rector Redcay leaned back and steepled his fingers. “Teaching would suit you,” he said. “You have the mind for it and the patience. It would be honest work, and you would still be forming minds, shaping faith in a different way.”

His approval should have eased me. Instead, guilt pinched at the edges of whatever relief I felt.

I admired him, and I wanted his blessing.

Selfishly, I wanted him to be proud of me rather than disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and it was the truest thing I’d spoken in weeks. “I’m sorry if I… if I let you down.”

He smiled then, and there was no condemnation in it. “You’re not letting me down, Henry. You’re choosing a path that might be truer to who you are. We shepherd many kinds of souls, and the good shepherd knows when to let a lamb go explore the meadow.”

Rector Redcay leaned back in his chair, studying me for a moment, then said, “Have you ever heard of the Claremont School of Theology?”

I shook my head.

“It’s in Los Angeles. My alma mater,” he said, and there was a flicker of fondness in his eyes, the kind you reserve for places that shaped you.

“Weather’s wonderful year-round, and their faculty are some of the finest in the country.

If you earn your PhD there, you’ll be able to find a position anywhere you like.

At a university or a seminary, public lectures, you name it. ”

The words felt as if someone had opened a window. There was still a storm outside, but at least I could breathe.

“I… thank you, Father. I…” My voice stumbled, catching on the lump in my throat. “Thank you.”

I started to rise, still shaky, but he lifted a hand. “Sit. I’ll type out your letter of recommendation right now.”

I sank back down as he swiveled toward the hulking typewriter on the side of his desk.

The old keys clacked in a steady rhythm, punctuated by the metallic ding at the end of each line.

His fingers moved with surprising speed for a man his age, and I realized he’d probably written hundreds of these—maybe thousands—each one a bridge between where someone stood and where they might go.

Watching him, I felt a deep gratitude that almost hurt.

Gratitude for his generosity, for not shaming me when I expected it, for seeing the part of me that could still serve, even if it wasn’t at the altar.

But beneath it was the persistent ache of guilt, sharp and sour.

No matter what he said, it still felt like I’d failed him. Failed the Church. Failed God.

The clacking stopped. He slipped the page free, read it over with a small nod, then folded it neatly and slid it into a crisp white envelope. With a firm press of his thumb, he sealed it and extended it toward me.

I took it carefully, like it was more fragile than paper had any right to be. “Thank you, Father,” I said. My voice was steadier this time, though the guilt still pressed against my ribs. “And again, I’m sorry. For letting you down.”

I left the office with the envelope in hand, the echo of his typewriter still in my ears. The air in the hallway seemed different now—less oppressive, but not quite free. As I walked past Father Daniel’s desk, he gave me a curt nod, with no trace of the earlier judgment in his expression.

Out in the courtyard, the afternoon sun struck my face. I paused, feeling its warmth, and I smelled the faint scent of cut grass drifting on the breeze. The path ahead was unmarked, and I didn’t know where it might lead. I just knew it wouldn’t be here.

And for the first time, I let myself wonder—really wonder—what would happen to me next.