Diary of a Priest in Love: 1. Falling into Love: a Legion of Christ Missionary in Mexico

Publisher Marketing: Will anyone understand this story? What led to the above rapturous discovery of romantic love? Or -depending on your religious point of view- how did a faithful and devout priest fall so precipitously from grace? How did this meticulously trained Legionary of Christ plunge to his death in the blink of an eye like an Acapulco diver done awry? How was his armor so easily pierced by the batting of a dark eyelash? For decades after the heady events in Mexico City and the Yucatan, our protagonist Abelard stored away his notebooks in battered boxes left in the basement. They were painful, goofy and incomprehensible: naive emotional outpourings from an immature life stage that was full of joy, suffering and, tinged, perhaps, with shame. He knew they would sound strange and senseless to many. By the same token sharing the notebooks would leave him open to ridicule, futility and irrelevance. Nevertheless, he decided to entrust them to the writer because of their value as real experiences. Perhaps readers might garner some insights into Abelard's -and St. Augustine's- obsessions: God and the human soul . And in a world where everything seemed trivial, material, boring, cheap and reduced to the lowest common denominator -including relationships, love, sex, passion, Church, priest... Could the diaries help regular people get inside the head and heart of a priest, a celibate Torn between love of God and love of woman? Could the man on the street find this often gut-wrenching experience interesting? What relevance has the obscure, rarified, piety glutted and spiritually stifling life of a Legionary of Christ have for the general public, the 21st-century-Christian or your regular Catholic? How does a priest react when "tempted by the flesh"? Is God anywhere to be found? Could Spirit somehow be present in the cauldron of passions which are often portrayed as base and purely instinctual? Could sensuality and passion in some paradoxical way be wholesome and holy? What happens when a priest is treated harshly and unwisely by his superiors? Where do Eros, Agape and Divine Love intersect? Or do they?