Catholic guilt is a term I heard a lot in my life. I think it’s a cop-out in all honesty. You don’t feel bad because you were raised a certain way: you feel bad because you are born bad.
We’re all born bad. We can’t help it though, it’s not our fault… but it is our problem.
Original sin isn’t something you should complain about: it’s something you should repent for. And for a long time it was believed traditional baptism was how we rid ourselves of it. I know I, like many catholics, thought that was the case… Then a few days ago I discovered the real price of purity.
When the bill presented itself to me, I was ready to pay it. I was willing to do what was necessary to reserve my seat in the God’s kingdom.
It was my third year at a rather intense Augustinian school pursuing my bachelors in theological education. I thought about entering the clergy, being that I wanted to educate people on the goodness of God and the impurities of man. Priesthood was the goal for the majority of my life. There was no bigger honor, no bigger sacrament a man can make. That would be as close as I could get to God.
I’d known that fact since I was a boy and it was what I wanted as I entered manhood… but God’s plan often doesn’t coincide with ours.
He thought it was time for me to meet Naomi.
And when she entered my life, the possibility of clergy hood had vanished.
I was in the library one day reading an omnibus of Apocryphal texts, when I heard a voice behind me and felt a warm breath on my neck.
“The Book of Enoch in there?” I jumped a bit in my chair and turned to see a girl peering over my shoulder. She had a soft smile resting on her face. Brown wavy hair, olive skin, gentle green eyes, and the most perfect freckle covered nose I’d ever seen. She was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made you forget where you were… and what you were gonna say.
“What?” I asked. She pointed at the book in my hands.
“Apocryphal texts. Is the book of Enoch in there?” I managed to escape the trance of her eyes and look to the book.
“Oh, no no, it’s uh–” I stumbled over my thoughts as I found myself back in her gaze. “just Christian pieces.”
“Damn, that sucks. The dead sea scrolls are cool.” She stood there looking at me. I couldn’t find any words for her. “I’m Naomi.” Relief filled my body as I hopped into the conversational lifeboat she sent my way.
“Thomas.” I extended a hand to shake. I guess the gesture might’ve been too formal for the circumstances because she curtsied after shaking my hand.
“A pleasure, Mr. Thomas… Do you mind if I sit with you?” Confusion seeped into me as I searched for a response.
“Are… are you sure.?”
She giggled at that.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were aware that there are empty tables literally all over the place so you wouldn’t be stuck sitting here.” The giggle came back out. Her eyes somehow became softer than they already were.
“I’m aware,” she said, as her smirk turned back into a smile. I gestured to the seat across from me. She sat down in the one next to me instead I learned a lot about her life:
She was from Chicago.
She was obsessed with anthropology but was majoring in organic chemistry.
She had an older brother named Eric and a younger sister named Serena.
She loved wood carving.
Her mother drowned in Lake Michigan when she was fourteen.
She watched it happen and didn’t know how to save her.
Her favorite show was The Good Place.
She liked to talk and I liked listening to her. I didn’t learn everything about her in those seven hours at the library, but about thirty minutes in I learned two things about myself: I no longer wanted to be a priest, and I loved her. She gave me her phone number and snap chat and asked me if I wanted to grab a drink. I told her I didn’t drink, but I would’ve loved to take her out to dinner. She agreed and, once again, we shook hands.
Two days later, we found ourselves on that date. She was the one asking me questions that night. I had one for her though, a little after our entrees came to the table.
“Why did you come talk to me in the library the other day?” That smile of hers got bigger and her cheeks became flushed.
“You’re cute.”
The response jumped out of my throat before I even had time to think about it.
“You’re beautiful.”
Her eyes got big. Big and warm. They seemed to go on forever, like a sort of tunnel made of a feeling unfamiliar to me. I lost myself walking down that passage, looking into those eyes, embracing that new and never ending sensation. But before I knew it, I found myself at the stoop outside of her apartment building.
“I had a great time tonight with you, Nao–” she kissed me right there and then. I’d never kissed anybody before. It was the highlight of my life. She pulled away and her eyes met mine.
“It doesn’t have to end here, you know.”
“Oh… are you free next week?” She shook her head and her smiling mouth let out a giggle.
“I mean you can come upstairs, Tom.” I felt my face turn red. Kissing someone was one thing… but the prospect of coitus wasn’t something I’d ever thought I’d come face to face with. I was a virgin in all senses of the word. It was also a sin, and I had that fact embedded in me… but a large part of me also knew that it wasn’t lust, I just genuinely wanted to share myself with this person.
And then it hit me.
This was a test from God. He sent the most wonderful girl in the world to see if he could get me to falter from the path he set me on.
“I’d really love to,” I said to her. “But I’ve got an exam tomorrow and I wanna cram just a little bit more tonight and early tomorrow.”
She bit her lip.
“Ok.”
“Next time?” I asked with a shrug.
“Next time.” She kissed me once again, wished me a good night, and went upstairs.
I passed the test.
And I continued to do so:
We spent more and more time together. We’d go to dinner and to the movies and to trivia nights. She took me apple picking, and dancing, and brought me to the zoo. These were all things I thought were purposeless for a very long time. Things I normally had no desire to do, because they would do me no good in the afterlife… but she made life on earth feel like heaven.
Naomi even started coming to mass with me, on her own accord. She really didn’t care much for religion, but she was willing to come to understand me better.
She made sacrifices to be with me.
And then one day, she sat me down and said she had something important to say.
She told me that she loved me.
More then she had ever loved a person before.
She respected my beliefs and understanded how much my faith meant to me.
But she had needs.
Needs that I couldn’t fulfill because of my faith.
And because of that, she thought it was best we start seeing other people.
Those words drove through my heart like a cold sharp knife.
But rather than blood coming out of the wound in my chest, the truth poured out instead.
I was ready to be with her, if she was still willing to have me.
We practically jumped out of our jeans. The idea of sharing myself with her at that moment… it just made sense. Lying with her, our bodies intertwined, it felt like something divine was taking place. We had become something more than two people: we were one entity. We were walking down that tunnel, together this time. I didn’t want it to end.
“I love you,” she whispered in my ear as we finished. And at the moment we did, I realized what I had done.
I had led a holy life… almost all of my life.
And my human curse still found a way to get the better of me.
God had been testing me, and I failed.
Original sin is perpetual. And it was for that reason that I gave into the temptation of lust and love. Before marriage, of all things.
I left Naomi’s house sobbing as she called after me. Before she was even down the stairs, I was in my car tearing down the street.
I had spit in the face of The Father. I’d given up on my life plan for a woman I’d known for only three months. My mistake shook my whole body and tears flowed in steady streams from my eyes as I made my way home.
There is no greater love than God’s love… and I turned my cheek to it. Everything I had worked so hard to protect and uphold was gone. I had reserved myself a seat in hell.
That thought poisoned my mind all the way home… but as I pulled into the parking lot of my dorm, I was hit with an epiphany.
There was a way out of this.
Even saints had sinned.
But the good they had done for God’s kingdom… the miracles they performed… that outweighed their transgressions. They left this world better than it was when they found it. I had to do the same if there was any chance of repenting.
The next day, Naomi wouldn’t stop calling or texting me, so I threw my phone out of the car window on my way to confession.
Inside, “Our Lady of Perpetual Piety,” the cathedral just off campus, Father Gleeson informed me my crimes against the kingdom of heaven were merely sins in the days of old. He said God was forgiving and even embraced intimacy if motivated by love rather than lust.
Heretic.
This charlatan knew nothing of the gospel. I took his half-blessing and prayed my Hail Mary’s with all my heart.
There had to be a way to clean my soul.
I went to the grocery store by my dorm and stayed out there for about nine hours. I helped people carry and pack their cars during that time, only to feel the same way.
I donated everything I had in the fridge and the non-perishables in my pantry to the local food drive, but I knew in my soul that there was still filth in me.
I wondered if there was a chance that sin resided within us in a physical sense. Perhaps it manifested itself as bacteria? I drank a bottle of hand sanitizer to see if that would help.
I vomited blood and bile. In addition, my level of spiritual sickness appeared stagnant as ever.
I concluded that it did not help.
How else could I rid my body of this horrible plague? The sickness that poisoned all men? How could I cleanse the world of this evil? I pondered these questions for hours. Searched every corner of my mind and found nothing. So I decided to turn to the internet.
‘Original sin’ is what I put into the browser.
An image came up.
It was a triptych painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
The Garden of Earthly Delights is what it was called. A triptych consists of three panels, each being its own painting. They go from left to right to convey a story.
The first panel was of the Garden of Eden. It showed the day God made Eve from Adam and gave them the beauties of the earth… and how, from her creation, Eve had her eyes set on sin.
The second showed a litany of lusting individuals: copulating with and gazing at one another in naked desire. Man and beast defied the laws of the universe and the good word of God.
The third panel portrayed hell: the sinful are rightfully punished and the lustful are stripped bare of their desire, cast into solitude. Fire, brimstone, and horrors beyond reasonable comprehension run rampant.
This last panel is where I’d land because of my failure. And unless I could think of a way to rid myself of this original sin, I’d be doomed… something I had noticed though was that all of the images had a similar connecting theme:
Nudity…
The exposed flesh is what led these people to act so lustfully. God’s greatest test is that which we looked at in the mirror everyday.
Our flesh… was our desire.
It was our sin.
And without skin, I’d have no desire for the flesh of others. All a man would have to do to free himself would be to flay himself. My lust would leave my body with my flesh. It made perfect sense.
This was the price I had to pay for purity. And I was willing to pay it.
The skin on my arms, legs and torso came off a bit smoother than I expected they would. Just to be safe, I took my intimate parts as well. I had to be careful with my neck, but once I got up to my jaw and cheeks, I was able to let out a sigh of relief. I only screamed a little. I have to say though, the hardest parts to peel were my eyelids. I managed to salvage a little bit of the left one. I finally got a look at myself after the last bits of scalp were gone. The muscles and veins in my face looked like an uncooked steak. It was strange. It was painful. But it felt… right. I felt clean. Most of all, I felt one with God.
My lipless smile startled me a bit, but it’s a face I would grow to learn and love as it was the true face the highest had bestowed upon me.
As good as it felt, I knew what came next would be difficult to do.
Salvation is only sweet when it's shared with those you love.
And Naomi didn’t want to be a sinner.
She was just born that way.
She needed somebody to help her shift from a life of sin toward the path of righteousness. So that’s what I did.
Her screams weren’t easy to hear, but I was able to separate her form her skin in under eight hours. She was hesitant to receive salvation. Even fought me, said rather hurtful things about me… my appearance. These were additional tests from God nonetheless. Tests that I passed this time around…. Though, her body was a mess by the time I finished carving. Her struggling made it a lot harder for me to do the job with care… if she had only moved a little less, she might’ve lived.
At least I helped her get into heaven.
And I am willing to help others too.
If you are looking for salvation, well I am looking to bring it to you. Cleanse you of your original sin, free of charge. I don’t mind driving cross country if I have to. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure God’s work is complete. If you’d like to have help getting into the kingdom of heaven, feel free to message me at noskinnosin@hotmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you. In the meantime, I’ll be sure to continue helping others, regardless of their resistance.
Just as God intended.
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