I enter the seminary at a young age but years of academic training fail to drain me of backwoods sap. By God’s good grace, my first parish assignment is a farming community where I soon rent a barn and pasture. A dutiful shepherd, I tend my flock with diligence but, in my spare time, I break young horses to ride.
            Most afternoons, around three o’clock, I'm standing like a centurion at the center of a training pen. I snap the whip and note the rippling muscles of a colt trotting the perimeter: its eyes alert and tail afloat. The hooves pounding the ground echo the sound of stallions marching down a Roman road. 
            “Do you give the horse its strength? Do you clothe its neck with flowing mane? It laughs at fear and is not dismayed.” (cf. Job 39:19-22)
            The colt stops, sweat-drenched, chest heaving. I recall my brother on the long-ago wagon. I hear the ding of a sanctus bell. 
            The horse lowers its head. I approach. Beyond the neck and tangled mane, a rough plank nailed to a post extends its arms. 
            In a place as sacred as this, how can I not bend the knee?