Soren Kierkegaard

followers of Grundtvig—the brothers Johannes Ferdinand and Peter An-
dreas Fenger, the brothers Martin and Frederik Hammerich, and Peter
Rørdam—would regularly call upon her father. But this fraternization does
not seem to have had any further beneficial consequences. On Friday, De-
cember 16, 1836, Søren Aabye had taken communion for the last time ever
with his father, who had had his eightieth birthday four days earlier. The
communion register reports: “Mr. Kierkegaard, Merchant, and one son,
S.A.” But during the entire year 1837 and the first half of 1838 Søren Aabye
did not take communion, and the communion register of the Church of
Our Lady records only “Mr. Kierkegaard, Merchant” and no one else. Nor
was the father accompanied to communion by Peter Christian, because
since Maria’s death Peter Christian had not taken communion at all.
The aged merchant had therefore had to go to communion alone, and
on his journey to and from church he could wistfully remember the days
when his family had gone to confession and communion together, as they
had on Nicoline Christine’s wedding day, Friday, September 24, 1824. In
1838, when G. H. Waage, who had been the family’s confessor for ten
years, was named director of Sorø Academy and the family was thus com-
pelled to choose a new confessor, the breach became unmistakably clear:
The senior Kierkegaard chose A.N.C. Smith, first curate at the Church of
Our Lady; Peter Christian made the same choice, though only after some
hesitation and apparently without knowledge of what his father had chosen;
on the other hand, Søren Aabye, who had turned twenty-five on May 5,
1838 and was therefore legally an adult, chose E. V. Kolthoff, the second-
ranking curate at the Church of Our Lady. On June 6, 1838, when Søren
Aabye took communion by himself for the first time in his life, the sexton
listed a certain “Cand. Philosophiæ[university student] Kierkegaard” in the
communion register, thereby leaving a record of the breach. And the rift
did not heal. In mid-April the father again had to take communion alone,
and his youngest son’s journal entry of a week later was not exactly glowing
with Christian faith: “If Christ is to come and dwell in me, it will have to
be in the manner described in the heading the almanac assigns to the Gospel
reading for today: Christ comes in through closed doors.” It was Sunday,
April 22, 1838. Over at Holmens Church it was an important confirmation
Sunday. One of the hopefuls who had taken up her position in the group
was named Regine Olsen, a girl of sixteen summers. She, too, would subse-
quently enter via closed doors. And exit again.
Among the journal entries from the spring of 1838 is one, dated May 19,
that is totally different in tone from all the others: “There isan indescribable
joythat glows within us just as inexplicably as the unmotivated outburst by
the Apostle: ‘Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice’ (Philippians 4:4). This is not