Saint Maximilian Kolbe is the Man in the Mirror

At the canonization of St Maximilian Kolbe, Pope John Paul II was gifted with a portrait of the new saint by Fr James McCurry, a friend of Beyond These Stone Walls.

August 12, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

As many of our readers know, this blog began early in the month of August in 2009. It came into being as a result of a phone call to Australia. The person I called in Sydney had read an article I wrote for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. It was her daunting suggestion that I write a blog that would be published weekly from prison. I had no idea then how that could happen. I had already been in prison for 15 years then, and Pornchai Moontri had already been my roommate for two years.

So after my phone call to Australia, I returned to our cell and told Pornchai what had been suggested to me. Neither of us knew what a blog was. They did not exist when we first went to prison. But I told Pornchai of what had been described to me: that this could be our voice to the world from behind these prison walls. Neither of us were taking this seriously, but I asked Pornchai that if I went ahead with this project, what should I call it? He immediately suggested “These Stone Walls.”

I wrote a weekly post from 2009 to 2020 when somehow this blog ran into a wall of resistance. It had to be taken down and started anew. Both Pornchai and I thought it was the end of our voice in the wilderness, but just weeks later in September 2020 it was restored with a new name: Beyond These Stone Walls. It also had a new editor, and in the same week that all of this happened, Pornchai was taken away on September 8, 2020, at 5 AM. He was taken for ICE detention (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) where he prepared for his deportation to Thailand after 36 years in the U.S., 30 of them in prison. I wrote at the time of all that we had been facing in a widely acclaimed post, “Life Goes On Behind and Beyond These Stone Walls.”

Since then another six years have passed. Pornchai has been back in Thailand for six years at this writing, and I have now been writing these weekly posts for 17 years. At this time each year Pornchai and I both honor our patron saint, Maximilian Kolbe, who surrendered his life at Auschwitz to save the life of another prisoner.

What follows are the first three posts ever written for this blog. I think you will see why we combined them to publish anew here this month.

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St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror

First published August 2009.

For someone on the outside looking in, it must seem an odd place to begin. Virtually every prison cell has one: a small stainless steel sink with a matching toilet welded to its side. Bolted to the cinderblock wall just above it is a small stainless steel mirror, dinged, dented, and scraped so badly that the image it reflects is unrecognizable.

I began each day in prison at the break of dawn by shaving in front of that mirror. That morning ritual had been repeated 5,412 times [when I first wrote of it in 2009. At this writing, I have been here for 11,750 days, but I no longer shave in front of that mirror. Rules for shaving changed sometime back. I now keep a close-cropped white beard, somewhat like the one Sean Connery wore, but without his cool Scottish accent.] Back then, I seldom cut myself shaving — a minor miracle as I could see very little of my self in that mirror. I often think of St. Paul’s cryptic image in his first letter to the Church in Corinth (13:12): “For now I see dimly, as in a mirror, but then I shall see face to face.” It is a hopeful image.

I sometimes find that my mind calculates dates and their meanings on a sort of autopilot. There came a day when I stood at the mirror to shave and realized that on that day — it was December 23, 2006 — I had been a priest in prison for the exact amount of time that I was a priest “on the streets” as prisoners like to describe their lives before prison.

From that day until now, I wonder which I see more of in that flawed mirror. Do I see the man who is a priest of 27 years? [Now 44 years] Or do I see only Prisoner 67546, the identity imposed upon me behind prison walls?

A strange thing happened on the day after I first reflected — as best I could in that mirror — on who I see. It was Christmas Eve, December 24, 2006, the day that the equation changed. It was the day that I was a priest in prison longer than anywhere else. That night at prison mail call, I had a few Christmas cards. One of them was from Father James McCurry, a Conventual Franciscan priest who once visited me in prison.

Inside Father McCurry’s Christmas card was a prayer card that is now one of my enduring treasures. It is taped to the stone wall just above the mirror in my cell and has been there ever since. In later years I was moved to other places, but the card always came with me. The holy card has an image of St. Maximilian Kolbe who offered himself for execution by starvation in place of another prisoner in Auschwitz in 1941. The card depicts Father Kolbe in his Conventual Franciscan habit. He has one sleeve in the striped jacket of his prison uniform with the number 16670 emblazoned across it. There is a scarlet “P” above the number indicating his Polish nationality. He was also a priest and a falsely accused prisoner. Does either designation extinguish the other? Father Kolbe is at once both, though only one identity was chosen by him.

The image is a haunting image for it captures fully that struggle I have so keenly felt. Father Maximilian appeared in my cell just a day after I asked the question of myself. Who am I? I thought at the time, that it was a rhetorical question, but it was a prayer. As such, it begged a reply — and got one.

Saint Maximilian and This Man’s Search for Meaning

Not long after that card first arrived, so did my friend Pornchai Moontri. He had just spent 13 years in solitary confinement in the Maine State Prison since he was age 18. When they could no longer hold him in the cruelty of such a place, they sent him here where he ended up with me. On the day he arrived in my cell, he dropped his trash bag of belongings, stared at the image above the mirror and asked, “Is this you?” That, too, was not a rhetorical question.

How I came to be in this prison is a story told elsewhere, by me and by others. How I “met” Father Maximilian Kolbe 60 years after he surrendered his life at Auschwitz is a story about actual grace. In his Catholic Catechism, Jesuit Father John Hardon defined actual grace as God’s gift of “the special assistance we need to guide the mind and inspire the will” on our path to God. Sometimes, it is very special.

My first years in prison are a blur in my memory. There is no point trying to find words to express the sense of loss, of alienation, of being cast into a dark abyss that was not of my own making — a loss that could not be grounded in any reality of my own. Thousands of days and nights had passed in the abyss before what Father Hardon described as “special assistance” crossed my path.

Someone, somewhere — I don’t know who — sent the prison’s Catholic chaplain (a layman then) a book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, M.D. Somewhere in my studies, I heard of this book, but only a prisoner can read it in the same light in which it is written. The chaplain called me to his office.  He wanted to know whether he should recommend this book, but didn’t have time to read it.  He wanted my opinion.

It had been years since anyone had asked my opinion on anything.  I didn’t read Dr. Frankl’s book so much as devour it.  I read it through three times in seven days.  As a priest, I often counseled others that grace is a process and not an event. It is not always so.  I was meant to read Man’s Search for Meaning at the precise moment that it landed upon my path. A week earlier, I would not have been ready.  A week later may have been too late.

I was drowning in a solitary sea of hopelessness.  I was not going to make it across.  My priesthood and my soul were dying.  The Book, as I have come to call it, is Viktor Frankl’s vivid account of how he alone among his family survived imprisonment in Auschwitz.  This was an imprisonment imposed on him for who he was: a Jew.

There is a central message in this small book.  A profound message, so clear in meaning, that it has within it the hallmark of inspired truth.   Like Saul thrown from his mount, I remember sinking to the floor when I read it.

“There is a freedom that no one can ever take from you: The freedom to choose the person you are going to be in any set of circumstances.”

This changed everything. Everything! You will see how later.  At the very end of his book, Dr. Frankl revealed the name of his inspiration for surviving Auschwitz. He wrote of Sigmund Freud’s cynical view that man is self-serving. And a man’s instinctual need to survive will trump “quaint notions” such as grace and sacrifice every time.  For Dr. Frankl, Auschwitz provided the proof that Freud was wrong.

That proof was Father Maximilian Kolbe.

The Sacrifice of Saint Maximilian

“Greater love has no man than this: that a man lay down his life for another.”

— John 15:13

As a young priest in 1982, I was only vaguely familiar with the name Maximilian Kolbe. I remember reading of his canonization by Pope John Paul II, but Father Kolbe’s world was far removed from my modern suburban priesthood. I was far too busy to step into it.

I didn’t know that nearly two decades later, Father Kolbe’s life, death, and sainthood would be proclaimed triumphantly on the wall of my prison cell, and not only by me. I also didn’t know this would help define the person I choose to be in prison.

Being a Jew and not a Catholic, Dr. Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, said nothing about Maximilian’s sainthood or any miracles attributed to his intercession. Instead, Dr. Frankl was moved by the profound sacrifice of Maximilian, which defies the narcissism of our times.

For those unfamiliar with him, the story is simple.

The prisoners of Auschwitz were packed into bunkers like cattle. To encourage informants, the camp had a policy that if any prisoner escaped, 10 others would be randomly chosen for summary execution.

At the morning roll call one day, a prisoner from Maximilian’s bunker was missing. Guards chose 10 men to be executed. The 10th fell to the ground and cried for the wife and children he would never see again. Father Kolbe spontaneously stepped forward and said,

“I am a Catholic priest, and I would like to take the place of this man.”

Two weeks later, he alone was still alive among the 10 prisoners chained and condemned to starvation. Maximilian was injected with carbolic acid on August 14, 1941, and his remains unceremoniously incinerated.

For the unbeliever, all that Maximilian was went up in smoke and ash in the bleak sky above Auschwitz. Viktor Frankl shared some other corner of that horrific prison. The story of the person Father Kolbe chose to be rippled through the camp. This story offered proof to Viktor Frankl that we can be as much inspired by grace as doomed by despair. We get to choose which will define us.

Within days of reading Man’s Search for Meaning  and learning of Father Kolbe’s sacrifice, I received a letter from out of the blue. Conventual Franciscan Father James McCurry had been in an airport in Ireland when he heard an Irish priest nearby mention that he corresponds with a priest in a Concord, New Hampshire prison. Father McCurry said he was on his way to visit his order’s house in Granby, Massachusetts and would arrange to visit the Concord prison.

Weeks later, Father McCurry and I met in the prison visiting room. When I asked him what his “assignment” is, he said,

“Well I just finished a biography of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Have you heard of him?”

Father McCurry went on to say that he was involved in Father Maximilian’s Cause for Sainthood, and was officially appointed by the Vatican to be Vice-Postulator for Maximilian’s Cause. He had met the man whose life was saved by Father Kolbe.

A few years later, Father McCurry arranged a Father Maximilian Kolbe exhibit at the National Holocaust Museum. It was then that he sent me the card depicting Father Maximilian clothed in his Franciscan habit with one sleeve in his prison uniform. I keep the card above my mirror in my cell.

I can never embrace these stone walls. I can’t claim ownership of them. Passively acceding to injustice anywhere contributes to injustice everywhere. Father Maximilian never approved of Auschwitz.

One cannot understand how I now respond to these stone walls, however, without hearing of Father Maximilian’s presence here.

Above my mirror, he refocused my hope in the light of Christ. The darkness can never overcome it.

What hope and freedom there is in that fact! The darkness can never, ever, ever overcome it!

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I will be offering Mass late at night on August 14, the Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, which is also the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, his Immaculata and ours. Regarding the letter from Father James McCurry at the end of this post, I only just now realized that it had not come to me from our editor; rather, Father McCurry sent it by U.S. mail to Pornchai Maximilian in Thailand, where it arrived after weeks with all its wrinkles still intact. Pornchai was so proud of it that he quickly took a photo and mailed it to me in prison.

You may also like these related posts in honor of our Patron Saint:

Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s Gift of Noble Defiance

The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell

Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s Gift of Noble Defiance

At the end of July, 85 years ago in 1941, Father Maximilian Kolbe stepped out of line at Auschwitz. His gift of noble defiance has spread throughout the known world.

July 30, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

Auschwitz 1941:

After the so-called dinner, I was invited between Blocks 18 and 19 where some prisoners had gathered among whom were several priests … Our colleague, Kolbe, spoke of the Feast of Corpus Christi, of the great omnipresent God, and of our sufferings by which He was trying to make us ready for a better life.

— A priest at Auschwitz, from Depositions of Fellow Prisoners, 1970, p. 34

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Pornchai Moontri once looked at the death chamber of Maximilian Kolbe and saw devouring jaws of evil. I saw that evil too, but choking on a brave soul’s noble defiance.

The photograph in this post has deep meaning and significance for us.  BTSW  reader Lupe Gwiazdowski, on a tour of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, stood with her camera before the gaping maw of a prison window. She photographed the window of the death chamber that consumed the life of our Patron Saint but could not extinguish the light of his sacrificial priesthood.

When Lupe’s letter with the photograph arrived in early July, 2017, when Pornchai “Max” Moontri was still here with me, he and I were standing with 100 other prisoners for Mail Call. The mail handlers here reversed the pages before stuffing the letter back in its envelope so the page with this photo was on top when I unfolded the letter.

I did not know what the photo was, but right off Pornchai pointed to it. “It’s a face!” he said. “An evil face!” Study the photograph above for a moment. Once I saw what Pornchai saw, I could not look at the photo again without instantly seeing that same demonic face. You will see it too.

But what Pornchai saw as the gaping jaws of evil ready to devour, I saw those same jaws choking on whatever was inside. When I suggested this to Pornchai, he saw it too. Stare at the photo for another moment, and you may see what I mean.

Then I read the letter that accompanied Lupe’s photo, and realized with a jolt that it was behind these gaping jaws that our Patron Saint, Maximilian Kolbe, surrendered his life in defiance of the great evil that manifested itself at Auschwitz.

Over two weeks of forced starvation followed his choice to die in place of an innocent young man. When Father Kolbe did not die in a timely manner that suited his captors, his life was taken by lethal injection on August 14, 1941. After a lifetime of devotion to “The Immaculata,” death came on the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Assumption. Lupe tells the story of the photo in her letter of June 29, 2017 that touched our hearts deeply:

“Hi Father G: I wanted to send you this photo and I hope you get it. I went to Poland this month, and I made a mental note to pray for you and Pornchai “Max” Moontri at the Auschwitz cell of St Maximilian Kolbe.

“As is often the case with my mental notes, when I got to the cell I was so overwhelmed that I forgot it. As soon as we exited the block of cells I remembered. I left the group and tried to push my way back to the cell, but Polish tour guides are not to be pushed against! I didn’t make it.

“I was downcast as I caught up with the group, and then realized that the guide was pointing to the bars of the Saint’s cell window from the outside. I didn’t even hear what she was saying as I looked upon this sacred spot. I thought of how this priest and his companion prisoners died giving such powerful witness through those same bars to so many whose hope was perishing. I lifted you and Pornchai up right there, and then snapped this photo for you. Father, I do not know what else to say.

“When I got back to a computer, I saw your post, “Thoughts Upon My 35th Anniversary of Priesthood Ordination,” and realized that your anniversary was on the same day I prayed for you and Pornchai-Max at Auschwitz. Father, thank you for your priesthood.”

In Noble Defiance of Evil

Today, virtually everyone knows the story of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. His Earthly remains were reduced to smoke and ash in the ovens of Hitler to drift in the skies above Auschwitz. But what he wrote and said and did, the glow of his soul, still moves mountains and the hearts of millions.

In Father Maximilian Kolbe, evil did not destroy what it set out to destroy. It imprisoned and killed the body of a man, but the priest lived on in noble sacrifice and love. The jaws of that window choked on the goodness of the soul contained therein.

Of all the thousands of accounts about the witness and strength of Father Maximilian Kolbe, for me the most powerful account comes from Herrmann Langbein, who was a prisoner at Dachau and then at Auschwitz. He is best known for his book, Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938-1945. He singles out one man’s defiance that I have cited in other posts about our Patron Saint:

“The best-known act of resistance was that of Maximilian Rajmund Kolbe, who deprived the camp administration of the power to make arbitrary decisions about life and death.”

— People in Auschwitz, p. 241

Langbein went on to write powerfully of the witness, not only of Father Kolbe’s sacrifice by volunteering to take upon himself the death sentence of a fellow prisoner, but of his demeanor in prison:

“Kolbe and his companions in misfortune had to spend almost three weeks [in starvation] in an unlit cell. On August 14 (1941) a lethal injection ended the suffering of the man whose bearing elicited the respect of the supervising SS men to the very end.”

— People in Auschwitz, p. 241

I pray for the gift of this brave priest’s noble defiance of evil. It is easier to just succumb to it, enduring it for as long as we can until it starts to bring about subtle changes in our resolve. My favorite passage in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (Harper, 1942) is Letter 12. You have seen this passage before in these pages. The demonic “Uncle Screwtape” describes perfectly the slippery slope that suffering and sin conspire to spread the contagion of evil. Their cumulative effect …

“… is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing … . Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

— The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, Letter 12

In no place is a man or woman without defiance “edged away from the Light out into the Nothing” more than in prison. Like all prisons — whether they be prisons of iron, or fear, or trauma, or loneliness, or sickness, or pain — year upon year of it can set us upon the subtle turnings C. S. Lewis describes. For some, no doubt, resistance to the evils of our prisons seems futile.

Something happened recently — something profoundly humbling — that I thought about when I read the short passage at the top of this post from a priest-prisoner in Auschwitz with Maximilian Kolbe. The passage is from a published collection, Depositions of Fellow Prisoners, in the investigation of Maximilian Kolbe’s cause for sainthood.

More than 12,000 priests died in Auschwitz and the other camps of Germany and Poland, but the priest who wrote the passage atop this post survived. I wonder about those who perished there, those whose hope was siphoned off by the evil in their midst.

But for Maximilian Kolbe, resistance to evil was the one charism of a sacrificial priesthood available to him in a place where priesthood and sacrifice were deemed meaningless by worldly powers. Prison can quickly descend into “every man for himself,” but Maximilian lived and died on life’s road less traveled.

Priesthood Lost in Translation

Over the many years that I have been in this prison unjustly, there was another priest here. He was a priest of my Diocese, but I never knew him outside of prison. In fact, I barely knew him here. He was convicted of a sexual abuse charge in 1997, one alleged to have taken place long before then, and had been here ever since.

I know that in 2001, this priest acquiesced to a demand that he be voluntarily laicized (dismissed from the clerical state). Over the ensuing years, after 25 years of priesthood, he never again heard from our Bishop or Diocese. He was discarded. The prisoner-priest lost his faith. He became unable to be present at Mass for the next sixteen years. He was in a different prison unit than I, and I saw him only in rare passing.

However, when printed copies of some BTSW posts were mailed to me, the sender would often send two. So, with the clandestine help of friends here, I started to send the other copy to this priest. I did not send him every post, just the ones about priesthood. One post reached an untapped well of faith and hope.

It was “Saint Maximilian Kolbe: A Knight at My Own Armageddon.” It was the middle of an important three-part post, and was the only post for which the priest sent back — via the same circuitous prison channels — a request to see more. These posts were the limits of our contact.

The same week that Lupe’s letter and photo arrived, Pornchai Max and I were climbing the multiple tiers of stairs on a Sunday morning for Mass in the prison chapel. As we passed the second floor landing, the priest mentioned above was just then emerging from the prison medical unit. I greeted him and shook his hand (another act of resistance as shaking someone’s hand is forbidden here) and then something strange happened.

Pornchai did not even know who he was and I did not want to put the priest on the spot so we parted company and proceeded up the next flight of stairs. Then Pornchai turned and said, “Do you want to come with us?” The priest paused for a moment looking puzzled, and then quietly followed us up the stairs. Before we entered the chapel, I asked Pornchai to go find us some seats while the prisoner-priest told me that this was his first time at Mass in 16 years. He became reconciled, and we sat with him.

The next week — being an idiot sometimes — I took our usual seats and Pornchai stood glaring at me. “What are you doing?” he asked, and then pointed to that other priest still standing outside the door. “Go get him and bring him in to sit with us,” said Pornchai. God bless Pornchai!

In early July back in 2017, I spotted that prisoner-priest on the local news. He was appearing before the New Hampshire Parole Board with a request for medical parole because he was dying of cancer.

A physician who spoke at the hearing reported that he had no more than six months to live, and his care would be a burdensome expense for the state. After some callous remarks from a victim advocate on the State’s payroll about whether he “looks sick enough,” and whether twenty years in prison exacts sufficient reckoning, the Parole Board granted his medical parole.

On the Move

A week later, Max and I were suddenly moved — he to one place and I to another. Apart for the first time in over ten years, this had been a great hardship for us both. We were trying to reunite, but once anything like this is done here, it resists being undone. Max was trying to be moved to the same place I was in. We saw each other only once in the prison law library where I work. I invited Max to pray with me the Memorare:

“Remember, O Most Gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, we flee unto you, O Virgin of virgins, our Mother; to you do we come, before you we stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of Word Incarnate, despise not our petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer us. Amen.”

The place I was sent to is the unit the other priest had been living in for the previous twenty years. My first week there was his last week there, and we were able to walk each morning and talk. He was restored to faith and hope that our sufferings will make us ready for a better life.

I was with him early on the morning he left prison, and went home to his sister to die. I like to think that we managed to fill in some of the cold abyss in which our Church let him wander alone in exile for twenty years. I cannot imagine, even in my most vengeful thoughts, that such alienation and abandonment are what Christ summons forth from the Apostolic witness of His Church.

Most of all, I like to think we helped to prepare my brother-priest for something essential imparted to us by a Patron Saint who guides us on a right path through prison: the gift of a noble defiance of evil with the living witness of sacrificial priesthood.

On the day after that priest left prison, one week after Max and I prayed the Memorare, I returned from work to see him living once again in the bunk above me. He remained there until he entered ICE detention to prepare for his return to Thailand in 2020.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The Annunciation: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us

The Gospel of Saint Luke opens with a news flash from the Archangel Gabriel for Zechariah the priest, and Mary — Theotokos — the new Ark of the Covenant.

March 25, Solemnity of the Annunciation

On the 25th day of March, the Church remembers the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary marking a pivotal event in Salvation History. The account is conveyed to us in the first chapter of the Gospel According to Saint Luke, a Gentile physician and a companion of the Apostle Paul. Several of the Fathers of the Early Church attribute the Third Gospel to Saint Luke and affirm his authorship of it. I once wrote of this unique Gospel in “Saint Luke the Evangelist, Dear and Glorious Physician.”

This Gospel reveals many facets of the life and mission of Jesus, but foremost among them is its universal message of Salvation. Luke, despite being a Gentile, anchors his Gospel in the traditions of the earlier Covenant, the Old Testament, portraying Jesus as the Savior and Redeemer of God’s Old Covenant people. He thus presents Jesus in history as one foretold by the Prophets (Isaiah 11:10-12, 49:6, and Ezekiel 39:25-29). Luke thus depicts Jesus as the Royal Messiah in the line and legacy of King David to reunite the scattered tribes of Israel and gather them into one nation. Given that he is the only Gentile Evangelist, that is an amazing feat through which Luke has prepared an artistic and spiritual masterpiece.

Saint Luke alone among the Evangelists recounts for us the Parable of the Good Samaritan (10:25-37), the Parable of the Prodigal Son (15:11-32), the Magnificat of Mary (1:46-55), the Benedictus of Zechariah (1:68-79), the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon (2:29-35), the Angelic Gloria (2:14) sung by the Angels on Christmas Night and in our liturgy to this day. And Luke is the sole source of the account that begins our story of Salvation: the Archangel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary.

No one really knows when or why tradition first places the Birth of Christ on December 25th, but the custom is ancient and it has a lot to do with the Annunciation, which also ties it into the events of Holy Week.

The first recorded mention of December 25 as the date of observance of the Feast of the Nativity was in a Roman document called the Philocalian Calendar dated as early as 336 A.D. Popular observance of the December 25 date of the Nativity, however, was at least a century older.

One obscure theory points to an early Roman Empire legend that great men are fated to die on the same date they were conceived. One tradition traced the date of Passover at or near March 25 in the year Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. If thus among some Romans it became popular belief that he was conceived on that date, then nine months to the day later would be December 25. However, it is impossible today to discern which came first, our belief in the December 25 date for the Birth of Jesus, or our belief in the March 25 date of his Crucifixion and therefore the Annunciation.

Spiritual Battle on a Cosmic Scale

The angels of TV-land usually worked out solutions to the drama of being human within each episode’s allotted sixty minutes. That’s not so with the angels of Scripture. Most came not with a quick fix to human madness, but with a message for coping, for giving hope, for assuring a believer, or, in the case of the Angel of the Annunciation, for announcing some really big news on a cosmic scale — like Salvation! What the angels of Scripture do and say has deep theological symbolism and significance, and in trying times interest in angels seems to thrive. The Archangel Gabriel dominates the Nativity Story of Saint Luke’s Gospel, but who is he and what is the meaning of his message?

We first meet Gabriel five centuries before the Birth of Christ in the Book of Daniel. The Hebrew name, “Gabri’El” has two meanings: “God is my strength,” and “God is my warrior.” As revealed in “Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel 
and the Scales of Hesed,” the Hebrew name Micha-El means “Who is like God?” The symbolic meaning of these names is portrayed vividly as Gabriel relates to Daniel the cosmic struggle in which he and Michael are engaged:

“Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to understand, and humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me. So I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to befall your people in the latter days . . . But I will tell you what is inscribed in the Book of Truth: there is none who contends at my side against these except Michael.”

— Daniel 10:12-14, 21

In the Talmud, the body of rabbinic teaching, Gabriel is understood to be one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham to begin Salvation History, and later led Abraham out of the fire into which Nimrod cast him. The Talmud also attributes to Gabriel the rescue of Lot from Sodom. In Christian apocalyptic tradition, Gabriel is the “Prince of Fire,” who will prevail in battle over Leviathan at the end of days. Centuries after the Canon of Old and New Testament Scripture was defined, Gabriel appears also in the Qu’ran as a noble messenger.

In Jewish folklore, Gabriel was in the role of best man at the marriage of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I found that a strange idea at first,  but then it dawned on me: Who else were they going to ask? In later rabbinic Judaism, Gabriel watches over man at night during sleep, so he is invoked in the bedside “Shema” which observant Jews must recite at bedtime in a benediction called the Keri’at Shema al ha_Mitah:

“In the name of the God of Israel, may Michael be on my right hand, Gabriel on my left hand, Uriel before me, behind me Raphael, and above my head, the Divine Presence. Blessed is he who places webs of sleep upon my eyes and brings slumber to my eyelids. May it be your will to lay me down and awaken me in peace. Blessed are You, God, who illuminates the entire world with his glory.”

In an older issue of Word Among Us, Louise Perrotta described Gabriel’s central message to Daniel:

“History is not a haphazard series of events. Whatever the dark headlines — terrorist attacks, natural disasters, economic upheavals — we’re in the hands of a loving and all-powerful God. Earthly regimes will rise and fall, and good people will suffer. But . . . at an hour no one knows, God will bring evil to an end and establish His eternal kingdom.”

The way He accomplishes that is personified in the unusual graphic atop this section portraying Mary bearing the Christ Child in cosmic harmony with the Angelic realm.

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East of Eden; East of God

The Book of Tobit identifies the Archangel Raphael as one of seven angels who stand in the Presence of God. Scripture and the Hebrew Apocryphal books identify four by name: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. The other three are not named for us. In rabbinic tradition, these four named angels stand at the Celestial Throne of God at the four compass points, and Gabriel stands to God’s left. From our perspective, this places Gabriel to the East of God, a position of great theological significance for the fall and redemption of man.

In a previous post I described the symbolism of “East of Eden,” a title made famous by the great American writer, John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for it in 1962. I don’t mean to brag (well, maybe a little!) but a now-retired English professor at a very prestigious U.S. academy who knew Steinbeck left a comment on my post comparing it to Steinbeck’s work. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Archangel Gabriel, but I’ve been waiting for a subtle chance to mention it again! (ahem!) But seriously, in the Genesis account of the fall of man, Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden to the East (Genesis 3:24). It was both a punishment and a deterrent when they disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:

“Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good from evil; and now, lest he put out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever,’ therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out, and to the east of the Garden of Eden he placed a Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every which way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”

— Genesis 3: 22-24

A generation later, after the murder of his brother Abel, Cain too “went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, East of Eden.” (Genesis 4:16). The land of Nod seems to take its name from the Hebrew “nad” which means “to wander,” and Cain described his fate in just that way: “from thy face I shall be hidden; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:14). The entire subsequent history of Israel is the history of that wandering East of Eden. I wonder if it is also just coincidence that the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the only source of the story of the Magi, has the Magi seeing the Star of Bethlehem “in the east” and following it out of the east.

In rabbinic lore, Gabriel stands in the Presence of God to the left of God’s throne, a position of great significance for his role in the Annunciation to Mary. Gabriel thus stands in God’s Presence to the East,  and from that perspective in St. Luke’s Nativity Story, Gabriel brings tidings of comfort and joy to a waiting world in spiritual exile East of Eden.

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Gabriel Appears to Zechariah

The Archangel’s first appearance is to Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth. Zechariah is told that he and his wife are about to become the parents of the one who would become John the Baptist. The announcement does not sink in easily because, like Abraham and Sarah at the beginning of Salvation History, Zechariah and Elizabeth were rather on in years. Zechariah is about to burn incense in the Temple of Sacrifice, as close to the Holy of Holies as a human being can get, when the Archangel Gabriel appears with news:

“Fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife, Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John . . . and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God and will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah . . .’”

— Luke 1:12-15

This news isn’t easily accepted by Zechariah, a man of deep spiritual awareness revered for his access to the Holy of Holies and his connection to God. Zechariah doubts the message, and questions the messenger. It would be a mistake to read the Archangel Gabriel’s response in a casual tone. Hear it with thunder in the background and the Temple’s stone floor trembling slightly under Zechariah’s feet:

“I am Gabriel who stand in the Presence of God . . . and behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things come to pass.”

I’ve always felt great sympathy for Zechariah. I imagined him having to make an urgent visit to the Temple men’s room after this, followed by the shock of being unable to intone the Temple prayers.

Zechariah was accustomed to great deference from people of faith, and now he is scared speechless. I, too, would have asked for proof. For a cynic, and especially a sometimes arrogant one, good news is not easily taken at face value.

Then six months later “Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.” (Luke 1: 26-27). This encounter was far different from the previous one, and it opens with what has become one of the most common prayers of popular devotion.

Gabriel said, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” His words became the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that and centuries of “sensus fidelium,” the consensus of the faithful who revere her as “Theotokos,” the God-Bearer. Mary, like Zechariah, also questions Gabriel about the astonishing news. “How can this be since I have not known man?” There is none of the thunderous rebuke given to Zechariah, however. Saint Luke intends to place Gabriel in the presence of his greater, a position from which even the Archangel demonstrates great reverence and deference.

It has been a point of contention with non-Catholics and dissenters for centuries, but the matter seems so clear. There’s a difference between worship and reverence, and what the Church bears for Mary is the deepest form of reverence. It’s a reverence that came naturally even to the Archangel Gabriel who sees himself as being in her presence rather than the other way around. God and God alone is worshiped, but the reverence bestowed upon Mary was found in only one other place on Earth. That place was the Ark of the Covenant, in Hebrew, the “Aron Al-Berith,” the Holy of Holies which housed the Tablets of the Old Covenant. I wrote of Mary’s identification with the most sacred artifact in all of Israel in “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

But the story of Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary draws on elements from the Second Book of Samuel. These elements are drawn by Saint Luke as he describes Mary’s haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea. In 2 Samuel 6:2, David visits this very same place to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant.  Upon Mary’s entry into Elizabeth’s room in Saint Luke’s account, the unborn John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. This is reminiscent of David leaping before the Ark of the Covenant in 2 Samuel 6:16.

For readers “with eyes to see and ears to hear,” Saint Luke presents an account of God entering into human history in terms quite familiar to the old friends of God. God himself expressed in the Genesis account of the fall of man that man has attempted to “become like one of us” through disobedience. Now the reverse has occurred. God has become one of us to lead us out of the East, and off the path to eternal darkness and death.

The Church honors with the deepest reverence Mary, Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the new Ark of the Covenant. Mary, whose response to the Archangel Gabriel was simple assent:

“Let it be done to me according to your word.”

“Then the Dawn from On High broke upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet on the way to peace.”

— Luke 1:78-79

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. It is also added to our collection of Scripture posts, The Bible Speaks.

You may also like these related posts:

Saint Luke the Evangelist, Dear and Glorious Physician

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Holy Week begins this year on Palm Sunday, March 29. We have collected a list of seven Holy Week posts from Beyond These Stone Walls. Together, they form a sort of personal Holy Week Retreat. We invite you to take part in it by visiting or revisiting each of its linked posts throughout the course of this coming week. You may access here Our Beyond These Stone Walls Holy Week Retreat.

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah

Saint Joseph is silent in the Gospel account of the Birth of the Messiah, but his actions reveal him as a paradigm of spiritual fatherhood and sacrificial love.

At Christmas

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: An important post at Beyond These Stone Walls appeared here recently with the title I Have Seen the Fall of Man: Christ Comes East of Eden. It is a bit heavy on the theology of Salvation and so the comments on it were limited. One of them, by Thomas Ryder left me pondering the nature of Sacred Scripture. I have never imagined that anything I write could be considered “sacred,” but Mr. Ryder’s comment introduced for me an awareness of how much of our New Testament was written from prison by Saint Paul. Mr. Ryder wrote:

“St. Paul’s epistles, many written from prison, are astonishing, not just for the brilliance of the exegesis, but for his insight into humanity and the beauty of his language. Fr. MacRae is his very worthy successor.”

I wanted to crawl under my prison bunk and hide, but there was no room.

In 2016 I wrote this Christmas post from prison. The story it tells turns out to be the Gospel from Saint Matthew for the Fourth Sunday of Advent at Mass this week leading to our celebration of the Birth of the Messiah. So like so many of our Christmas hymns, it is worth repeating for it is the reason for this Season.

At the time I wrote it, I had been living in dire straits with eight prisoners per cell. Daily life there was chaotic and draconian. The word “draconian” refers to a set of punishing conditions notorious for their severity and heavy-handed oppression. The word was derived from Draco, a Seventh Century B.C. politician who codified the laws of Athens to severely oppress the rights and liberties of its citizens.

Pornchai Moontri was living in that same setting with me, though neither of us had said or done anything to bring it about. It was simply a bureaucratic development that we were told would last for only a few weeks. One year later, we were both still there. Later in 2017 we were finally moved to a saner, safer place, but that Advent and Christmas in 2016 are etched in my mind as a painful trial, with but one bright exception.

Many of our friends were also thrust into that same situation, living eight to a cell in a block of 96 men seemingly always on the verge of rage. I was recently talking with a friend who was there with us then. He said that what he recalls most from the experience was how Pornchai and I went from cell to cell on our first night there to be sure our friends were okay. And what he recalled most about Christmas Eve in that awful setting was Pornchai setting up a makeshift workspace in our cell to make Thai wraps for all the other prisoners on the block.

Over the previous week in visits to the commissary, I stocked up extra tortilla wraps and ingredients. Our friends helped with distribution as Pornchai undertook his first-ever fast food job. The hardcore prisoners around us were amazed. Nothing like this had ever happened here before. Just weeks earlier, Donald Trump was elected President. He announced a policy that foreign migrants seeking to stay in the United States would first be sent to Mexico to await processing. While the entire cellblock was eating Thai wraps, Pornchai announced to loud cheers that they are henceforth to be called “Thai Burritos.”

It was in that inhumane setting that I first wrote the story of Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah described in the Gospel according to St. Matthew (1:18-24). It was the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent back then. When I went back to look at my 2016 post on that Gospel passage about Joseph’s dream I decided to write it anew.

Among The People Who Walked in Darkness

The Gospel of Matthew begins with “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1). Many have pointed out some differences between the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s account and that found in the Gospel of Luke (3:23-38). They are remarkably similar in the generations from Abraham to King David, but from David to Jesus they diverge. This is because Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus forward from Abraham through King David to Jesus in the line of Joseph who connects to Jesus by adoption, the same manner in which we now call God “Our Father.”

The genealogy in the Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, begins with Mary and runs backward through David to Abraham and then to Adam. It is a fine point that I have made in several reflections on Sacred Scripture that we today find ourselves in a unique time in Salvation History. Abraham first encountered God in the 21st Century before the Birth of Christ. We encounter God in the 21st Century after. At the center of all things stands Jesus whose Cross shattered a barrier “To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate.”

That both genealogies pass through David is highly significant. This is expressed in the first reading from Isaiah (9:1-6) in the Vigil Mass for the Nativity of the Lord on Christmas Eve:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone. You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing... For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed as on the day of Midian.... For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They call him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and ever peaceful from David’s throne and over his kingdom which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice now and forever.”

— Isaiah 9:1-6

The differences in the genealogy accounts are a testament to their authenticity. Matthew stresses the Davidic kingship of Jesus over Israel by adoption through Joseph mirroring our adoption as heirs to the Kingdom. Luke, by tracing the ancestry of Jesus through Mary all the way back to Adam, stresses a theological rather than historical truth: the Lordship of Jesus over sin and grace and our redemption from the Fall of Man — a Savior born to us through Mary.

The Birth of the Messiah

What initially struck me in Saint Matthew’s account of the Birth of Jesus is its language inferring the sanctity of life. Having just passed though a disappointing national election in America in which the right to life was center stage, we heard a lot of talk about fetal heartbeats, viability, and reproductive rights. Our culture’s turning away from life is also a turning away from God. The fact that many nominally Catholic politicians lend their voices and votes to that turning away is a betrayal of Biblical proportions. In the Story of God and human beings, we have been here before. Planned Parenthood is our culture’s Temple to Baal.

The Gospel passages about the Birth of the Messiah clearly establish a framework for the value Sacred Scripture places on human life. Mary is never described as simply pregnant, or in a pre-natal state, or carrying a fetus. She is, without exception from the moment of the Annunciation, declared to be “with child.” But it was not all without politics, obstacles, and suspicions, and fears of finger-pointing to discredit her fidelity.

The story begins with Matthew 1:18-19 and Joseph pondering how best to protect Mary from the scandal that was surely to come.

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, being a just man unwilling to expose her to disgrace, resolved to send her away quietly.”

— Matthew 1:18-19

I am struck by the fact that in the Gospel, Mary never attempted to explain any of this to Joseph. What would she have said? “An angel appeared to me, said some very strange things, and when he left I was with child?” Would Joseph have just accepted that without question? Would you? The story’s authenticity is in its human response: “Joseph being a just man unwilling to expose her to disgrace, resolved to send her away quietly.” (Matthew 1:19)

It is important to understand the nuance here. What made Joseph and any Jewish man, a “just” man in the eyes of the Jews — and in the eyes of the Jewish-Christian Evangelist, Matthew — is his obedience to the Law of Moses which required a quiet divorce. Early Church traditions proposed three theories about why Joseph became resolved to send Mary away quietly.

The first is the “suspicion” theory, the weakest argument of the three but one held by no less than Saint Augustine himself in the early Fourth Century. The theory presents that Joseph, like what most men of his time (or any time) might do, initially suspected Mary of being unfaithful in their betrothal, and thus felt compelled to invoke the law of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 to impose a bill of divorce because he had found something objectionable about her.

In that theory, Joseph clings to his decision until an Angel of the Lord sets him straight in a dream. However the theory entirely overlooks the first motive ascribed to Joseph in the Gospel: that of being a just man “unwilling to expose her to disgrace.” (Matthew 1:19)

The second theory is the “perplexity” theory proposed by Saint Jerome also in the early Fourth Century. In this, Joseph could not bring himself to suspect Mary of infidelity so the matter left him in perplexity. He thus decided to quietly send her away to protect her. According to this theory, his dream from the Angel of the Lord redirected his path with confirmation of what he might already have suspected. This theory was widely held in medieval times.

The third is the “reverence” theory. It proposed that Joseph knew all along of the divine origin of the child in Mary’s womb, but considered himself to be unworthy of her and of having any role in the life of this child. He thus decided to send her away to protect the divine secret from any exposure to the letter of the law. This theory was held by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Thirteenth Century.

But I have a fourth theory of my own. It is called Love, Sacrificial Love, the essense of fatherhood.

But first, back to Joseph’s dream.

The Angel of the Lord

“As [Joseph] considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called, Emmanuel (which means ‘God with us’). When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him. He took Mary as his wife, but he knew her not until she had borne a son, and he called his name Jesus.”

— Matthew 1:18-24

There is a lot to be unpacked from this passage. This account represents the first of three dreams experienced by Joseph in which he was instructed by an “Angel of the Lord” to undertake specific action relative to his pivotal role in the lives of Mary and Jesus. The method of delivery for each message is not just some rank and file angel — though that would certainly have sufficed — but rather an “Angel of the Lord.” The title appears only a rare few times in the Hebrew Scriptures and only four times in the New Testament: Once in Acts of the Apostles and three times in the Gospel of Matthew, and only in reference to Joseph’s dreams about the Birth of the Messiah.

There are 126 references to dreams among the characters of Sacred Scripture. Some of the pivotal moments in Salvation History were set in motion through dreams. In the original Greek of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the term used for Joseph’s three dreams about the birth of Jesus is ‘onar,’ and it is used nowhere else in Sacred Scripture but here. It refers not just to a dream, but to a divine intervention in human affairs.

Coupled with the fact that the dream is induced by an “Angel of the Lord,” the scene takes on a sense of Divine urgency when compared with other angelic messages. The urgency is related to Joseph’s pondering about what is best for Mary, a pondering that could unintentionally thwart God’s redemptive plan for the souls of all humankind.

There are many parallels in this account with events in the life of the Old Testament Joseph in the Book of Genesis. Both had the same name. Both were essential to Salvation History. Both were in the line of King David — one looking forward and the other backward. Both were the sons of a father named Jacob. Both brought their families to safety in a flight to Egypt. God spoke to both through dreams.

The task of the Angel of the Lord is to redirect Joseph’s decision regardless of what motivated it. The divine urgency is to preserve the symbolic value of King David’s lineage being passed on to Jesus by Joseph’s adoption. The symbolism is immensely powerful. This adoption, and the establishment of kingship in the line of David in the human realm, also reflects the establishment of God’s adoption of us in the spiritual realm.

Remember that the title, “King of the Jews” is one of the charges for which Jesus faced the rejection of Israel and the merciless justice of Rome. There is great irony in this. Through the Cross, Jesus ratifies the adoption between God and us. Mocked as “King of the Jews,” He becomes for all eternity Christ the King and we become the adopted subjects and heirs of that Kingdom. It is difficult to imagine the Child born in Bethlehem impaled upon the Cross at Golgotha, but He left this world as innocent as when he entered it. His crucified innocence won for us an inheritance beyond measure.

And Saint Joseph won for us an eternal model for the sacrificial love of fatherhood.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post in preparation for our observance of the Birth of the Messiah. You may also like these related posts:

I Have Seen the Fall of Man: Christ Comes East of Eden

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

How December 25 Became Christmas

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

He Has His Mother’s Eyes: The Vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe

The Church now steers us from titles for Mary such a Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix. Our Lady of Guadalupe presents us with another: “The Very Pathway to Eternity.”

December 10, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

“The Blessed Mother is not only beyond the Earth, but also beyond the stars. She is not only Mother of the world, but Mother of the heavens — or as we might say today, Mother of the Universe. The child that she bears would therefore be not only the Savior of the world, but also the Savior of the heavens — and the Universe. In view of this, we can rely on Him and her not only for help but for the teaching that transcends all time — the very pathway to eternity.”

— Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.,
Christ, Science and Reason, Ignatius Press, 2024

I want to revisit something I wrote about at this time a few years ago. Late in the afternoon of December 11, 2018, I was at my desk in the prison Law Library where I use two computer systems side by side. Neither can be used for my own work. I still write posts on an old typewriter.

One computer at my work desk connects directly to Lexis Nexus, a legal database that all law libraries have. The other connects to the prison library system database. As I was shutting down the computers before leaving for the day, I decided to change the background screen on that second computer. I have written of this before, but the event seems so profoundly impossible that I still struggle to comprehend it. For the previous 10 years the desktop image on the screen was a depiction of the Milky Way Galaxy with a little “You Are Here” arrow pointing to a tiny dot in the cosmos that depicts our solar system. It made me feel very insignificant.

I had but moments left before rushing out the door at 3:00 PM. I called up a list of background screens which displayed only hundreds of numbered graphic files with no way to view them. So I decided to just pick a random number — there were pages of them — and get what I get. Then I shut down the system without seeing it.

The next morning, December 12, I arrived at my desk and booted up the computer for work. The image that filled my screen left me breathless. It is the one you see here below. It’s a magnificent mural in Mexico City. The image was grainy because it was expanded from something only slightly larger than a postage stamp. I was not yet even conscious of the date. On the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, from a thousand random numbers, she appeared on my screen and has been there since.

I was not always conscious of any spiritual connection with Mary. Many years ago when this blog first began, I wrote about an incident involving a sort of apparition of Mary. It wasn’t so much visual, but rather a mental phenomenon that deeply affected me. In 1989 I was in the back seat of a car in New Mexico with two other priests in the front seat. We were driving to Chimayó in the north of New Mexico to an obscure Catholic shrine that one of the priests wanted to see. The legend behind the shrine is this:

This Catholic shrine known as El Santuario de Chimayó located in Chimayó, New Mexico is renowned for a legendary miraculous event in its founding. According to the traditional story, in 1810, a local landowner named Don Bernardo Abeyta was performing penance in the area when he saw a bright light emanating from the ground. Upon digging, he discovered a wooden crucifix depicting Our Lord of Esquipulas (a revered Guatemalan image of Christ). Attempts to relocate the crucifix to a nearby church in Santa Cruz failed, as it mysteriously returned to the original spot each time. Interpreting this as a divine sign, Abeyta built a small chapel on the site around 1813-1816. The shrine became famous for "tierra bendita" (holy dirt) from a small pit ("el pocito") at the discovery site, which pilgrims believe possesses healing properties for physical, emotional, and spiritual ailments. 

Learning of this in the back seat of the car, I scoffed in disbelief. This sparked an argument about the legitimacy of such events. I scoffed a lot back then in the ignorance of my youth (which sadly extended up until about the age of 40). In the car, we argued about other miraculous events including the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of Guadalupe. I was not a believer, something which the other two priests found offensive. I simply could not understand the purpose for an appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Juan Diego, an Aztec convert, in 1531. “How does this impact anyone’s faith?” I scoffed.

Then IT happened. Sitting in the back seat of that car, I had a sudden, indescribable but overwhelming image in my mind’s eye appearing to me. It was mercifully brief for I could not have withstood it for long. It was an experience of immense power. Then the car pulled to the side of the road and stopped. “Are you alright?” I was pale and in shock and pressed up against the back door of the vehicle as though I were trying to flee. I did not tell my friends what had happened. I had no frame of reference for it, but I have been in awe of Her ever since, and I never scoffed again.

The Mystery of the Tilma

Our Lady of Guadalupe became my favorite among all the Marian images I have since come to reverence. Its origin is fascinating. Nearly five centuries ago, on the morning of December 9, 1531, young Juan Diego, an early Aztec convert to Catholicism in the New World, was walking at the foot of Tepayac Hill outside Mexico City.

Days earlier in the same location, Juan Diego heard the beautiful voice of a Lady, but saw no one. On this day, she appeared. She instructed Juan Diego to build a church on this site. Unlike me, Juan Diego did not scoff. He, too, was in awe. So he went to the home of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga and told him of what he had seen and heard. The bishop did not believe him, of course. I would not have believed him either, and certainly not before my own “event.” So the bishop asked Juan Diego to return to Tepayac Hill and, if the Lady appears to him again, he is to request a sign that he can bring to the bishop.

So Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac Hill. He was wearing a tilma, a cloak made of coarse, uncomfortable fiber that was the typical garment of the poor in Mexico at that time. The Lady told him to gather up some flowers in his tilma. Juan Diego then noticed that he and the Lady were surrounded by beautiful Castilian roses in full bloom. Castilian roses did not grow anywhere near Mexico City, and even if they did they were certainly not in bloom in December.

The date was December 12, 1531 three days after her first appearance to Juan Diego. So Juan Diego gathered as many of the Castillian roses as he could and stuffed them into his tilma. He returned to the home of Bishop Zumárraga.

When he removed his tilma in the presence of the bishop and a group of people with him, he and they were surprised to see the beautiful Castilian roses pouring from his open tilma onto the floor. But they were stunned to also see imprinted on the tilma an amazing image of a beautiful young woman surrounded by the rays of the Sun with the crescent moon under her feet, surrounded by roses and with angels attending her. No one was more shocked and surprised by that image than Juan Diego himself. In describing this scene, I used the word “imprinted.” It was for lack of any other suitable word. There was no printing involved, no painting, no evidence of any brush stroke. In all her magnificence, she was simply inexplicably there.

At Tepeyac Hill that day, the Lady had asked Juan Diego to tell the bishop that she is “Coatloxopeuh,” which in Nahuati, the language of the Aztecs, means “The One Who Crushed the Serpent.”

Juan Diego’s tilma was made of coarse fiber completely unsuitable for painting. Since 1666, the tilma image has been studied by artists and scientists who have been unable to explain how the image became incorporated into the very fibers of the tilma. The shawl is the only one of its kind still in existence after nearly 500 years. It is enshrined in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which now incorporates the region of Tepeyac Hill.

The Miracle in Her Eyes

Four hundreds of years later, in 1929, a photographer revealed that when he enlarged photographs of the Lady’s face on the tilma, other tiny images appeared to be in her eyes. He was instructed to say nothing of this until the phenomenon could be studied. In his magnificent book, Christ, Science, and Reason (Ignatius Press 2024) Father Robert Spitzer, SJ, PhD described this phenomenon at length, quoting the ophthalmologist, Dr. Lavoignet:

“It is impossible to attribute to chance, to a textile accident, or to pictorial matter this extraordinary coincidence between the localization of the reflections in the Virgin’s eyes and the most elaborate and up-to-date laws of optical physiology, especially as it seems these reflections code a different focal distance. It is their most amazing property. If the light of an ophthalmoscope set with a suitable lens, is directed on to the reflection, the reflection fills with light and shines like a little diamond … her eye lights up and the iris becomes brilliant.”

— Christ, Science and Reason, p 202

Father Spitzer went on to explain that “this is naturalistically and humanly inexplicable. How does a flat image contain depth of field and encode the proper focal length to obtain luminosity?” It is what scientists would expect to find within the cornea only of a living human being. There was no technology in 1531, nor is there today, that can explain this other-worldly image.

After filtering and processing the images using computers, it was discovered that the Lady’s two eyes contain another imprint — the image of the bishop and several other people staring at the tilma apparently at the moment Juan Diego presented it in 1531. It was a permanent imprint equally appearing upon the retinas of both eyes in stereoscopic vision. It appeared to be what Our Lady of Guadalupe saw when Juan Diego first presented his mysterious tilma to the bishop.

Father Spitzer also described the research into the tilma conducted by Dr. José Aste Tonsmann, a renowned ophthalmologist. He enlarged the area of the Madonna’s corneas 2500 times and identified 13 figures, six in the peripheral iris area under the cornea (including the man thought to be Juan Diego), and seven in the central pupil area under the cornea. Dr. Aste Tonsmann described the result of his research as follows:

“In the eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe is reflected the entire scene of Juan Diego opening his tilma in front of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga and the other witnesses of the miracle.”

This implies that what is imprinted on Juan Diego’s tilma is the scene taking place, from the perspective of someone looking on at the moment Juan Diego opened his tilma and the roses poured out.

The characters in the scene, in the eyes of Mary, are far too small to be seen by human eyes. It was only when modern ophthalmological equipment greatly enlarged the corneas that the imprint upon them could be seen.

Giulio Dante Guerra, from the Italian National Council of Research summed up Dr. Aste Tonsmann’s discovery as follows:

“In this scene it is possible to identify, from left to right looking at the eye: a seated Indian looking up; the profile of an elderly man with a white beard and head marked by advanced baldness, very similar to depictions of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga; a younger man, almost certainly the interpreter Juan Gonzalez; an Indian with marked features, with a beard and mustache, certainly Juan Diego, who opens his cloak, still without the image, in front of the Bishop; and several other figures … . In short, within the eyes of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe there is a ‘snapshot’ of what happened in the home of the Bishop of Mexico City at the time in which the image itself was formed on the tilma.”

Mary Among the Stars

I can only describe this last phenomenon by using the words of Father Robert Spitzer borrowed from his book Christ, Science, and Reason:

“There is another remarkable characteristic on the image of the Madonna that cannot be ascertained with certainty though it should be briefly mentioned: the stars on the Madonna’s mantle. These stars have a remarkable characteristic that heightens the Madonna’s message — not only to 16th Century culture, but also to our contemporary scientific culture. Father Mario Rojas Sanchez discovered this about their placement: he was able to ascertain, thanks to collaboration with astronomers at the Laplace Observatory in Mexico City, that the stars correspond to the placement of constellations visible from Mexico City at the winter solstice of 1531. Given the Julian calendar in use at the time, the winter solstice in 1531 fell on December 12. The stars do not appear according to the normal ‘geocentric’ perspective, but rather according to a ‘cosmocentric’ perspective, that is, as an observer placed ‘above the vault of heaven’ would see them.”

— Christ, Science, and Reason, p 211

Father Spitzer goes on to point out that there are maps available on the Internet of constellations that would have been present in the sky viewed from Mexico City on December 12, 1531. These maps convert the geocentric reference frame (an observer looking at the stars from the Earth) into a cosmocentric reference frame (an observer looking at the stars from beyond those stars toward the Earth). This cosmocentric reference frame requires rotating the cardinal axis 90 degrees counterclockwise. This reference frame corresponds to the placement of the stars on the Madonna’s mantle.

This is truly extraordinary. No 16th Century Indian or European would have such knowledge, nor would anyone else. This knowledge became available to science only in the 20th Century.

Father Spitzer concludes with a profound statement about something the world will honor and celebrate in just two weeks:

“She is not only Mother of world, but Mother of the heavens — or as we might say today, Mother of the Universe. The child that she bears would therefore be not only the Savior of the world, but also the Savior of the heavens — and the Universe.”

— Christ, Science, and Reason, p. 212

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post about the miraculous vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I am grateful to Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. and his marvelous book Christ, Science, and Reason available at Ignatius Press.

You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Listen to Our Mother: Mary and the Fatima Century

How Our Lady of Fatima Saved a World in Crisis

Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims, and the Pope

We and the Mayflower Pilgrims owe thanks to the Pope and some Catholic priests for the Thanksgiving of 1621 with Squanto and the Plymouth Colony.

Thanksgiving by Fr Gordon MacRae

Growing up within sight of Boston, Massachusetts meant lots of grade school field trips to the earliest landmarks of America. We looked forward to those excursions because they meant a day out of school. The only downside was the inevitable essay. Back then, I had no love for either history or essays. Go figure!

Some field trips are vividly remembered even six decades later. A visit to the deck of “Old Ironsides,” the U.S.S. Constitution in Boston Harbor, stands out as the most exciting. Visits to the sites of the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and Paul Revere’s famous ride also stand out as great adventures in hands-on U.S. history — the essays notwithstanding.

Then there was the trip to Plymouth Rock (YAWN!), the most underwhelming national monument in America. Everyone of us emerged from the bus to file past Plymouth Rock while poor Mr. Dawson had to listen to an endless cascade of “That’s IT?!”

“Dedham granodiorite.” That’s the scientific name of the rock where the Mayflower Pilgrims were left to settle in the New World in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. Plymouth Rock was noted and described in the Pilgrims’ journals, but it fell into obscurity for a century until the town of Plymouth decided to build a wharf in 1741. That’s when 94-year-old church elder Thomas Faunce set out to identify Plymouth Rock and mark the site. Thirty-four years later, the town moved the rock to a more prominent location, accidentally breaking it in half in the process. Only the top half made its way to the town’s new site.

Then shopkeepers began chiseling away at it, selling chunks to tourists for $1.50 each. Over the ensuing years, Plymouth Rock was moved again and again, split in half a second time, cemented back together, then what was left of it ended up surrounded by a concrete portico to become the nation’s first national landmark.

You Can Say That Again!

Every year since 1961 on the day before Thanksgiving, The Wall Street Journal publishes the same two lead editorials by Vermont C. Royster. They are considered classics. “The Desolate Wilderness” describes the purpose and plight of the Puritan founders of New England who left such a deeply engraved mark, for better or worse, on the spirit of this nation. “And the Fair Land” lays out the free market foundation upon which American enterprise was built. These editorials are now a Thanksgiving tradition, and if the WSJ can get away with annual repetition, so can I.

This year I’m revisiting the story of Squanto and the Pilgrims, with a few additions and updates, and posting it before Thanksgiving in the hope it might be Tweeted, pinged, e-mailed, and otherwise shared.

The lack of awe inspired by Plymouth Rock is in inverse proportion to the story of how the Pilgrims came to stand upon it. Every grade school student knows the tale of the Mayflower. In 1620, its pilgrim sojourners fled religious persecution from the established Church of England. They embarked on a long and treacherous voyage across the Atlantic in the leaky, top-heavy Mayflower. Landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts, the Pilgrims befriended the native occupants, endured many hardships, then, after a successful first harvest in the New World, celebrated a Thanksgiving feast with their Native American friends in the autumn of 1621.

That story is true, as far as it goes, but the story your grade school history book omitted is downright fascinating, and every Catholic should know of it. Before boarding the Mayflower, the Pilgrims were called “Separatists.” The religious “persecution” they came here to flee consisted mostly of their determination to purge the remnants of Catholicism from the established Church of England.

Author, Philip Lawler summarized their agenda in his book, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture (Encounter Books, 2008):

“[T]he Puritans were campaigning against the lingering traces of Catholicism. Decades of brutal persecution — first under Henry VIII, then under Elizabeth I — had eliminated the Roman Church from English public life in the sixteenth century; the country’s few remaining faithful Catholics had been driven underground. For the Puritans, that was not enough . . . They were determined to erase any vestigial belief in the sacraments, any deference to an ecclesiastical hierarchy.”

— Philip Lawler in The Faithful Departed

The Pilgrims came here to establish a New World theocracy, a religiously oriented society that would reflect their religious fervor which was also anti-Catholic.

Puritanism deeply affected the American national character, but I wonder if the Pilgrims would even recognize the American religious landscape of today. It is far from what they envisioned.

The Puritan Pilgrims were not always considered the survivors of religious persecution American history made them out to be. Writer, H.L. Mencken described Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” And G.K. Chesterton once famously remarked:

“In America, they have a feast to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims. Here in England, we should have a feast to celebrate their departure.”

— G.K. Chesterton

Pilgrim’s Progress

When the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower on December 11, 1620, they were not at all prepared for life in the New World. They were originally destined to colonize what is now Virginia, but the Mayflower veered badly off course. They also considered settling at the mouth of the Hudson River in modern day New York, but Dutch traders conspired to prevent it.

Before leaving England on September 16, 1620, the Pilgrims used their meager resources to purchase a second ship to sail along with the Mayflower and remain with them in the New World. That vessel was called the Speedwell. It was anything but well, however, nor was it speedy. Just 200 miles off the English coast, the Speedwell was sinking. Those aboard had to transfer to the crowded Mayflower while the Speedwell returned to England. There was evidence that the Speedwell was intentionally rigged to fail, leaving the colonists with no vessel with which to explore once the Mayflower departed.

The voyage across the Atlantic was delayed for months, finally landing the Pilgrims in New England at the start of winter. There were 102 aboard the Mayflower when it left England, but by the end of their first winter in the New World, only half that number were still alive. Unable to plant in the dead of winter, their first encounter with the indigenous people of coastal Massachusetts — known to those who lived there as “The Dawn Land” — came when the near starving Pilgrims stole ten bushels of maize from an Indian storage site on Cape Cod. It was not a good beginning.

Massasoit, the “sachem” (leader) of the once powerful Wampanoag tribe, was not at all enamored of the visitors, and the fact that they seemed intent on staying disturbed him greatly. The Pilgrims had no way to know that prior European visitors to those shores left diseases to which the people of The Dawn Land had no natural resistance. By the time the Pilgrims arrived, 95% of the indigenous population of New England, including the Wampanoag, had been decimated.

Still, Massasoit could have easily overtaken and destroyed the invaders, who were barely surviving, but they had something he wanted. Massasoit feared that his tribe’s weakened state might spark an invasion from rivals to the south, and he noted that the Pilgrims had a few cannons and guns that could help even the odds.

The Pilgrims Meet “The Wrath of God”

So instead of attacking the Pilgrims, Massasoit sent an emissary in the person of Tisquantum, known to history as Squanto. He was actually a captive of Massasoit and arrived just weeks before the Pilgrims. Tisquantum was likely not his original name. In the language of the people of The Dawn Land, Tisquantum meant the equivalent of “the wrath of God.” It may have been a name given to him, and, as you’ll see below, perhaps for good reason. 

Squanto was to become the primary force behind the Pilgrims’ unlikely survival in the New World. On March 22, 1621, the vernal equinox, Squanto walked out of the forest into the middle of the Pilgrims’ ramshackle base at Plymouth, a settlement known to Squanto as Patuxet. That place was once his home. To the Pilgrims’ amazement, Squanto spoke nearly perfect English, and arrived prepared to remain with them and guide them through everything from fishing to agriculture to negotiations with the nervous and well-armed Massasoit and the Wampanoag.

As historian Charles C. Mann wrote in “Native Intelligence,” (Smithsonian, December 2005), “Tisquantum was critical to the colony’s survival.” Squanto taught them to plant the native corn they had stolen instead of just eating it, and he negotiated a fair trade for the theft of the corn. The Pilgrims’ own supplies of grain and barley all failed in the New World soil while the native corn gave them a life-saving crop. Squanto taught them how to fish, and how to fertilize the soil with the remains of the fish they caught. Most importantly, Squanto served as an advocate and interpreter for the Pilgrims with Massasoit, averting almost certain annihilation of the weakened and distrusted foreigners.

A Catholic Rescue

For their part, the Pilgrims interpreted Squanto’s presence and intervention as acts of Divine Providence. They had no idea just how much Providence was involved. It is the story of Squanto — of how he came to be in that place at that very time, and of how he came to speak fluent English — that is the most fascinating story behind the first Thanksgiving.

In 1614, six years before the arrival of the Mayflower, Captain John Smith — the same man rescued by Pocahontas in another famous tale — led two British vessels to the coast of Maine to barter for fish and furs. When Smith departed from the Maine shore, he left a lieutenant, Thomas Hunt, in command to load his ship with dried fish.

Without consultation, Thomas Hunt sailed his ship south to what is now called Cape Cod Bay. Anchored off the coast of Patuxet (now Plymouth) in 1614, Hunt and his men invited two dozen curious native villagers aboard the ship. One of them was Squanto. Once aboard, the Indians — as the Europeans came to call them — were forced into irons in the ship’s hold. Kidnapped from their homes and families, they were taken on a six-week journey across the Atlantic. Not all the captives survived the voyage. Those who did survive, Squanto among them, were brought to Malaga off the coast of Spain to be sold as slaves.

Fortunately for Squanto, and later for our Pilgrims, Spain was a Catholic country. Seventy-seven years earlier, envisioning injustices visited upon the indigenous peoples of the New World, Pope Paul III issued “Sublimus Dei,” a papal bull forbidding Catholic governments from enslaving or mistreating Indians from the Americas. The Pope declared that Indians are “true men” who could not lawfully be deprived of liberty. “Sublimis Dei” instructed that European intervention into the lives of Indians had to be motivated by benefit to the Indians themselves. It would take America another 300 years to catch up with the Catholic Church and abolish slavery.

As a result of the papal decree, the Catholic Church in Spain was opposed to the mistreatment of Indians, and opposed to bringing them to Europe against their will. Of course, the Catholic ideal did not always prevent slave trade on the black market. At Malaga, Thomas Hunt managed to sell most of his captives, and was about to sell Squanto when two Spanish Jesuit priests intervened. The Spanish-speaking priests seized Squanto who somehow convinced them to send him home. Not knowing where “home” was, the priests arranged for Squanto’s passage as a free man on a ship bound for London. It is likely that the Jesuits even baptized Squanto as a Catholic. It would have been a way to assure his status as a free man.

Squanto’s world tour was underway. In late 1614, having no idea where he was, Squanto walked into the London office of John Slaney, manager of the Bristol Company, a shipping and merchant venture that had been given rights to the Isle of Newfoundland by England’s King James I in 1610. Squanto spent the next three years stranded in London before being placed on a ship bound for St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1617. By now fully immersed in the language and ways of the English, Squanto spent another two years stranded in Newfoundland — 1,000 miles of sea and rocky coast still separating him from his native Patuxet.

Late in 1619, Squanto befriended Thomas Dermer, a British Merchant in Newfoundland who agreed to sail Squanto home, though neither knew where home was. They knew it was south, so south they sailed. Squanto eventually recognized a Patuxet landmark — maybe even what we came to call Plymouth Rock.

With Thomas Dermer’s ship anchored off Patuxet, Squanto stepped onto the shores of home after a nearly six year absence. But the people of The Dawn Land — Squanto’s people — were no more. Squanto was devastated to learn that disease had ravaged his home in his absence, and not a single Patuxet native had survived. Squanto was alone.

Squanto knew he could not remain there. He convinced Thomas Dermer to accompany him inland in search of anyone among his people who might have survived. There was no one. It wasn’t long before both men were taken captive by Massasoit, sachem of what had been a confederation of 20,000 native Massachuset and Wampanoag tribal peoples. By the time Squanto and Thomas Dermer stood captive before Massasoit, however, all but 1,000 of them were dead from diseases carried to the New World aboard European vessels.

Just weeks later, it was to this setting that the Mayflower’s naive and ill-prepared Pilgrims arrived to face the winter of 1620 in the New World. Squanto, now alone — his life ravaged and his home and people destroyed — convinced Massasoit to send him to the Pilgrims as a negotiator and interpreter instead of attacking them. Squanto put his wrath aside, and became a bridge linking two disparate worlds.

Without Squanto — and, indirectly at least, the Pope and some Jesuit priests — the fate of the Puritan Pilgrims would have been vastly different, and Thanksgiving would likely have never taken place. Squanto was, as Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation wrote of him,

“A spetiall instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectations.”

On that point, both Puritans and Catholics might agree. At your Thanksgiving table this year, say a prayer of thanks for Tisquantum — Squanto. Our national ancestors were once pilgrims and strangers in a strange land, and that land’s most disenfranchised citizen assured their survival.

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Dismas, the Good Thief Crucified Next to Christ the King

With Jesus before him, Pilate asked the chief priests, ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ They replied ‘We have no king but Caesar.’ Only a criminal saw Christ the King.

November 19, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

“Yes, dogs are round about me; a pack of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and my feet — I can count all my bones — they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

— Psalm 22:16-18

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: This may be a very familiar post to some of our Readers. It was originally written as a Holy Week post some years ago, and for some reason it has remained one of our most popular posts. The Church’s liturgy is on a three-year cycle and so every three years one of three Gospel Readings will appear for the Solemnity of Christ the King. The Gospel passage for this year is the story of Dismas crucified to the right of Christ at Calvary. When I read to a priest-friend the above title and description of this post today, he was stunned. He had never before consciously considered that the denouncement of Christ as King by the religious authorities of Israel, and the identification from the Cross of Christ as King were events separated by only a few hours.

The late Pope Benedict XVI wrote a wonderful reflection about the exchange with Dismas on the Cross next to Jesus. Here is what Pope Benedict wrote in a short meditation entitled “How to Enter Christ’s Kingdom”:

“Then there is the faith of the Good Thief: a faith barely outlined but sufficient to assure him salvation: Today you will be with me in Paradise.” This ‘with me’ is crucial. Yes, it is this that saves him. Of course, Dismas is on the Cross like Jesus, but above all he is on the Cross with Jesus. And unlike the other evildoer and all those who taunted Jesus, Dismas does not ask Jesus to save him or to come down from his Cross. He asked only, from his own cross, ‘Remember me when you come into your kingdom.’”‍ ‍

This is the story of Dismas, crucified to the right, Paradise Lost and Found. It is the story of all of us who come to Him bearing our gifts as we might at Christmas, but also bearing our crosses as we must at Calvary.

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The only hero at Calvary was Christ. The only person worth following up that hill — up ANY hill — is Christ. I follow Him with the same burdens and trepidation and thorns in my side as you do. So do not follow me. Follow only Him.

This Holy Week, one of many behind these stone walls, has caused me to use a wider angle lens as I examine the events of that day on Mount Calvary as the Evangelists described them. This year, it is Dismas who stands out. Dismas is the name tradition gives to the man crucified to the right of the Lord, and upon whom is bestowed a dubious title: the “Good Thief.”

As I pondered the plight of Dismas at Calvary, my mind rolled some old footage, an instant replay of the day I was sent to prison — the day I felt the least priestly of all the days of my priesthood.

It was the mocking that was the worst. Upon my arrival at prison after trial late in 1994, I was fingerprinted, photographed, stripped naked, showered, and unceremoniously deloused. I did not bother worrying about what the food might be like, or whether I could ever sleep in such a place. I was worried only about being mocked, but there was no escaping it. As I was led from place to place in chains and restraints, my few belongings and bedding stuffed into a plastic trash bag dragged along behind me, I was greeted by a foot-stomping chant of prisoners prepped for my arrival: “Kill the priest! Kill the priest! Kill the priest!” It went on into the night. It was maddening.

It is odd that I also remember being conscious, on that first day, of the plight of the two prisoners who had the misfortune of being sentenced on the same day I was. They are long gone now, sentenced back then to just a few years in prison. But I remember the walk from the courthouse in Keene, New Hampshire to a prison-bound van, being led in chains and restraints on the “perp-walk” past rolling news cameras. A microphone was shoved in my face: “Did you do it, Father? Are you guilty?”

Quickly led toward the van back then, I tripped on the first step and started to fall, but the strong hands of two guards on my chains dragged me to my feet again. I climbed into the van, into an empty middle seat, and felt a pang of sorrow for the other two convicted criminals — one in the seat in front of me, and the other behind.

“Just my %¢$#@*& luck!” the one in front scowled as the cameras snapped a few shots through the van windows. I heard a groan from the one behind as he realized he might vicariously make the evening news. “No talking!” barked a guard as the van rolled off for the 90 minute ride to prison. I never saw those two men again, but as we were led through the prison door, the one behind me muttered something barely audible: “Be strong, Father.”

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Revolutionary Outlaws

It was the last gesture of consolation I would hear for a long, long time. It was the last time I heard my priesthood referred to with anything but contempt for years to come. Still, to this very day, it is not Christ with whom I identify at Calvary, but Simon of Cyrene. As I wrote in “Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross“:

“That man, Simon, is me . . . I have tried to be an Alter Christus, as priesthood requires, but on our shared road to Calvary, I relate far more to Simon of Cyrene. I pick up my own crosses reluctantly, with resentment at first, and I have to walk behind Christ for a long, long time before anything in me compels me to carry willingly what fate has saddled me with . . . I long ago had to settle for emulating Simon of Cyrene, compelled to bear the Cross in Christ’s shadow.”

So though we never hear from Simon of Cyrene again once his deed is done, I am going to imagine that he remained there at Calvary. He must have, really. How could he have willingly left? I am going to imagine that he remained there and heard the exchange between Christ and the criminals crucified to His left and His right, and took comfort in what he heard. I heard Dismas in the young man who whispered “Be strong, Father.” But I heard him with the ears of Simon of Cyrene.

Like a Thief in the Night

Like the names of the Magi I wrote about in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear,” the name tradition gives to the Penitent Thief appears nowhere in Sacred Scripture. Dismas is named in a Fourth Century apocryphal manuscript called the “Acts of Pilate.” The text is similar to, and likely borrowed from, Saint Luke’s Gospel:

“And one of the robbers who were hanged, by name Gestas, said to him: ‘If you are the Christ, free yourself and us.’ And Dismas rebuked him, saying: ‘Do you not even fear God, who is in this condemnation? For we justly and deservedly received these things we endure, but he has done no evil.’”

What the Evangelists tell us of those crucified with Christ is limited. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel (27:38) the two men are simply “thieves.” In Saint Mark’s Gospel (15:27), they are also thieves, and all four Gospels describe their being crucified “one on the left and one on the right” of Jesus. Saint Mark also links them to Barabbas, guilty of murder and insurrection. The Gospel of Saint John does the same, but also identifies Barabbas as a robber. The Greek word used to identify the two thieves crucified with Jesus is a broader term than just “thief.” Its meaning would be more akin to “plunderer,” part of a roving band caught and given a death penalty under Roman law.

Only Saint Luke’s Gospel infers that the two thieves might have been a part of the Way of the Cross in which Saint Luke includes others: Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus’ cross, and some women with whom Jesus spoke along the way. We are left to wonder what the two criminals witnessed, what interaction Simon of Cyrene might have had with them, and what they deduced from Simon being drafted to help carry the Cross of a scourged and vilified Christ.

In all of the Gospel presentations of events at Golgotha, Jesus was mocked. It is likely that he was at first mocked by both men to be crucified with him as the Gospel of St. Mark describes. But Saint Luke carefully portrays the change of heart within Dismas in his own final hour. The sense is that Dismas had no quibble with the Roman justice that had befallen him. It seems no more than what he always expected if caught:

“One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’”

— Luke 23:39-41

The Flight into Egypt

The name, “Dismas” comes from the Greek for either “sunset” or “death.” In an unsubstantiated legend that circulated in the Middle Ages, in a document known as the “Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,” this encounter from atop Calvary was not the first Gestas and Dismas had with Jesus. In the legend, they were a part of a band of robbers who held up the Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt after the Magi departed in Saint Matthews Gospel (Matthew 2:13-15).

This legendary encounter in the Egyptian desert is also mentioned by Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom who, having heard the same legend, described Dismas as a desert nomad, guilty of many crimes including the crime of fratricide, the murder of his own brother. This particular part of the legend, as you will see below, may have great symbolic meaning for salvation history.

In the legend, Saint Joseph, warned away from Herod by an angel (Matthew 2:13-15), opted for the danger posed by brigands over the danger posed by Herod’s pursuit. Fleeing with Mary and the child into the desert toward Egypt, they were confronted by a band of robbers led by Gestas and a young Dismas. The Holy Family looked like an unlikely target having fled in a hurry, and with very few possessions. When the robbers searched them, however, they were astonished to find expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh — the Gifts of the Magi. However, in the legend Dismas was deeply affected by the infant, and stopped the robbery by offering a bribe to Gestas. Upon departing, the young Dismas was reported to have said:

“0 most blessed of children, if ever a time should come when I should crave thy mercy, remember me and forget not what has passed this day.”

Paradise Found

The most fascinating part of the exchange between Jesus and Dismas from their respective crosses in Saint Luke’s Gospel is an echo of that legendary exchange in the desert 33 years earlier — or perhaps the other way around:

“‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingly power.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”

— Luke 23:42-43

The word, “Paradise” used by Saint Luke is the Persian word, “Paradeisos” rarely used in Greek. It appears only three times in the New Testament. The first is that statement of Jesus to Dismas from the Cross in Luke 23:43. The second is in Saint Paul’s description of the place he was taken to momentarily in his conversion experience in Second Corinthians 12:3. The third is the Heavenly Paradise that awaits the souls of the just in the Book of Revelation (2:7).

In the Old Testament, the word “Paradeisos” appears only in descriptions of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:8, and in the banishment of Cain after the murder of his brother, Abel:

Cain left the presence of the Lord and wandered in the Land of Nod, East of Eden.

— Genesis 4:16

Elsewhere, the word appears only in the prophets (Isaiah 51:3 and Ezekiel 36:35) as they foretold a messianic return one day to the blissful conditions of Eden — to the condition restored when God issues a pardon to man — and he will not be using an autopen.

If the Genesis story of Cain being banished to wander “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” is the symbolic beginning of our human alienation from God — the banishment from Eden marking an end to the State of Grace and Paradise Lost — then the Dismas profession of faith in Christ’s mercy is symbolic of Eden restored — Paradise Regained.

From the Cross, Jesus promised Dismas both a return to spiritual Eden and a restoration of the condition of spiritual adoption that existed before the Fall of Man. It is easy to see why legends spread by the Church Fathers involved Dismas guilty of the crime of fratricide just as was Cain.

A portion of the cross upon which Dismas is said to have died alongside Christ is preserved at the Church of Santa Croce in Rome. It is one of the Church’s most treasured relics. Catholic apologist, Jim Blackburn has proposed an intriguing twist on the exchange on the Cross between Christ and Saint Dismas. In “Dismissing the Dismas Case,” an article in Catholic Answers Magazine Jim Blackburn reminded me that the Greek in which Saint Luke’s Gospel was written contains no punctuation. Punctuation had to be added in translation. Traditionally, we understand Christ’s statement to Dismas to be:

“Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The sentence has been used by some non-Catholics (and a few Catholics) to discount a Scriptural basis for Purgatory. How could Purgatory be as necessary as I described it to be in “The Holy Longing” when even a notorious criminal is given immediate admission to Paradise? Ever the insightful thinker, Jim Blackburn proposed a simple replacement of the comma giving the verse an entirely different meaning:

“Truly I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise.”

Whatever the timeline, the essential point could not be clearer. The door to Divine Mercy was opened by the events of that day, and the man crucified to the right of the Lord, by a simple act of faith and repentance and reliance on Divine Mercy, was shown a glimpse of Paradise Regained.

The gift of Paradise Regained left the cross of Dismas on Mount Calvary.  It leaves all of our crosses there.  Just as Cain set in motion our wandering “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden,” Dismas was given a new view from his cross, a view beyond death, away from the East of Eden, across the Undiscovered Country, toward eternal home.

Saint Dismas, pray for us.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post in honor of Christ the King. You may also wish to read these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’

To Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Thanksgiving in the Reign of Christ the King

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

Of Saints and Souls and Earthly Woes

For Catholics, the month of November honors our beloved dead, and is a time to reinforce our civil liberties especially the one most endangered: Religious Freedom.

The Commemoration of All Saints and All Souls by Fr. Gordon MacRae

A lot of attention has been paid to a recent post by Pornchai Moontri. Writing in my stead from Thailand, his post was “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand.” Many readers were able to put a terrible tragedy into spiritual perspective. Writer Dorothy R. Stein commented on it: “The Kingdom of Thailand weeps for its children. Only a wounded healer like Mr. Pornchai Moontri could tell such a devastating story and yet leave readers feeling inspired and hopeful. This is indeed a gift. I have read many accounts of this tragedy, but none told with such elegant grace.”

A few years ago I wrote of the sting of death, and the story of how one particular friend’s tragic death stung very deeply. But there is far more to the death of loved ones than its sting. A decade ago at this time I wrote a post that helped some readers explore a dimension of death they had not considered. It focused not only on the sense of loss that accompanies the deaths of those we love, but also on the link we still share with them. It gave meaning to that “Holy Longing” that extends beyond death — for them and for us — and suggested a way to live in a continuity of relationship with those who have died. The All Souls Day Commemoration in the Roman Missal also describes this relationship:

“The Church, after celebrating the Feast of All Saints, prays for all who in the purifying suffering of purgatory await the day when they will join in their company. The celebration of the Mass, which re-enacts the sacrifice of Calvary, has always been the principal means by which the Church fulfills the great commandment of charity toward the dead. Even after death, our relationship with our beloved dead is not broken.”

That waiting, and our sometimes excruciatingly painful experience of loss, is “The Holy Longing.” The people we have loved and lost are not really lost. They are still our family, our friends, and our fellow travelers, and we shouldn’t travel with them in silence. The month of November is a time to restore our spiritual connection with departed loved ones. If you know others who have suffered the deaths of family and friends, please share with them a link to “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts.”

The Communion of Saints

I have written many times about the saints who inspire us on this arduous path. The posts that come most immediately to mind are “A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II,” and more recently, “With Padre Pio When the Worst that Could Happen Happens.” Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Saint Padre Pio inspire me not because I have so much in common with them, but because I have so little. I am not at all like them, but I came to know them because I was drawn to the ways they faced and coped with adversity in their lives on Earth.

Patron saints really are advocates in Heaven, but the story is bigger than that. To have patron saints means something deeper than just hoping to share in the graces for which they suffered. It means to be in a relationship with them as role models for our inevitable encounter with human trials and suffering. They can advocate not only for us, but for the souls of those we entrust to their intercession. In the Presence of God, they are more like a lens for us, and not dispensers of grace in their own right. The Protestant critique that Catholics “pray to saints” has it all wrong.

To be in a relationship with patron saints means much more than just waiting for their help in times of need. I have learned a few humbling things this year about the dynamics of a relationship with Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio. I have tried to consciously cope with painful things the way they did, and over time they opened my eyes about what it means to have their advocacy. It is an advocacy I would not need if I were even remotely like them. It is an advocacy I need very much, and can no longer live without.

I don’t think we choose the saints who will be our patrons and advocates in Heaven. I think they choose us. In ways both subtle and profound, they interject their presence in our lives. I came into my unjust imprisonment decades ago knowing little to nothing of Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio. But in multiple posts at Beyond These Stone Walls I have written of how they made their presence here known. And in that process, I have learned a lot about why they’re now in my life. It is not because they look upon me and see their own paths. It is because they look upon me and see how much and how easily I stray from their paths.

I recently discovered something about the intervention of these saints that is at the same time humbling and deeply consoling. It is consoling because it affirms for me that these modern saints have made themselves a part of what I must bear each day. It is humbling because that fact requires shedding all my notions that their intercession means a rescue from the crosses I would just as soon not carry.

Over the last few years, I have had to live with something that is very painful — physically very painful — and sometimes so intensely so that I could focus on little else. In prison, there are not many ways to escape from pain. I can purchase some over-the-counter ibuprophen in the prison commissary, but that’ is sort of like fighting a raging forest fire with bottled water. It is not very effective. At times, the relentless pain flared up and got the better of me, and I became depressed. There are not many ways to escape depression in prison either. The combination of nagging pain and depression began to interfere with everything I was doing, and others started to notice. The daily barrage of foul language and constantly loud prison noise that I have heard non-stop for decades suddenly had the effect of a rough rasp being dragged across the surface of my brain. Many of you know exactly what I mean.

So one night, I asked Saint Padre Pio to intercede that I might be delivered from this awful nagging pain. I fell off to sleep actually feeling a little hopeful, but it was not to be. The next morning I awoke to discover my cross of pain even heavier than the night before. Then suddenly I became aware that I had just asked Padre Pio — a soul who in life bore the penetrating pain of the wounds of Christ without relief for fifty years — to nudge the Lord to free me from my pain. What was I thinking?! That awareness was a spiritually more humbling moment than any physical pain I have ever had to bear.

So for now, at least, I will live with this pain, and even embrace it, but I am no longer depressed about it. Situational depression, I have learned, comes when you expect an outcome other than the one you have. I no longer expect Padre Pio to rescue me from my pain, so I am no longer depressed. I now see that my relationship with him is not going to be based upon being pain-free. It is going to be what it was initially, and what I had allowed to lapse. It is the example of how he coped with suffering by turning himself over to grace, and by making an offering of what he suffered.

A rescue would sure be nice, but his example is, in the long run, a lot more effective. I know myself. If I awake tomorrow and this pain is gone forever, I will thank Saint Padre Pio. Then just as soon as my next cross comes my way — as I once described in “A Shower of Roses” — I will begin to doubt that the saint had anything to do with my release.

His example, on the other hand, is something I can learn from, and emulate. The truth is that few, if any, of the saints we revere were themselves rescued from what they suffered and endured in this life. We do not seek their intercession because they were rescued. We seek their intercession because they bore all for Christ. They bore their own suffering as though it were a shield of honor and they are going to show us how we can bear our own.

For Greater Glory

Back in 2010 when my friend Pornchai Moontri was preparing to be received into the Church, he asked one of his “upside down” questions. I called them “upside down” questions because as I lay in the bunk in our prison cell reading late at night, his head would pop down from the upper bunk so he appeared upside down to me as he asked a question. “When people pray to saints do they really expect a miracle?” I asked for an example, and he said, “Should you or I ask Saint Maximilian Kolbe for a happy ending when he didn’t have one himself?”

I wonder if Pornchai knew how incredibly irritating it was when he stumbled spontaneously upon a spiritual truth that I had spent months working out in my own soul. Pornchai’s insight was true, but an inconvenient truth — inconvenient by Earthly hopes, anyway. The truth about Auschwitz, and even a very long prison sentence, was that all hope for rescue was the first hope to die among any of its occupants. As Maximilian Kolbe lay in that Auschwitz bunker chained to, but outliving, his fellow prisoners being slowly starved to death, did he expect to be rescued?

All available evidence says otherwise. Father Maximilian Kolbe led his fellow sufferers into and through a death that robbed their Nazi persecutors of the power and meaning they intended for that obscene gesture. How ironic would it be for me to now place my hope for rescue from an unjust and uncomfortable imprisonment at the feet of Saint Maximilian Kolbe? Just having such an expectation is more humiliating than prison itself. Devotion to Saint Maximilian Kolbe helped us face prison bravely. It does not deliver us from prison walls, but rather from their power to stifle our souls.

I know exactly what brought about Pornchai’s question. Each weekend when there were no programs and few activities in prison, DVD films were broadcast on a closed circuit in-house television channel. Thanks to a reader, a DVD of the soul-stirring film, “For Greater Glory” was donated to the prison. That evening we were able to watch the great film. It was an hour or two after viewing this film that Pornchai asked his “upside-down” question.

“For Greater Glory” is one of the most stunning and compelling films of recent decades. You must not miss it. It is the historically accurate story of the Cristero War in Mexico in 1926. Academy Award nominee Andy Garcia portrays General Enrique Gorostieta Delarde in a riveting performance as the leader of Mexico’s citizen rebellion against the efforts of a socialist regime to diminish and then eradicate religious liberty and public expressions of Christianity, especially Catholic faith.

If you have not seen “For Greater Glory,” I urge you to do so. Its message is especially important before drawing any conclusions about the importance of the issue of religious liberty now facing Americans and all of Western Culture. As readers in the United States know well, in 2026 we face a most important election for the future direction of Congress and the Senate.

“For Greater Glory” is an entirely true account, and portrays well the slippery slope from a government that tramples upon religious freedom to the actual persecution, suppression and cancelation of priests and expressions of Catholic faith and witness. If you think it could not happen here, think again. It could not happen in Mexico either, but it did. We may not see our priests publicly executed, but we are already seeing them in prison without due process, and even silenced by their own bishops, sometimes just for boldly speaking the truth of the Gospel. You have seen the practice of your faith diminished as “non-essential” by government dictate during a pandemic.

The real star of this film — and I warn you, it will break your heart — is the heroic soul of young José Luis Sánchez del Río, a teen whose commitment to Christ and his faith resulted in horrible torment and torture. If this film were solely the creation of Hollywood, there would have been a happy ending. José would have been rescued to live happily ever after. It is not Hollywood, however; it is real. José’s final tortured scream of “Viva Cristo Rey!” is something I will remember forever.

I cried, finally, at the end as I read in the film’s postscript that José Luis Sánchez del Río was beatified as a martyr by Pope Benedict XVI after his elevation to the papacy in 2005. Saint José was canonized October 16, 2016 by Pope Francis, a new Patron Saint of Religious Liberty. His Feast Day is February 10. José’s final “Viva Cristo Rey!” echoes across the century, across all of North America, across the globe, to empower a quest for freedom that can be found only where young José found it.

“Viva Cristo Rey!”

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Our Faith is a matter of life and death, and it diminishes to our spiritual peril. Please share this post. You may also like these related posts to honor our beloved dead in the month of November.

Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand

The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

A Not-so-Subtle Wake-Up Call from Christ the King

A Cold Shower for a Spotlight Oscar Hangover

The film “Spotlight” won the Academy Award for Best Picture on February 28, 2016. Since then journalist JoAnn Wypijewski has debunked it as a script for moral panic.

February 12, 2025 by Father Gordon MacRae

[ Note from Father MacRae:I should have been more attentive in explaining this post this week.  It is not so much a reprint as a restoration.  A noted journalist had written a wonderful piece about the “Spotlight” film’s Academy Award for Best Picture nine years ago.  The writer, JoAnn Wypijewski, heralded an entirely new view of the film, which caused me to want to rewrite this post. ]

For some purveyors of journalism in America, the standard for modern news media seems to come down to “whoever screams longest and loudest is telling the truth.” Taking a position against a tidal wave of “availability bias” — a phenomenon I once described in a Catalyst article, “Due Process for Accused Priests” — might get a writer shouted down in a blast of hysteria masked as journalism.

But that may be changing. A post I wrote a few years ago, “The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy on the Cover of Newsweek,” a story that exposes a Catholic sex abuse fraud, has generated an unexpected response. At this writing, it has been shared thousands of times on social media, and has drawn readers by the thousands every day since it was posted.

There is nothing in that post, however, that screams out drama from the rooftops. If anything, it is subtle, reasoned, and unemotional. I am sometimes criticized for telling important stories without much emotional hype. Sometimes my friends become irritated with my lack of ranting and raving, but I must come down on the side of rational discourse when I write.

That lesson in the difference between responsible journalism and moral panic has been driven home again. I have had to add a few names to my short list of “News Media Spinal Columns.” Some writers exemplify courage and integrity by rationally exposing important stories despite a scandal-hungry news media that prefers moral panic to moral truths. Some have pushed back against that tide admirably, and though the list is short, today I have to add the name of another journalist with a spinal column.

On Sunday evening, February 28, 2016 I opted for Downton Abbey on PBS instead of the Academy Awards. Like most PBS productions, Downton Abbey had no commercial breaks so I did not switch over for even a peek at that annual diversity-challenged nod to Hollywood narcissism known as the Oscars.

I was not at all surprised to learn that “Spotlight” won the Oscar for Best Picture, its sole award out of six nominations. It is a sign of Oscar’s elitist finger on the pulse of common humanity that only two percent of viewers thought this was “Best Picture” in a USA Today study of exit interviews.

JoAnn Wypijewski has a very different take, not so much on the film itself, but on the integrity, of the story behind it and its damage to the art of journalism as rational reporting gave way to emotion. I cannot tell you how disappointing it was to read a review by Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online who surrendered reasoned journalism right in paragraph one:

“I cried watching that movie. I looked around and saw sorrow. I couldn’t help wondering if someone around me had been hurt by someone who professed to be a man of God.”

“But, hey, lighten up. It’s just a movie,” wrote two reviewers in the The New York Times (which, by the way, owned The Boston Globe during its 2002 Spotlight Team investigation). “And they don’t give an Oscar for telling the truth.”

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CounterPunch

On the day after the Oscars, at least five people sent me messages with a link foreboding, “You Need to See This!” Each warned that I am mentioned extensively in a controversial article by JoAnn Wypijewski at CounterPunch, a left-leaning news site that lives up to its name. Entirely unaccustomed to being treated justly by the media of the left in all this, my first thoughts on the article were not happy ones. Then the final message we checked was from the author herself with a link to “Oscar Hangover Special: Why’ ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film”:

“Fr. MacRae, I suspect you will think this intemperate… but then being in prison has given you an expansive view of polite company. I wrote this [see link] on the heels of the Oscars. I think you will like some of it, at least.”

I had no input into this article and no prior awareness of it. It does not represent my point of view at all, but rather is written solely from the point of view of the public record, seen through a fair and just set of journalistic eyes. The article was read once to me via telephone, and my knee jerk reaction was to keep it to myself. Then it was printed and sent to me, and I have since read it carefully twice. It’s tough stuff, and it made me grimace more than once, but mostly for its brutal honesty.

On first hearing the article, I have to admit that I didn’t much like being thrown together with the story of Father Paul Shanley, a notorious Boston priest with a long history of ecclesiastical rebellion. I suspect this is what the author meant by prison giving me “an expansive view of polite company.” I guess she understands that in some other circumstance, I may not choose to stand next to a lightning rod in a perfect storm.

But I know and admit that my gag reflex of umbrage was unjust, as I know that the case against Paul Shanley was unjust. He was tried not based on evidence of a real crime, but solely on the basis of his reputation. That was the only vehicle in which an utterly unbelievable, scientifically unsupportable claim of repressed and recovered memory could have been sold to an otherwise rational set of jurors.

First, throughout the 1970s, The Boston Globe, celebrated Paul Shanley as a notorious, pro-gay, in-the-Church’s-face “Street Priest.” Then, when it better suited the agenda of editors, the Globe turned on him. Shanley was tried in the pages of the Globe before he set foot in any court of law. He was sacrificed to a story that is not even plausible, and in its telling, journalistic integrity was sacrificed as well.

“Let That Sink In”

Paul Shanley stood for and did all manner of things that on their face were seen by some as dishonorable and disrespectful of his priesthood and his faith. But he was not on trial for those things. He was on trial for very specific offenses for which there was no evidence whatsoever beyond his reputation. All objective observers who look past his personal morality long enough to see the facts conclude that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was then in prison at age 84. We don’t have to like him to see that the Shanley trial was a sham.

Ms. Wypijewski’s CounterPunch juxtaposition of all this with the story of my own trial and imprisonment was jarring at best, but only because I have lived under the cloud of false witness for so long that to see it again in print assails me. The author’s revelation that this was all driven by the hysteria of moral panic surrounding the very idea of priestly abusers, and not evidence — for there was no evidence — drove the accusations, drove the trial, drove the media coverage, and drove me into prison. “MacRae got sixty-seven years for refusing to lie,” she wrote. “Let that sink in.”

The truth is that most of you now reading this have already let that sink in while others, including others in the Church, have settled for moral panic. This is why the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, Publisher and Editor of First Things magazine, wrote that my imprisonment “reflects a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.” This is why I need you to share this post and the CounterPunch article linked at the end.

Otherwise very reasonable Catholics on both the left and right have used the scandal of accused priests for their own agendas and ends with no regard for evidence, for justice, or for the most fundamental rights of their priests. The blind, self-righteous judgment of this “voice of the faithful” was the soil in which moral panic grew. Let that sink in, too.

The news media has done the same, and JoAnn Wypijewski has documented this masterfully. What The Boston Globe did was not journalism. It came as no surprise, in the years to follow the Spotlight revelations, that the Globe’s owner, The New York Times, became desperate to sell it. Several years ago the Globe was purchased by John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox. The New York Times let the Globe go for less than seven cents on the dollar on their original purchase price of $1.1 billion. It was sold by the Times for $70 million. Bottom line: The Boston Globe is dying. The Catholic Church is not.

Globe to shutter Crux site, shift BetaBoston
by Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, Casting the Second Stone2016

The Boston Globe said Friday that it will shut down Crux, the newspaper’s online publication devoted to news and commentary on the Roman Catholic Church. Crux will halt publication on April 1, and several employees will be laid off.

In a memo sent to Globe employees Friday, Globe editor Brian McGrory wrote “we’re beyond proud of the journalism and the journalists who have produced it, day after day, month over month, for the past year and a half.” But McGrory added, “We simply haven’t been able to develop the financial model of big-ticket, Catholic-based advertisers that was envisioned when we launched Crux back in September 2014.”

McGrory said that the Crux site will be handed over to associate editor and columnist John Allen, a veteran reporter on Catholic affairs. McGrory said that Allen “is exploring the possibility of continuing it in some modified form, absent any contribution from the Globe.” Crux editor Teresa Hanafin will stay in the newsroom, probably at bostonglobe.com, the paper’s online home.

Casting the Second Stone

In “Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write On the Ground?,” I described the limits that the Hebrew Scriptures imposed on the process of accusing, judging, and destroying our fellow human beings. Only with evidence and witnesses, and there had to be at least two, could the first stone be cast according to the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 17:17). Only then could the mob be justified in joining in.

But in the creation of a moral panic, such as that which Hollywood recently endorsed at the Academy Awards, no such limits on public stoning by the mob are deemed necessary. The Laws of God are not to be found in the credits of a Hollywood production, and for many in modern Western Culture, Hollywood is now the final arbiter of truth and justice. Are you really prepared to accept a lecture on morality and justice taught by the news media with an endorsement from Hollywood? Some — even among Catholic priests and bishops — have learned that the best way to avoid being targeted by a witch hunt is to join in with its inevitable stoning.

Regarding the CounterPunch article taken as a whole, JoAnn Wypjewski is wrong about one thing. I did not “like some of it, at least.” I liked all of it! I liked it not because it is comfortable to read — it is not — but because it is the truth, because it is written by a person whose integrity as a journalist took precedence over what those on her ideological side of the fence demand from her. I like it because very early on in the article she risked making herself a lightning rod for the media left by challenging its availability bias:

“I am astonished that, across the past few months, ever since ‘Spotlight’ hit theaters, otherwise serious left-of center people have peppered their party conversation with effusions that the film reflects a heroic journalism, the kind we all need more of… What editor Marty Baron and the Globe sparked with their 600 stories and their confidential tip line for grievances was not laudatory journalism but a moral panic, and unfortunately for those who are telling the truth, truth was its casualty.”

Writing for The Wall Street Journal recently, author Carol Tavris described the devastation typically left in the wake of a moral panic:

“How do you convey to the next generation the stupidity, the rush to judgment, the breathtaking cruelty, the self-righteousness, the ruined lives, that every hysterical epidemic generates? On the other hand, understanding a moral panic requires perspective-distance from the emotional heat of anger and anxiety.”

— “A Very Model Moral Panic,” WSJ.com, August 7, 2015

To date the CounterPunch article has been shared thousands of times on social media. This is of utmost importance because it lets all media know that this is an important story that has been neglected by the mainstream media.

I therefore implore you to share this post, and to read and share this important article by JoAnn Wypijewski: “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film.”

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NOTE TO READERS: Father Gordon MacRae is now publishing an occasional article on X (formerly Twitter). His first article there is linked below. We invite our readers to follow him on X @TSWBeyond.

xAI Grok and Fr. Gordon MacRae on the True Origin of Covid-19

You may also like these recommended posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Anatomy of a Sex Abuse Fraud

The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul

Unjustly in Prison for 30 Years: A Collision of Fury and Faith

Cardinal Bernard Law on the Frontier of Civil Rights

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Advent of the Mother of God

Advent begins a time to release ourselves from the grip of Earthly powers to prepare the Way of the Lord and make straight His path.

Advent by Father Gordon MacRae

The Gospels According to Matthew and Luke are the Scriptural sources for the events of Advent and Christmas. They have many similarities and some differences. Matthew alone tells the story of the Magi, a story I unfolded here in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear.” Only Luke has the story of Saint Gabriel the Archangel and the Annunciation. It seems that Mary herself was his source for that account and the events to follow. That Gospel passage graces two important Feast Days within Advent: The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. I unfolded the deeper recesses of that account as well in “Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us.”

Both Evangelists often present two stories, one on the surface, and one with much deeper meaning and historical context for those “with eyes to see and ears to hear” making these accounts far richer stories with deeper significance. What lies beneath the lines of the Gospel has to be excavated by seeing and hearing with the hearts and minds of the original hearers of this Good News.

Saint Luke’s account of the Annunciation is followed immediately by Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth who awaits the pending birth of John who would become known as the Baptist. It’s a short account, easy to read and ponder, but it tells two stories — maybe even three — one on its surface and one or two that lay beneath. I am going to reproduce it here:

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the child [who would become John the Baptist] leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

— Luke 1:39-45

This account comprises the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary and is familiar to all of us. At face value, it relates a joyous encounter between Mary and Elizabeth, her cousin and the wife of Zechariah and expectant mother of John the Baptist.

Then there is a second level of meaning, though subtle, that astute Jewish hearers might detect in Luke’s account. The experience of the child leaping in Elizabeth’s womb in the presence of the prenatal Jesus recalls the Old Testament story of Rebekah (Genesis 25: 22-23), pregnant with the twins, Jacob and Esau. Both Luke’s Gospel and the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, use the Greek word “skirtáō” to describe this “leaping” or “struggling” of the child in the womb.

In Saint Luke’s account, “the child leaped (skirtáō) in her womb” is used to infer that the child in Mary’s womb would be greater than his slightly older cousin, John (expressed in John 3:16 and 3:27-30). In the Old Testament case of Rebekah, it was to show that Jacob would have preeminence over his slightly older brother, Esau, as God Himself explains:

“The children struggled (skirtáō) together within her… And the Lord said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born to you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.”

— Genesis 25: 22-23

Also, Elizabeth’s declaration, “Blessed are you among women,” reverberates in Jewish ears back to the experiences of Jael and Judith (Judges 5:24-27 and Judith 13:18). Blessed for their heroic courage in warding off the enemies hostile to Israel, Jael and Judith struck mortal blows to the head of the enemy. In Mary’s case, the victory will be even greater as she puts the head of the enemy beneath her feet (Genesis 3:15).

Elizabeth’s question put to Mary — “Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” — does not denote a simple visit between cousins. Every occurrence of “Lord” in this account and throughout this chapter in Luke (there are seven such references in this chapter) refer to God. Elizabeth’s declaration that Mary is the Mother of God (Theotokos, in the Greek) became the first Marian dogma to be expounded by the Church and defined, at the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431.

Preceding these verses in Luke’s Gospel — and found nowhere else — is the beautiful account of the Archangel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Zechariah and then to Mary, and the very different ways the Archangel approaches them with Divine News. It demonstrates the great reverence and deference with which the Evangelist and early Church viewed Mary. It was a reverence that spilled over into art, as evidenced in the great painting “The Annunciation” by Fra Angelico.

The New Ark of the Covenant

And then there is yet another layer of meaning for keen Jewish ears in Saint Luke’s Visitation account. There are several striking parallels between Mary’s visit with Elizabeth and King David’s reaction to the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem 1,000 years before. In Luke 1:39, Mary proceeds in haste “into the hill country to a city of Judah.” In the Second Book of Samuel (6:2) David arose and went to the very same place. In Luke 1:43, Elizabeth asks, how is it “that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” In Second Samuel 6:9, David asks, “How is it that the Ark of the Lord comes to me?” In Luke 1:41, “When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the child leaped in her womb…” In Second Samuel 6:16, “As the Ark of the Lord came into the City of David, Michal the daughter of Saul saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord.”

The parallel is extremely important for the hearers of Luke’s words. The importance rests in the way the Ark of the Covenant was viewed by the people of God. It was a chest made of acacia wood — about 3.75 feet long and 1.5 feet wide (1.1 meters by 0.5 meters) lined both inside and outside with gold (Exodus 25:10-26). At its four corners were placed heavy rings of gold through which acacia poles could be slipped to carry the Ark since it could not be touched by human hands.

The lid was composed of a solid slab of gold that formed the “kapporet” or “mercy seat,” the place of atonement. It was surmounted by two solid gold cherubim which formed a throne so that the Ark itself became a footstool for God (Numbers 10: 33-35).

The Ark was built upon the command of God at Mount Sinai, and it housed the two stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. It also contained a golden vessel of manna (Exodus 16:34) and the rod of Aaron (Numbers 17:10). The Ark became the evidence of the Lord’s intimate association with Israel, a sign of the Covenant, and a housing for the Presence of God. When the Jews encamped, the Ark was placed in the Holy of Holies where Moses “conversed with the Lord” (Numbers 7:89).

During a struggle with the Philistines, the Ark was captured (1 Samuel 4:11) and taken. The Philistines suffered seven months of earthquakes and plagues (1 Samuel 5:3-9) until the Ark was returned. It stayed for twenty years at Kiriath-Jearim until that scene above in Second Samuel (6:16) when David leaped before it as it returned to the Tabernacle in Jerusalem.

The Ark remained there for the next 400 years until the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. to the Babylonians (Jeremiah 3:16). It was not counted among the spoils claimed by the Babylonians but the Second Book of Maccabees (2 Macc 2-5) described that it was saved from destruction by the Prophet Jeremiah and hidden on Mount Nebo where it would stay “until God gathers His people together again and shows His mercy” (2 Macc 2:7).

Thus emerged throughout Israel the expectation of a Messiah, a Branch of David and a Son of God. In Saint Luke’s subtle but powerful short paragraph about the Visitation is found an entire nation’s wealth of understanding about the return of the Ark of the Covenant and the hope of a Messiah. In the subtle hand of Saint Luke, it is in Mary, the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Ark of the New Covenant that the Dawn from On High broke upon us. Hers is a soul that magnifies the Lord.

The vision of the Ark in the Book of Revelation (11:19-12:1) hints at this identification: the “woman clothed with the sun” is the Mother of God. And she wants the last word. The door to that Word was opened on the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception. The Word is “Mercy,” a divine Christmas gift, and it is the great tragedy of our age that so many do not even know they need it.

O Come, O Branch of Jesse’s stem;
From Every foe deliver them
That trust Your mighty power to save,
And give them victory over the grave.

O Come, O Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that sets us free,
And close the path to misery.

Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel.
To thee shall come Emmanuel.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Our regular weekly post will appear here on Wednesday. The above post was first published several years ago in an older version of this blog. Because of its popularity and focus on Advent, we have restored it and updated it substantially. You may note that some of the wonderful reader comments were posted on the original version of this post.

We have all been through a lot in the few three years. Advent is a time to correct our focus on all that really matters. For more Advent reading we recommend the following posts:

Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us

How Our Lady of Fatima Saved a World in Crisis

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”