“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Eric Mahl, and Pornchai Moontri: A Lesson in Freedom
For another 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat, our friends behind These Stone Walls sought the true source of freedom and brought a captive soul along for the ride.
For another 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat, our friends behind These Stone Walls sought the true source of freedom and brought a captive soul along for the ride.
I received an unexpected letter in the snail mail recently. It was startling, really, because it was hand written on plain white paper with absolutely nothing but its contents to signify its importance. It was from Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, a far more prolific writer than me, and the last person I expected to have time to write to me. What made its arrival so striking was how much it lifted me up from yet another round of spiritual warfare that came just before it.
I’ll get back to Father Gaitley’s letter in a moment. Things like our latest spiritual battle are very difficult to put into writing. Most people have had the experience of seeing their world unexpectedly disrupted. There are times when the solid ground upon which we stand just seems to collapse out from under us. There is no place where this happens more than in prison.
I returned to my cell one day weeks ago to find my friend and roommate, Pornchai “Max” Moontri packed and gone. He had apparently been summoned out of his job and told that he can no longer live with me and must move immediately. In a world in which we have little control over our lives, such things are a jarring and alarming experience.
Pornchai was forced to move in with a notorious transgender activist who was back in prison for the third or fourth time. Everyone around us, staff and prisoners alike, expressed their utter dismay and bewilderment with this arrangement. I was angry and perplexed that some bureaucrat for whom we are sight unseen could make such decisions for us and make them stick.
With the help of some dedicated prison staff members, it took 24 hours to get to the bottom of what happened and why. It turned out that this was the result of a bureaucratic decision set in motion in the prison computer system five years earlier when we lived in another place. It was not based on any reality anyone could determine. Once discovered, all was restored just as quickly as it was disrupted.
Pornchai was rattled but much relieved when he was able to move back with me the next day. Just how quickly this was rectified was even more startling to me. Sometimes when such decisions are made, even poor or unjust decisions, they are often not rectified at all. It could have taken weeks or months to fix this.
To ponder just how difficult such things can be here, take a new look at a moving August 16, 2017 post in which Mary herself decided how and where we would live. I mean that literally. It seems that she will just not be thwarted in her plan. That post was “Pornchai Moontri at a Crossroads.”
Father Michael Gaitley’s most welcome letter arrived right in the middle of all this madness. In it, he referred to Pornchai and me as “The Special Ops in The Marian Missionaries of Divine Mercy.” He asked for the support of our prayers for a writing project in which he is now engaged.
For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free
Readers may remember an important turning point in our lives behind These Stone Walls called 33 Days to Morning Glory (Part I – Part II). We were the first prisoners in the world to have an opportunity to take part in this retreat experience written by Father Gaitley. The Spring, 2014 issue of Marian Helper magazine carried a description of our experience with the above photo in an article by Felix Carroll entitled, “Mary Is at Work Here.” Here is a striking excerpt:
“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group of inmates to be the first. That reason eventually was revealed. It turned out that one of the participating inmates was Pornchai Moontri, who was featured in last year’s Marian Press title, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions.
“Moreover, before joining the Marians’ Evangelization Department a year ago and helping to spearhead the 33 Days initiative, Eric Mahl was also featured in the book. Eric and Pornchai met for the first time when Eric presented to the inmates during one of the six weekly meetings for the group retreat. ‘I felt like I met my brother, someone I’ve known my whole life,’ Eric said afterwards.
“Fr. Gordon MacRae — who chronicles his life in his celebrated website, TheseStoneWalls.com — joined Pornchai in [Marian] consecration and called it ‘a great spiritual gift’ that ‘opened a door to the rebirth of trust’ at a particularly dark time for both men.”
That was in 2014. In 2016, as the Jubilee Year of Mercy came to a close, I was asked by Marian Helper editor Felix Carroll to write an article entitled “The Doors That Have Unlocked,” about living out our faith in the Year of Mercy. My article included this brief paragraph about our 2014 Marian Consecration:
“Our consecration did not result in thunder and lightning. Our spiritual warfare continues. That’s the nature of prison life. Only in hindsight could we see the immense transformative grace that was given to us. The consecration to Jesus through Mary changed not only our interior lives, but our environment as well.”
I saw that “immense transformative grace” manifest itself again after our most recent trials that preceded Father Gaitley’s letter. The Marians were in the process of offering another
33 Days to Morning Glory retreat program in the prison. Catholic inmates were invited to consider taking part in it, but fifteen were required for the program and only thirteen signed up.
So, given that yet another set of dark days immediately preceded this for us, I asked Pornchai if he would like to sign us both up for a renewal. I said I felt that we were being strangely invited by the circumstances. And just as in 2014, we also both felt reluctant, but we have learned the hard way that reluctance is just another battleground in spiritual warfare.
Eric Mahl (left), a Marian lay aggregate, has helped spearhead the Marians’ evangelization efforts. Standing in front of New Hampshire State Prison for Men, he is joined by prison ministry volunteers Jean Fafard, Nate Chapman, David Kemmis, and Fr. Wilfred Deschamps.
A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
On Sunday, June 30, the third 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat commenced at the New Hampshire State Prison, and two of its participants had also been present for the first. To our great joy, Eric Mahl showed up from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for an opening presentation. It was a spellbinding meditation based upon that day’s Second Reading from St. Paul to the Galatians which Eric read:
“For Freedom Christ has set us free. For you were called to freedom, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
I love it when the Lord is ironic. The prisoners around us devoured Eric’s message giving voice to Saint Paul “For freedom Christ has set us free.” A team of Catholic Prison Ministry volunteers was on hand to begin our 33 Days retreat. Nate Chapman, David Kemmis, Jim Preisendorfer, Jean Fafard, Peter Arnoldy, Andy Bashelor, and Father Bill Deschamps comprise a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The next week, July 7, the first installment began. As happens with all spiritual endeavors here, we had to line up at random, and then count off by fours. All the ones would thus be at one small group table for the duration of the 33 Days. The same for twos, threes, etc.
Pornchai and I and our friend CJ — who we dragged along with us — all ended up at the same table, though not by any design of our own. You have met CJ in these pages before in a most important post, “Catholic Priests, Catholic Survivors, Moral Quagmires.”
That post was, in part at least, about how Pornchai and CJ share a similar trauma in their lives that is entirely unknown to each other. I pondered in that post how we could even begin to help him cope with what was taken from him and the impact it has had on his life. A number of readers commented and sent private messages that they are praying for CJ.
So there we were, sitting at this one table with Catholic Ministry volunteer Andy Bashelor. The first point for us to ponder after watching and listening to Father Michael’s Gaitley’s introductory video was, “Consider a special need in your life that you entrusted to the intercession of Mary or a favorite saint.”
A long, uncomfortable silence followed, and then Pornchai opened up. He mentioned our recent trials, and how, very early in our friendship, I challenged him to the great adventure of faith. He said that I told him that his way of doing things had not been working out so well, and invited him to try my way for awhile. Pornchai spoke with a crack in his voice about how doors then began to open, in both his future and his past.
Andy Bashelor, interrupted at that point and said, “I should tell you that I read a powerful article about you.” Then, (turning to me) he said, “And it was written by you.” Pornchai and I knew that he was speaking of “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”
Our friend CJ sat there mesmerized, instinctively knowing that something painful but important was now on the table. Pornchai went on to speak of how he was sent here after fourteen years in prison, seven of them in solitary confinement in a supermax prison. He spoke of how his life seemed without hope, of how he trusted no one and had no vision beyond prison. He spoke of how his very soul was imprisoned from a painful and traumatic past.
And then Pornchai spoke of a priest who saw him beaten and left in ruins on the side of the road, but did not pass by. He spoke of how he was led to Saint Maximilian Kolbe, and then to Mary, and then to Christ, and of how all has now changed. Pornchai then repeated something that always leaves me with a lump in my throat. He said he woke up one day and suddenly saw before him a future when up to then all he ever had was a past.
“Now there is hope,” Pornchai said triumphantly. He spoke of how setbacks no longer defeat him, and of how God has not waited for his prayers, but has opened doors one by one to bring light to both the traumas of the past and the worries of the future.
And all this while, the Holy Spirit was speaking through Pornchai to someone else. CJ sat there in stunned silence and spoke not a word. The next day he came to me in the prison library, clearly shaken. He was stricken to the core by what he heard, and asked me to help him begin the process of becoming Catholic. Then he asked me to ask Pornchai Moontri to help him face the past and teach him how to hope for a future.
“I can’t yet deal with how weird it is,” CJ said, “That I had to come to prison to learn what it means to be free.”
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. The great adventure of 33 Days to Morning Glory is a saving grace that my friend, Father Michael Gaitley, set in motion as a seminarian and published after just one year of priesthood. Today, over two million copies of 33 Days to Morning Glory are in circulation. To read more of what this has meant to us behind These Stone Walls please see these related sites and posts:
Behold Your Son / Behold Your Mother (Marian.org).
Please share this post!
Fr Seraphim Michalenko on a Mission of Divine Mercy
Midway in our Consoling the Heart of Jesus retreat in prison, Fr Seraphim Michalenko, Director of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, fulfilled Hebrews 13:3.
Midway in our Consoling the Heart of Jesus retreat in prison, Fr Seraphim Michalenko, Director of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, fulfilled Hebrews 13:3.
Some strange and interesting things are happening behind These Stone Walls this summer, and it’s a task and a half to stay ahead of them and reflect a little so I can write of them. In too many ways to describe, we sometimes feel swept off our feet by the intricate threads of connection that are being woven, and sometimes revealed.
I wasn’t even going to have a post for this week. I spent the last ten days immersed in a major writing project that I just finished. I knew it would be a struggle to type a post on top of that. I also had no topic. Absolutely nothing whatsoever came to mind. So I decided to just let readers know that I need to skip a week on TSW. Yet here I am, and it’s being written on the fly as I struggle to type it and get it in the mail in time.
What brought on this frenzy to get something posted on this mid-summer day? Well, first of all I awoke this morning and looked at the calendar, and realized that the post date I decided to skip is also the Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It commemorates the apparition of our Blessed Mother to Saint Simon Stock, founder of the Carmelite Order, in the year 1215. She promised a special blessing to those who would wear her scapular. According to the explanation of this Memorial in the Daily Roman Missal, “Countless Christians have taken advantage of Our Lady’s protection.”
“Protection.” It seems a strange word to describe what we might expect from devotion to Mary. Most TSW readers remember my post, “Behold Your Mother! 33 Days to Morning Glory” about the Marian Consecration which Pornchai Maximilian and I entered into on the Solemnity of Christ the King in 2013. Felix Carroll also wrote of it — with a nice photo of us — in “Mary is at Work Here” in Marian Helper magazine. [Flash Version and PDF Version]
Throughout that 33 Days retreat leading up to our Consecration, I was plagued with the creepy feeling that this was all going to cost us something, that maybe Pornchai and I were opening ourselves to further suffering and trials by Consecrating to Mary the ordeals we are now living. What we have both found since our Marian Consecration, however, has been a sort of protection, a subtle grace that seems to be weaving itself in and around us, permeating our lives. Exactly what has been its cost? It has cost us something neither of us ever imagined we could ever afford to pay. The price tag for such grace is trust, and where we live, that is a precious commodity not so easily invested, but very easily taken from us.
I am amazed at the number of TSW readers who have written to me about their decisions to commence the 33 Days retreat, and commit themselves to Marian Consecration. I received a letter this week from Mary Fran, a reader and frequent correspondent who is completing her 33 Days retreat with her Marian Consecration on the day this is posted, the Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. She is going into this with just the right frame of mind and spirit. I hope she doesn’t mind, but here’s an excerpt of her letter:
“This is a very good retreat. I will be sorry to see it over. I have the Consecration Prayer typed out on pretty paper in preparation for the big day. A new beginning. A new way of life. Under new management.”
The truth is, Mary Fran, that it will never be over. But I like your idea of a life “under new management.” The concept seems to have a lot less to do with what Marian Consecration might cost in terms of trials to be offered, and more to do with what graces might be gained to endure them when they come. I’m not sure of why or exactly when it started, but after receiving the Eucharist since my own Consecration I have begun to pray the Memorare, a prayer attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux that best expresses our confidence in Mary as repository of grace and, therefore, protection:
“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, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you I come, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen.”
Trust Is the Currency of Grace
In a post last month, “Father’s Day in Prison Consoling the Heart of Jesus,” I wrote a little about how much of a daily ordeal our prisons can sometimes be. Near the end of that post, I quoted a brief dialogue between Father Michael Gaitley, author of Consoling the Heart of Jesus, and Father Seraphim Michalenko, Director of The National Shrine of The Divine Mercy. Their discussion is worth expanding a bit for this post. In fact, it was part of this week’s assigned reading in our Consoling the Heart of Jesus retreat in which we are at the midway point behind these prison walls. So here is a little more of that conversation:
“Father Gaitley: ‘And we want to console Jesus in the best possible way … and the best way to console Him is to remove the thorn that hurts His heart the most, the thorn that is lack of trust in His merciful love … and the best way to remove that thorn and console Him is to trust Him.’
”Father Seraphim: ‘And how do you LIVE trust? What is its concrete expression in your daily 1iving? … The way you live that trust is by praise and thanksgiving, to praise and thank God in all things. That’s what the Lord said to St. Faustina.’”
It struck me just today that the new trial asked of me in Marian Consecration is to imitate her trust, her famous fiat to the seemingly impossible: “Be it done to me according to Thy word.” Such trust is not an easy thing to embrace when the world turns dark, when freedom is taken by forces beyond our control, when fortune fades, when health fails, when loved ones are lost, when love itself is lost, when evil seems to win all around us, when depression, the noon-day devil, wants to rule both day and night.
That almost seems to sum up prison, and as such we are all destined for the trials of life in some form or another. We are all destined for some form of prison. So many readers have asked me for an update on our friend, Anthony, of whom I wrote recently in “Pentecost, Priesthood, and Death in the Afternoon.” Anthony is in prison dying of cancer. Several weeks ago, he could no longer bear the pain he was in so he was moved to the prison medical unit for palliative care. He came to the prison chapel for Mass the following Sunday, and the one after that. He was not there at Mass last week, and it is very possible we will not see Anthony again in this life.
Though he is but 200 yards away locked in another building, prisons pay no heed to the bonds of connection between human beings in captivity. Once Anthony was moved elsewhere, we may not visit him, inquire about him, or even hear from him. That is one of the great crosses of prison, and the welfare of that person and his soul is something about which we can now only trust. We can only be consoled by what YOU have done in our stead. When I last saw Anthony, he smiled and said, “I have gotten so much mail and so many cards I feel totally surrounded by God’s love.”
Father Michael Gaitley summed up nicely the road out of this dense forest of all our anxious cares:
“So the best way to console Jesus’ Heart is to give him our trust, and according to the expert [Fr Seraphim Michalenko] the best way to live trust is with an attitude of praise and thanksgiving, the way of joyful, trustful acceptance of God’s will.”
Opening Impenetrable Doors
At the end of “Dostoevsky in Prison and the Perils of Odysseus,” I wrote, “the hand of God is somewhere in all this, visible only in the back of the tapestry where we cannot yet see. He is working among the threads, weaving together the story of us.” Some readers liked that imagery, but it’s also true. It really happens and is really happening in our lives right now. I have experienced it, and Pornchai has recently experienced it in a very big way, but only with eyes opened by trust. Here’s how.
In the months after Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I first met, United States Immigration Judge Leonard Shapiro had just ruled that Pornchai must be deported from the U.S. to Thailand upon whatever point he is to be released from prison. The very thought of this was dismal, like stepping off a cliff in dense fog with no safe landing in sight. Pornchai had only a “Plan B”: to make certain that he never leaves prison.
I was deeply concerned for him, and tried to put myself in his shoes. How does a person get literally dumped into a country only vaguely familiar with no human connections whatsoever? How would he live? How could he even survive? So I told him something so totally foreign to both of us that I shuddered and doubted even as I was saying the words. I told him he has to abandon his “Plan B” and trust. Trust me and trust God. What was I saying?! I wasn’t even sure I trusted at all.
Three years later, Pornchai became a Catholic on Divine Mercy Sunday 2010. A lot of people don’t realize that this was completely by “accident.” And it caused me to worry even more about his future. Thailand is a Buddhist nation. Less than one percent of its people are Catholic. I wondered how becoming Catholic could possibly serve him in a country and culture from which he was already completely alienated and in which he must somehow survive.
Pornchai didn’t even know that the time he was choosing for his entry into the Church was Divine Mercy Sunday. What he had originally planned was to surprise me by telling me of his decision to be Baptized on my birthday, April 9, which was a Friday in 2010. It was, in his mind, to be a birthday present. Some present! I wasn’t even trusting that this was a good idea.
So Pornchai went to talk with the prison’s Catholic chaplain, Deacon Jim Daly to help arrange this. The Chaplain asked a local priest to come to the prison for the Baptism, but he was only available to do this on Saturday, April 10. I stood in as proxy for Pornchai’s Godparents, one in Belgium and one in Indianapolis, while Vincentian Father Anthony Kuzia Baptized and Confirmed Pornchai.
The next day was Divine Mercy Sunday, and it just so happened that Bishop John McCormack was coming to the prison for his annual Mass that day. So just the night before, I explained to Pornchai about Saint Faustina, Divine Mercy, why Pope John Paul II designated the Sunday after Easter to be Divine Mercy Sunday, and how this devotion seemed to sweep the whole world. Pornchai thus received his First Eucharist and was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, and Whoever planned this, it wasn’t us!
Then because I mentioned that fact on TSW a few times, it got the attention of Felix Carroll, a writer for Marian Helper magazine. Felix then asked if he could write of Pornchai’s Divine Mercy connection for the Marian.org website in an article entitled, “Mercy – Inside Those Stone Walls.” The response to that article was amazing. From all over the world, people commented on it and circulated it. Felix wrote that “the story of Pornchai lit up our website like no other!”
So then in the eleventh hour, Felix Carroll pulled a book he was just about to publish. It was supposed to be about 16 Divine Mercy conversions, but Felix changed the titled to Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions, and added an expanded chapter about Pornchai Moontri’s life and conversion. The chapter even mentions me and These Stone Walls, though I really had very little to do with Pornchai’s conversion. Pornchai and I received copies of the book, looked at each other, and simultaneously asked, “How did this happen?”
The Needlepoint of God
The book went everywhere, including into the hands of Father Seraphim Michalenko, Director of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy and the person I quoted on the issue of trust in this post. Father Seraphim became an instrument for the threads God was weaving for Pornchai. He sent the book to another contact, Yela Smit, a co-director of the Divine Mercy Apostolate in Bangkok, Thailand. The result was simply astonishing, and the threads of connection just keep being woven together. I wrote of this incredible account in “Knock and the Door Will Open: Divine Mercy in Bangkok Thailand.”
In that post, I wrote of how I undertook responsibility for easing Pornchai’s burden by trying to find him connections in Thailand only to be frustrated every step of the way. Then, in spite of myself, in the back of the tapestry where we cannot yet see, those threads were being woven together miraculously, and trust found a foundation in the dawn of hope. Suddenly, through nothing either of us did or didn’t do, the cross of fear and dread about how Pornchai would survive alone in Thailand was lifted from him.
Pornchai and I went to Sunday Mass in the Prison Chapel last week. The priest who is usually here is away for a few weeks so we heard it would be someone “filling in.” It was Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, 84 years old and the man who opened the doors of Divine Mercy for Pornchai in Thailand where God has accomplished some amazing needlework. Father Seraphim was accompanied by Eric Mahl who also has a chapter in Felix Carroll’s Loved, Lost, Found, and who has become a good friend to me and Pornchai. They both returned that evening for a session of our Consoling the Heart of Jesus Retreat. Pornchai was able to meet with Father Seraphim for a long talk. He has seen firsthand the evidence of Divine Mercy, and it all happened behind the walls of an impenetrable prison.
