How Our Lady of Guadalupe Came to Us in Prison

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is the setting for a profound story of how Mother Mary sought out two sons in darkness and led them to the light of Divine Mercy.

December 11, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

“The Marians believe Mary chose this particular group of inmates to be the first. That reason eventually was revealed. It turns out that one of the participating inmates was Pornchai Moontri.”

‘Mary Is at Work Here’ by Felix Carroll

This story describes a most unlikely series of events in a most unlikely place. Some of it has been told in these pages before, but putting theses threads together in one place creates an inspiring tapestry of Divine Mercy. I first began writing about this several years ago at the conclusion of a six-week retreat program in the New Hampshire State Prison.

Over the summer of 2019, Pornchai Moontri and I were asked to take part, for a second time, in the Divine Mercy retreat, 33 Days to Morning Glory by Marian Fr Michael Gaitley. It was offered here in the summer months amid lots of competing activities. The organizers needed 15 participants to host the retreat, but only 13 signed up. So Pornchai and I were to be “the filler.”

We ended up benefitting greatly from the ‘retreat,’ and I think we also contributed much to the other participants. At the end of it, one of the retreat facilitators, Andy Bashelor turned to Pornchai and said “I want you to know that I saw your conversion story. It is the most powerful story I have ever read.” I wrote of this in “Eric Mahl and Pornchai Moontri: A Lesson in Freedom.”

But before returning to that story, I want to revisit something that happened several months before it was posted. 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. For the previous several years it was a graphic image of our Galaxy with a little “You Are Here” arrow pointing to a tiny dot in the cosmos that depicted our solar system. It made me feel somewhat 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 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 is the one you see here. It’s a magnificent mural in Mexico City. I was not yet even conscious of the date. On the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, blindly chosen from a thousand random numbers, she appeared on my screen and has been there ever since.

I was not always conscious of any spiritual connection with Mary. Her sphere of influence in my life was first directed to Pornchai Moontri. The segment from Marian Helper magazine atop this post attests to that. I wrote of it in “Fr Seraphim Michalenko on a Mission of Divine Mercy.”

A Mystery in Her Eyes

But back, for a moment, to Our Lady of Guadalupe which became my favorite among all the Marian images I have come to reverence. Its origin is fascinating. Nearly five centuries ago, on the morning of December 12, 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 that spot. She then told him to gather up in his tilma — a shawl that was commonly worn at the time — a bunch of Castillian roses that appeared nearby. Castillian roses were never in bloom in December, but there they were. He was told to bring these to the local bishop.

When Juan Diego removed his tilma in the presence of the bishop and a group of people with him, he and they were surprised to see the roses. But they were stunned to also see imprinted in 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. The woman had asked Juan Diego to tell the bishop that she is “Coatloxopeuh,” which in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, means “The One Who Crushes the Serpent.”

Juan Diego’s tilma, a garment of the poor, 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.

Hundreds of years later, in 1929, a photographer revealed that when he enlarged photographs of the Lady’s face on the tilma, other images appeared to be in her eyes. In 1979, scientist and engineer, Dr. Jose Aste Tousman, studied the tilma using more sophisticated imaging equipment enlarging her eyes 2,500 times.

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.

On January 26, 1979, Pope John Paul II offered Mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe before an overflow crowd of 300,000. Years later, St. Juan Diego was canonized by him. Now, seemingly by random “accident,” that image is enshrined on the computer screen in the place where I work each day in prison. The mathematical odds against this happening are as astronomical as the odds against the image itself.

Her Summons to Pornchai Moontri

The icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe is now also on the wall of my cell. It has been widely accepted by many as a representation of the “Woman Clothed with the Sun and the Moon Under Her Feet” as described in the Book of Revelation (12:1). In the Mystical City of God, Venerable Mary of Agreda discerned that evil greatly fears this image, and flees from it.

Both Sacred Scripture and Catholic Tradition are filled with accounts of good men and women who suffer terrible ordeals only to be transformed into great men and women. I told the devastating story of how Pornchai Moontri came into my life in 2005 and all that he endured before and after in “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner.”

Seemingly by some mysteriously Guiding Hand, the events of both our lives steered us toward the point of our being in the same place at the same time and meeting. After all that Pornchai had suffered in life, he would never have trusted me, an accused Catholic priest, if not for a series of articles that Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in The Wall Street Journal. Pornchai read them and was moved that he has met a friend whose life had been unjustly shattered in almost equal measure to his own. It was then that he made a decision to do something he had never done before, to trust.

In 2007, the next catastrophe in his life took place. After fifteen years in prison, many of them in the cruel torment of solitary confinement, Pornchai was ordered by a U.S. Immigration Judge to be deported to his native Thailand upon completion of his sentence. Pornchai despaired about the prospect of one day being left alone in a country of only vague memories, a country from which he was taken against his will as a young abandoned child.

I told Pornchai in 2007 that we will have to build a bridge to Thailand. He scoffed at this, saying that it was impossible to do from a prison. Then the first sections of the bridge began to be laid out. This was two years before this blog began in 2009. First, Mrs. LaVern West, a retired librarian in Cincinnati, Ohio also read those WSJ articles and began corresponding with me.

In a return letter, I mentioned my friendship with Pornchai and the challenges we faced. LaVern began researching and printing rudimentary lessons of Thai language and culture and sending them to Pornchai who began to study them. One of the lessons mentioned a Thai language series produced by Paiboon Publishers, a Thai language bookseller in California. So I wrote to them. Pornchai had not heard Thai spoken since before he became a homeless 13 year old lost in America.

Paiboon Publishers donated a set of Thai language DVDs to the prison library for the exclusive use of Pornchai to study Thai several hours per week. He quickly became proficient in the spoken language of his early childhood. Reading and writing in Thai, however, were simply beyond his grasp. Mine too.

We both gave learning the Thai writing system a serious effort, but it seems just a complex series of squiggles beyond the capacity of most Western adult minds to assimilate. Pornchai reads and writes fluently in English, however, which in Thailand is an asset.

In 2008, the Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights published “Pornchai’s Story” as the conversion story of 2008. In 2009, Beyond These Stone Walls began, and I also began a quest to make our presence known in Thailand. Dilia E. Rodriguez, PhD told the story of the development of this blog in “From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor.” It conveys how this blog impacted both my life and Pornchai’s in prison, and of how it reached a global readership including throughout Asia.

Also across the globe in Australia, attorney Clare Farr read of us and began an investigation into the life of Pornchai in both Thailand and the State of Maine.

My efforts to reach out to Thailand at first seemed to no avail. Everything written and mailed from prison bears a disclaimer stamped on our envelopes declaring that the contents were written and mailed from prison. With only a few exceptions, my letters to anyone I thought might help us were met with silence. Meanwhile, Pornchai was brought into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. This resulted in several articles and a chapter in the book, Loved, Lost, Found, by Marian Helper Editor, Felix Carroll. That chapter is reprinted here with permission entitled Pornchai Moontri: Mercy Inside Those Stone Walls.

The book was especially powerful, and it made its way to Bangkok where it was read by a prominent group of Catholics who founded a Divine Mercy mission and ministry there.

My Surrender to Her Fiat

I gradually became aware that what I once thought and hoped was a Great Tapestry of God designed to rescue me was really designed to rescue Pornchai Moontri, and I was but an instrument in a Divinely inspired Script. It became increasingly clear to me why Mary sent another of her spiritual sons, St Maximilian Kolbe, into our lives.

I came to understand in my heart and soul that I am to emulate what he did. I am to offer my life — or at least my freedom — for the salvation of another prisoner upon whom Mary has placed the safety of her mantle. I wrote of this recently in “The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe.” This is how we got to where we are.

Pornchai’s survival has taken on a life of its own as a result of our growing years of trust in Divine Mercy. The Divine Mercy Thailand group conveyed its readiness to help me prepare Pornchai for his eventual reassimilation to Thailand. They were on the other end of what seemed to us just a black hole up to that point. They embraced Pornchai and provided him with housing and support upon his arrival after a 36 year absence from Thailand. Our Lady lifted from us both an enormous burden of hopelessness.

Late on the night of November 22, 2019, I watched on EWTN as Pope Francis was greeted in Thailand in a beautiful ceremony as Thai Catholics in a predominantly Buddhist culture sang for him like an angelic choir. I realized I will be handing Pornchai over to them in a matter of months, and I could not contain my emotions any longer. As Pornchai was fast asleep late at night in the prison bunk above, as I watched Pope Francis being received in Thailand, I began to cry.

I do not know where our long road turns next, but what started as tears of loss and sorrow that night were also tears of triumph. They were the tears of St. Joseph, summoned to a Fatherhood he never envisioned but from which he would never retreat. Through grace, and the gifts of powerful advocates in Heaven and on Earth, we did all this from inside a prison cell in Concord, New Hampshire. At every turn I heard Mary’s Fiat to Divine Providence: “Be it done to me according to Thy Word.”

The beautiful and miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was placed on our cell wall for Pornchai. Now it remains there still, for me.

O come, O come Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Note: We posted a companion to this post at our Voices from Beyond Page on the day before this post is published: “Thomas Merton and Pornchai Moontri Meet in the City of Angels.”

For more on the mysterious presence of Mary in our lives, please visit “A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

And for the future Mary promised: “Thailand’s Once-Lost Son was Flag Bearer at the Asian Apostolic Congress on Mercy.”

+ + +

The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

In one of history’s darkest times and places, Saint Maximilian Kolbe continued his life’s greatest quest: to know, honor, and echo the assent of Mary to the Lord.

August 14, 2024 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined as a dogma of faith the bodily Assumption into Heaven of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The precise words of Pope Pius are found in the Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, “The Most Bountiful God,” defining what much of the Church already believed, and now holds as a matter of truth:

“We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed truth that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”

It was not without controversy. Pius XII thus became the first pope in a century to define a new dogma of faith. Five papacies earlier, in 1869, Pope Pius IX sought, cajoled, and in the end imposed, the doctrine of papal infallibility. In his book, Making Saints, former Newsweek editor Kenneth Woodward described the doctrine of infallibility as a “sheathed sword” (Making Saints, p. 314). He described it that way because, from the time of the doctrine’s inception in 1869, a declaration of papal infallibility has only been invoked once: a century later in 1950 when Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary to be an infallible tenet of faith.

This was not just a unilateral pronouncement from on high. Before defining the dogma in 1950, Pius XII sought and received an amazing response of affirmation from the “sensus fidelium,” the assent of the faithful from throughout the world. The Our Sunday Visitor Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine describes this beautifully:

“Infallibility in belief pertains to the whole Church. ‘The whole body of the faithful … cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of the faith (the ‘sensus fidei’) of the whole people when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent to matters of faith and morals.” (Lumen Gentium)

“To understand properly how the whole people of God is infallible in its sense of the faith (sensus fidei, sensus fidelium) it must be born in mind that the body of the faithful goes beyond limits both of place and, especially, of time. The People of God always includes those of past generations as well as those in the present moment. The former are in fact the vast majority, and it is easier to ascertain what they believed. It is that belief that marks the sensus fidelium and points infallibly to the truth." (p. 334)

To help in understanding this concept of the Universal Church that includes the faith of all generations past, see my post, “The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead” (linked again at the end of
this post). It is evidence of the ongoing connectedness of the faithful departed to the life of the Church.

I found this concept to be a stunning affirmation, not only of what we believe, but of why we believe it. The idea that infallibility includes the unwavering faith of the vast majority of the People of God taken as a whole over the span of millennia is mind-boggling truth.

The faith of the entire Church, from its birth at Pentecost to the present, points to a belief in Mary as Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the New Ark of the Covenant. Pope Pius XII strongly considered this before defining as infallible the Dogma of the Assumption in 1950. From the Chair of Peter, Pius XII sought the assent of the faithful in the present through his encyclical, Deiperae Virginis Mariae, to inquire whether Mary’s bodily Assumption should be defined.

As a result, an amazing number of petitions reached Rome from every corner of the Church. The petitions included those of 8,000,000 laity, 50,000 religious women, 32,000 priests, 2,505 archbishops and bishops, 311 cardinals, and 81 patriarchs of the Eastern Church. If this demonstration of assent had been able to span the entire life of the Church the result would have been immeasurable.

From the earliest days of the Church many considered the Assumption of Mary — centuries before it was defined as a tenet of faith — to be, in the words of Pius XII, “the fulfillment of that most perfect grace granted to the Blessed Virgin and the special blessing that countered the curse of Eve” — original sin. In the Eastern Church, a “Memorial of Mary” was already being celebrated on August 15 in the Fifth Century. It spread from the East and came ot be known as the koimesis in Greek and the dormitio in Latin, both of which mean the “falling asleep.” By the Eighth Century, belief in the bodily Assumption of Mary was widely accepted in both the East and West.

In the 19th Century, John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote that both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary are implicit in her identification as the “New Eve,” a title given to Mary since the Second Century. Just as the Resurrection of Jesus was the essential element of His victory over sin and death, Mary shares that victory in her designation as the New Eve, and in the words of Jesus at the foot of the Cross as the spiritual Mother of all. Seeing His Mother at the foot of the Cross, Jesus said ot her, “Woman, behold your son.” And then to the Disciple John, “Behold your Mother.” It was an adoption arrangement (John 19:26-27).

Among the earliest titles of Mary is Theotokos, Greek for “The Bearer of God.” For the Scriptural foundation of this belief and its implications, see my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

“What Will Become of You?”

In the Gospel account of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:2), Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus at Mount Tabor. Both Moses and Elijah, according to Scripture, entered heaven in both body and soul. The appearances of Mary at Fatima, Lourdes, Tepeyac Hill in Mexico, and others all point to an understanding of Mary as existing still in that same form. I wrote of the details of one of these visits in “A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

There is no saint of modern times with a stronger and more dedicated devotion ot Mary than Saint Maximilian Kolbe who seemed to live with a perpetual presence of the Immaculata in his field of view. Long before he was the Saint of Auschwitz and Founder of the Militia Immaculata, Saint Maximilian Kolbe was simply “Raymond,” a highly intelligent and gifted boy born into poverty in a rural farming community in Poland.

Like me, Raymond Kolbe was fascinated by the sciences of astronomy and cosmology and actually once built a working rocket as a boy. Also like me, he exasperated his mother at times. One day his frustrated mother scolded him, “Raymond! Whatever will become of you?” Filled with grief, young Kolbe went immediately to a local church and turned to the Mother of God with the same question. According to Kolbe’s own words as reported by my friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC in his wonderful book, 33 Days to Morning Glory,

“Then the virgin appeared to me holding in her hands two crowns, one white and one red. She looked at me with love and she asked me if I would like to have them. The white meant that I would remain pure, and the red meant that I would be a martyr. I answered, ‘yes, I want them.’ Then she looked at me tenderly and disappeared.”

Father Gaitley went on to describe that what was meant by “pure” in this sense was that Kolbe would never allow evil or dishonesty to take root in his heart. And it never did. On August 14, the date this is posted, the Church honors Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He also happens to be my own Patron Saint as well as that of my friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, and the Patron Saint of this blog. To the best of our ability, we follow in his spiritual footsteps, but his footsteps took him to an ultimate sacrifice. The nature of that sacrifice, along with Maximilian’s Auschwitz prison number 16670, now a badge of honor, is expressed on Pornchai’s T-shirt atop this section of our post. Our friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, described the footsteps of Saint Maximilian in brief but familiar prose in 33 Days to Morning Glory :

“In 1941, after decades of incredibly fruitful apostolic labors in Poland and Japan, Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Before his arrest, his brother Franciscans had pleaded with him to go into hiding. He said he was grateful for their loving hearts but couldn’t follow their advice.

“He later explained why: ‘I have a mission to fulfill.’ That mission was fulfilled on the eve of the Feast of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven when, after he volunteered to take the place of another prisoner condemned to starvation, the impatient Nazis finished Kolbe off with a lethal injection. Thus, St. Maximilian died a martyr of charity and received the red crown from his Immaculata.”

Two hours before his arrest, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe penned what Father Gaitley called “the single most important theological reflection of his life. It was nothing less than the answer to a question that eluded him for many years, the question he had pondered over and over throughout his life was: “Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?”

In the document, according to Father Gaitley, Kolbe raised a key point. In the appearances of Mary at Lourdes, Mary did not say to St. Bernadette, “I am immaculately conceived,” but rather she said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was thus clarified for Maximilian that through a special grace from God, Mary was in fact immaculately conceived in the womb of her own mother with no stain of original sin and that grace became her very identity by the as yet unseen merits of her Son. Understanding this means stepping out of conventional time and space for a moment into the mystery of the “nunc stans” the "Eternal Now" in which God dwells and in which He envisions all time and space as one. It is a difficult concept for our linear existence to ponder, but I have pondered it for my entire life.

Father Gaitley asks (p. 52): “Why does Mary make the grace she received at her conception her very name?” Clearly, Mary is not a divine being. Kolbe wrestled with this divinity problem for decades, and it ultimately led to a solution.

There are two Immaculate Conceptions, one created (Mary) and the other uncreated (the Holy Spirit). Before Mary, there was the uncreated Immaculate Conception, “the One Who for all eternity springs from God the Father and God the Son as an uncreated conception of love, the prototype of all conceptions that multiply life throughout the universe. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, the Spirit is the 'conception' that springs from their love. The Holy Spirit is the “Immaculate Conception” b e c a u s e, being God, He is without sin.

Is Mary then a personification of the Holy Spirit? The truth of this union between the Holy Spirit and Mary is found in a somewhat difficult passage in Maximilian’s own writings as reported by Father Gaitley:

"What type of union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the ‘essence’ of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, lives in her. This was true from the first instant of her existence. It was always true; it will always be true.” ( Gaitley, p. 53)

“In what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist? He himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very Love of the Most Holy Trinity ... . In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being” (Gaitley, p. 53-54)

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, henceforth all generations shall call me
blessed.”

— From the Magnificat of Mary, Luke 1:46-48

In “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God,” I explored a similar Marian theology, and from it I think I can finally make sense of what Saint Maximilian has proposed. Mary, Theotokos , the Bearer of God, is an eternal repository of the Holy Spirit. Both my friend Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I owe her a great debt — not for saving us from Earthly Powers of destruction, because they actually mean little, but for preserving us in faith despite them.

+ + +

“Remember that those who ask for Heaven of the Immaculata will surely achieve it because she is unable to deny us anything nor is the Lord God able to deny her anything. We shall shortly know exactly what it will be like in Heaven. Surely in a hundred years none of us will be walking on this Earth. But what are a hundred years in the face of what we have been through? Soon, therefore, provided we are well prepared under the protection of the Immaculata.”

— St. Maximilian Kolbe, 1941

+ + +

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please spend some time in prayer and thanksgiving at the live feed of Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s own Adoration Chapel featured below after all our posts at Beyond These Stone Walls.

You may also like these related posts:

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

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.”

Listen to Our Mother: Mary and the Fatima Century

The century since the Miracle of Fatima in 1917 saw an explosion of Marian devotion throughout the world. For me, one skeptic priest, resistance was futile.

Back in May, 2017, Mother’s Day in the United States was on the day after the 100th anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady of Fatima which occurred on May 13, 1917. There was a lot taking place in preparation for the observance of that day, but very little of it was available to me. Months earlier I received a wonderful letter from Annie Karto, a Catholic songwriter and music composer. She had composed a beautiful song entitled “Rise Up All People,” and she performed it in 2016 as part of a special Divine Mercy production that included a slide presentation. She wanted me to know that I was a part of that presentation and that she was dedicating the song to me. She wanted to send me a link to the video so I could hear it and see the presentation. I was most grateful to her but there was simply no format available to me in prison to make that happen.

For the previous 23 years, I had been living in what was widely understood here to be punitive housing. I was told that it was because I do not admit guilt. So for 23 years I just endured it. I endured it far longer than any other prisoner. For half of those years, Pornchai Moontri lived in a cell with me. As you know, some very important things took place in those years that were filled with grace personally inspired by Saint Maximilian Kolbe who pointed us always to the Immaculata.

During a Divine Mercy workshop in the prison chapel that year, one of the volunteers from the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy told me that Concord, NH has a Catholic radio station. I had no idea. The only radio available for purchase where I happened to be living was a small hand-held model manufactured by Sangean and sold to prisoners here for just under $50. It was a pricey item considering that there are many radios for a fraction of that price, but in prison we had no other options. I decided against the purchase because the world of concrete and steel where we lived blocked out most radio signals. So why would anyone here buy a radio? That was a question I was asking myself even as I filled out the order form to send to a friend who wanted to order one for me from a catalog of items approved for prisoners. At the time, I needed other things more than a radio. I had holes in my socks but for reasons I do not understand to this very day, a friend was insistent that I have a radio. So when my radio arrived, I installed two AAA batteries, tuned into the FM frequency that carried the signal for Ave Maria Radio, and heard nothing but disappointing static.

So in mid May 2017, the morning of Mother’s Day, the day after hearing all that static on my new radio, Pornchai and I went outside to the prison Ball Field. He was pitching for a baseball game that day, and I just wanted to walk the perimeter of the field. On our way there, after we had passed through several locked doors and barriers, Pornchai said, “Why don’t you bring your radio?” So I rushed back through multiple barriers, patiently waiting at each for unseen entities to buzz me through a multitude of electronic locks. I got back to our cell, grabbed the radio, and reversed the process of waiting at each of the locked doors.

I made it back to the Ball Field just as the last door was about to slam shut. I walked toward the back of the field, took my radio out of my pocket, and unraveled its earbud headphones. It was still tuned to the local Catholic station from which I heard only static the night before. At the moment it came alive in the Ball Field, I heard the voice of Teresa Tomeo say, “Our guest today is Catholic singer and songwriter Annie Karto to discuss her latest CD, ‘Rise Up All Peoples.’” And then I heard for the first time Annie’s now famous song. I had imagined that song in my mind many times, but never heard it. Months before, Annie Karto, produced a video for that song for a national conference on Divine Mercy, and the video included, among many images, a photograph of me from an article for the Year of Mercy entitled “The Doors that Have Unlocked.”

Having neither seen nor heard any of this before, I could only imagine it until that morning outside when I had the right receptor at just the right time to hear the music play. My friend, Pornchai Moontri was on the pitcher’s mound in a game when he stopped to wonder why I was standing mesmerized and immobilized at the far outfield.

Click or tap image to play Annie Karto’s 4-minute presentation of “Rise Up All People.”

Listening to Mary with the Right Receptors

When that was over, and Teresa Tomeo’s Catholic Connection had signed off for the day, I had another five minutes out in the field. I continued listening to a call-in show about Scripture. The first caller was a man who identified himself as a fallen away Catholic who is now a Protestant Evangelical. He said that he left the Church because of the Catholic focus on Mary as “a conduit of grace” which, he seemed to believe, is not supported by Biblical truth.

At that moment, my new radio just stopped working. It died two months after I received it. I tried everything to get it working again, but to no avail. I cannot return it, and given its limited use (outside only) I could not justify buying a new one. So now I just walk in the Ball Field in silence. But I have the strangest sense that I heard the things that I was supposed to hear when I had the right receptor to hear them. I do not know how the Catholic radio commentators responded to the Evangelical’s concern about Mary, but the answer came to me immediately. I was thunderstruck by it, and by how little thought I had ever given to this before.

The basis of religious authority for Evangelical Protestants is “Sola Scriptura,” Latin for “Scripture Alone.” The concept embraces not just Biblical authority, but also a deeply held belief in Biblical inerrancy. Both notions clearly support Catholic belief in the role of Mary in Salvation History. It’s a truth that I was once deaf to as well, because I did not employ the right receptors to hear it. There was a time as a younger priest inspired only by science, when I scoffed at notions such as Marian apparitions at Fatima. But I have come to understand that such things are highly valued in our life of faith, less by the events themselves and more by their impact on our spiritual history. I was a little slow in my heart to come to understand Mary in our life of faith as Catholics. I knew all that there was to know about her, but I did not know her. I did not “hear” Mary because I did not have inner receptors tuned to her. The deep reverence that Catholics hold for Mary, and the notion that she can be, and has been, an emissary from Heaven and a conduit of grace make total sense.

The appearances of Mary in the Gospel are like bookends for the story of salvation. Her first appearance — in the Gospel of Saint Luke (1:26-56) — opens with an angelic declaration that is unprecedented in all of Sacred Scripture:

“In the sixth month the Angel 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. And he came to her and said, ‘Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.’”

— Luke 1:26-28

Scripture contains 326 references to angelic appearances between the fall of Adam and the Resurrection of Christ. This brief passage in the Gospel of Luke is the first and only place where an angel refers to a human person with a title instead of a name. And the title — rendered “full of grace” in its English translation — is fascinating.

The term appears in only one other place, the Book of Acts of the Apostles which was also authored by Saint Luke. It’s a reference to Stephen who would become Christianity’s first martyr: “Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8). However, these English translations of the term fail to capture the full meaning the Evangelist intended. In Saint Luke’s original Greek, the terms have very different meanings.

In the case of Stephen, the original Greek words of Luke for “full of grace” were “plērēs charitos.” You can see in this the Greek roots of the word “charity.” But in the angel’s reference to Mary, a very different Greek term was used to convey the words, “full of grace.” It was a title much more than a trait. The Greek term Saint Luke used is “kecharitomēnē,” a far more revealing concept. It refers not just to a facet of her character, as in the case of Stephen, but of her essence. “Kecharitomēnē” refers to a prior action of God in which Mary was “graced” in the sense of her being a “vessel” in multiple tenses — past, present, and future — who is instilled with divine life, a soul that magnifies the Lord.

This does not mean that Mary was divine. It means that God prepared her from the moment of her conception. Some English translations use the term “highly favored one” instead of “full of grace” in the Angel’s greeting, but this in no way captures the truth of the Evangelist’s meaning which is far more profound than “favor.” It is closer to “innate holiness.” Saint Luke’s unique Greek title became the Scriptural basis for the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. It points not to a trait of Mary’s character, but to a revelation of her lifelong holiness and unique place in Salvation History as the Mother of both the Redeemer and the redeemed — the new Eve.

In the angelic declaration to Mary (Luke 1:28) the next phrase is rendered in English, “the Lord is with you.” Its more proper sense is, “the Lord is within you.” Her Greek title, “Theotokos,” literally “Mother of God,” was defined at the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 and reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council in Lumen Gentium (53). For the entire life of the Church, Mary has been venerated — not worshipped, but venerated — as the Mother of God. This is a theological truth that I described in “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The Miracles of Fatima

I owe a debt today to the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, stewards of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I wrote of this debt, and of my all-too-human resistance to their great gift, in “Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare.” That debt was deepened in 2022. That is when the Church marked the 100th anniversary of our Blessed Mother’s first of six appearances to three small shepherd children in the village of Fatima, Portugal. She appeared to them in this little known, out-of-the-way village in Portugal as World War One raged on all around them. It was the time of what Pope Benedict XV (not XVI) described as “the suicide of Europe.” It was at this very time that Mary reentered human history to convey a message through the smallest of voices in a most insignificant place. Then it echoed with ever increasing volume across the century to follow.

I had never fully understood the apparitions at Fatima. My scientific mind with its natural skepticism had always been in the way, making real moments of grace hard won for me. But now I think, for the first time in my life, I understand what happened at Fatima commencing on May 13, 1917 and the 13th of each of five months to follow. And thanks to Fr Michael Gaitley’s book The Second Greatest Story Ever Told, I finally understand Fatima’s meaning in the context of faith and in the context of human history.

My understanding has also been greatly aided by a wonderful gift by a superb Catholic writer and friend of Beyond These Stone Walls, Felix Carroll. You have met Felix Carroll in these pages before. He is the Executive Editor of Marian Helper magazine, which has published two major articles about my friend Pornchai Moontri’s Divine Mercy conversion and my place in that remarkable story. Felix is also the author of the great Divine Mercy book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions with a chapter about the life of Pornchai.

As I was pondering how to approach a post about the Fatima Century, I quickly found myself wading into waters I am only now beginning to sound for spiritual depth. Knowing the facts is one thing, but knowing the necessary story under the story is quite another. The Spring 2017 issue of Marian Helper with a cover entitled “Fatima: 100 Years Later” filled in a lot of the blanks for me. I read it cover to cover in one sitting. Its centerpiece is an amazing article by Felix Carroll entitled, “Fatima. The Place. The Message.” I am simply in awe of his achievement. I urge you to visit Marian Helper and read Felix Carroll’s outstanding writing, his historical analysis, and the depth of his understanding of the message and miracle of Fatima — all in just a few very readable pages.

In 2017, at the behest of Fr Michael Gaitley and Felix Carroll, I wrote an article about the journeys of both me and Pornchai Moontri into the Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The article was, “Behold Your Son, Behold Your Mother!” Felix told me that it “ lit up the Marians’ website as never before.” It was not me and Pornchai who got the attention of so many people. It was her. It is no mystery in our troubled time that so many are finally coming to listen to our Mother. After writing the article I received this brief reflection from an Evangelical Protestant college student:

“I finally get it! I am a college student and a lifelong Protestant. I never understood the Catholic connection to Mary until I read this. Thanks to this I finally understand Mary and her place in the life of faith.”

+ + +

Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Please honor our Mother by sharing this post. You will behold her place in history as never before by reading and sharing with others another amazing post written for Beyond These Stone Walls and LifeSite News by Craig Turner entitled:

“How Our Lady of Fatima Saved a World in Crisis”

The 100th Anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima can be seen through a lens of history. Journalist and historian Craig Turner presents a fascinating view of the Fatima Century.

July 12, 2017 by Craig Turner with an Introduction by Fr Gordon MacRae

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.”

A Priest and Prisoner in the Light of Divine Mercy

Fr Seraphim Michalenko, Fr Michael Gaitley, Fr Richard Drabik, Fr Gordon MacRae, Marian Helper Editor Felix Carroll and Pornchai Moontri in a wondrous Divine Mercy drama.

As a young man, I depended far too much on my own resources. I recognize today in the humility of hindsight that they were never quite up to the task. But back then, I knew everything. What a dumbass I have since become! I now know nothing, and cannot write a single word except in the light of Divine Mercy. My life’s path recalls the words of Dante Alighieri as he opened his epic literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. His story begins in a dark forest on Good Friday in the year 1300:

“When I had journeyed midway upon our life’s path, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the way that does not stray. How can I say what wood that was, that savage forest which even now in recall renews my fear? So bitter death is hardly more severe! But to tell the good I found there, I will also tell of the other things I saw.”

— Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, Canto I

In my post two weeks ago, “Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct,” I told of some of the other things I saw — a forest of dark things like corruption and deep injustice surrounded me once. Like Dante, I cannot tell of these — though they must be told — without the light of a profoundly wonderful grace I discovered amid all that suffering.

In many posts over time, I have told snippets of the story of Divine Mercy, of how it entered midway upon my life’s journey, and of how it dramatically transcended my prison walls. I have never before put it all together in a post, and I cannot pretend to do so now because it would fill a book. Perhaps one day, if I have the tools to do so, this story will become a book. For now, however, all I have is this humble blog.

What prompted this retelling of my Divine Mercy journey is the death of Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, who on this Earth became a driving force in the beatification and canonization of St. Maria Faustina and the promotion of her famous Diary. My friend, Marian Helper Editor Felix Carroll, published a moving eulogy which included this paragraph:

“Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, the world-renowned expert on the life and spirituality of St. Faustina — the man who smuggled photographic images of the pages of St. Faustina’s Diary out of Communist-occupied Poland in the 1970s and later documented her beatification and canonization miracles — died Thursday, February 11, 2021, from illness related to Covid 19. ... Side by side with Blessed Michael Sopocko, Pope St. John Paul II, and St. Faustina herself, Fr. Seraphim stands as a central figure who helped make the Divine Mercy message and devotion the greatest grassroots movement in the history of the Church.”

— Felix Carroll in "Rest in Peace, Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC"

A few years ago, well into his eighties, Father Seraphim ventured from his home at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for a drive of several hours to Concord, New Hampshire. He came to offer Mass in prison, and to interview Pornchai Moontri and me about the substance and source of our Divine Mercy journeys as we passed through the dark wood of prison.

My story, which I have told before, begins in 1988. Father Richard Drabik, MIC was Provincial Superior of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, a post from which he wrote the Preface for Divine Mercy in My Soul, also known as the Diary of Saint Faustina. You will find his Preface at the beginning of every copy of this mysterious book.

A few years later when he concluded his term as Provincial, Father Drabik was recruited to be a spiritual director for the Servants of the Paraclete Renewal Center for priests in New Mexico where I once served as Director of Admissions. Father Richard became my spiritual director for several years, and the finest one I ever had as a priest.

Grace Follows Even the Darkest Night

I will never forget the moment Father Richard stopped by my office one night early in April, 1993 to tell me that he would be leaving that week for Rome to take part in the Beatification of Sister Maria Faustina by Pope John Paul II on Divine Mercy Sunday. Father Richard invited me to write a private intention to be placed on the altar for the Mass of Beatification. Then I promptly forgot all about it.

Saint Faustina was later canonized by Pope John Paul II on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2000, a saint canonized by a saint. Now that I think of it, the saints who have had the most influence on my life as a priest and as a prisoner, and ultimately also on Pornchai Moontri’s life, were canonized by Pope John Paul II. Besides Saint Faustina they include Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Saint Padre Pio, and the Beatification of Mother Teresa.

I know the latter two do not retain their Earthly titles, but I cannot imagine calling them anything else. These influencers now also include Saint John Paul II himself who left a giant footprint on both the Church and my life as a priest.

I knew nothing of Saint Faustina when Father Richard made his request, and if he ever spoke of Divine Mercy in our sessions, I retained none of it. If memory serves, I did most of the talking in spiritual direction. I hope I have since learned to listen as well. Father Richard, like many at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, is still in contact with me. I hope he might be reading this.

A week or so after inviting me to write my intention for the Mass of Beatification in Rome, I had forgotten all about it. Father Richard stopped by my office again on the night before his departure and reminded me of it. I was especially busy with God only knows what. I told him I would bring it to him in ten minutes. I then grabbed a piece of note paper and quickly wrote this spontaneous prayer:

---

“I ask Blessed Faustina’s intercession that I may have the strength and courage to be the priest God wants me to be.”

---

I sealed my intention in a small envelope and brought it to Father Richard. I watched him tuck it into a pocket of his jacket, and thought no more of it. The Beatification of Saint Faustina was presided over by Pope John Paul II on Divine Mercy Sunday, the Sunday after Easter, but it was not yet called that. It was on the day of St. Faustina's Mass of Canonization, on April 30, 2000 during the Great Jubilee Year that Pope John Paul II declared in his homily that from hereon the Second Sunday of Easter will be the day of Divine Mercy.

But none of this meant anything to me. Today, it means everything to me. By the time Father Richard returned from Rome after the Mass of Beatification in 1993, I had been arrested on false charges from the distant past, and taken away. In 1994, after refusing multiple “plea deal” offers to plead guilty and serve one year in prison, I was sentenced to a term of sixty-seven years. That story is conveyed in the post cited above.

I spent the next twelve years in the dark forest of Dante’s Inferno. I heard from no one. I communicated with few. In all that time, I somehow retained an identity as a priest. Because I maintained my innocence, I spent all that time in punitive prison housing with eight men sharing each cell. An officer in that unit saw that I had a typewriter so he asked me to volunteer to type some inventory forms for him each week. After a few weeks he asked me if I wanted something in return. He meant extra food. I asked for the use of an empty storage room for one hour on Sunday nights to offer private Mass.

A Summons to Divine Mercy

It was not what this Sergeant expected to hear. He said he would have to present the unusual request to his own supervisor. Holy Week was coming up, and I hoped I might have an approval by Easter. It came a week too late. My first Mass in prison was offered in a storage closet on April 30, 2000, which I only later learned was the first official Divine Mercy Sunday and the day Saint Faustina was canonized.

That was year six, midway in my twelve years in darkness. Six years later, I was visited in prison by Father James McCurry, who is today the Minister Provincial of the Franciscan Friars Conventual of the Our Lady of the Angels Province. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had also been a vice-postulator for the cause of sainthood for Saint Maximilian Kolbe who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982, the year I was ordained. Father McCurry learned of me from some other priest. He was in the area and thought he would arrange a visit.

His first words in the visiting room, after introducing himself, were, “What do you know about St. Maximilian Kolbe?” I knew little beyond the fact that he offered his life to save that of another prisoner in the horror of Auschwitz. We talked about that but our visit was brief. He had to catch a plane. He said he would be sending me something. A week later, a small biography of Saint Maximilian arrived along with a card depicting him in both his Franciscan habit and his Auschwitz uniform.

By that time, I had been moved to slightly better prison quarters, perhaps thanks to the Sergeant who was impressed that I asked for a place to offer Mass instead of extra food. I put the image of Saint Maximilian on the battered steel mirror in my cell. Through tears, I realized that on that same day I was a priest in prison a day longer than I had been a priest in freedom. The darkness I felt was overwhelming. I would eventually write multiple posts about the impact this Saint has had on our lives, most notably “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.”

Shortly after Saint Maximilian arrived on the mirror in my cell, Pornchai Moontri was sent here after fourteen grueling years lost in and out of solitary confinement in a Maine prison. I was bitter and he was broken. All hope had virtually died in our lives. Providence moved Pornchai from one place to another here, and then he ended up living with me. In his moving recent guest post, “Free at Last Thanks to God and You,” he recounted the day he first walked into my cell and saw the image of Saint Maximilian on the mirror. “Is this you?” he asked.

From that moment on, we were caught up in the grasp of Divine Mercy. As you know, Pornchai became a devout Catholic and was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. Knowing the importance of this conversion for him, I was compelled to set aside all the bitterness of false witness and wrongful imprisonment that I carried like a crushing cross in my own Calvary. Confronting the brokeness of Pornchai meant also confronting my own in the light of Divine Mercy, and it salvaged my life as a priest.

Pornchai Moontri was featured, as you know, in a profoundly wonderful book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions, by Marian Helper Editor Felix Carroll. Father Seraphim Michalenko brought the book to Thailand where he presented a retreat to Divine Mercy Thailand. He read them the chapter about Pornchai, and a future, long since thought to be hopeless, was born for him.

We were also invited to take part in a series of 33-Day retreats in Father Michael Gaitley’s “Hearts Afire” program beginning with “33 Days to Morning Glory.” As a result, dozens of other prisoners followed us on this path and many were converted. I will link to the most moving of their stories at the end of this post.

And Divine Mercy has not let up — not even for a moment. I just learned that in 1994, the year I was sent to prison, Relevant Radio host, Drew Mariani, produced a film along with the Marians entitled, “Time for Mercy.” Late last month, some 26 years later, Drew Mariani interviewed me in prison. The interview is available at our “Special Events” page.

+ + +

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please continue to celebrate Divine Mercy this year through these additional posts with inspiring true accounts of how Divine Mercy has impacted our lives:

Coming Home to the Catholic Faith I Left Behind by Michael Ciresi

I Come to the Catholic Church for Healing and Hope by Pornchai Moontri

Behold Your Son! Behold Your Mother! by Fr Gordon MacRae

Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane

The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.

It seems so long ago now, but a few years back I wrote a post that stunned some TSW  readers out of the doldrums of a long nap in the Garden of Gethsemane where, sooner or later, we will all spend some time. That post was “Pentecost, Priesthood, and Death in the Afternoon.”

It was about one of our friends, a middle-aged prisoner named Anthony, and his discovery of having terminal cancer. Anthony was one of the most irritating and obnoxious individuals I had ever met. He was the only prisoner I have ever thrown out of my cell with a demand that he never return. Very few people have had that kind of effect on me, but Anthony was masterful at it.

But then Anthony discovered that he was dying. As an unintended result of our “falling out” he believed that he could not come to me. He was Pornchai Moontri’s friend but the story of his impending doom was my comeuppance. I cannot forget the day that Pornchai told me, “You have to help Anthony. He is going to die and he doesn’t know how.” After a long sleep when the priest in me had succumbed too much to the prisoner, that was my awakening in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Over the next 18 months, Pornchai and I took care of Anthony for as long as we possibly could before handing him over to the prison version of hospice from where we would never see him again. But before that happened, Anthony became a Catholic, was received into the Church, and had a transformation of spirit that, in the midst of death, proclaimed an incomparable stress on life.

Pornchai and I were eyewitnesses to how all the things that once took priority in Anthony’s life just fell away. He became, in the end, like “Dismas, Crucified to the Right” of the Lamb of God. It seemed so ironic that it was his impending death that opened up for Anthony a world of faith, hope and trust that overcame all other forces at work in his life. In the end, I no longer, recognized the man I had once so disdained.

Not long after leaving us, Anthony died in the prison’s medical center where a small group of hospice volunteers took turns being with him around the clock. I once wrote of Anthony’s death, and of an event that shook our world back then, but it’s a story worth telling again. I told it at a brief memorial service for Anthony that was attended by about sixty prisoners, twice the normal for such things.

At the service in the prison chapel, those attending were invited to speak. So Pornchai nudged me and said, “Tell them about the book.” I told those in attendance that Anthony left this world having committed a second crime against the State of New Hampshire: an unreturned library book. The rest of the story generated a collective gasp.

The Library where I work has a computer system that tracks the 22,000 volumes from which prisoners can select and check out books. When a prisoner is released from prison without returning a book, an alert would come across the screen a week later to give us a last chance to find and retrieve a book left behind.

I had no knowledge that Anthony ever checked a book out of the Library. I never saw him there, and he never asked me for a book. But a week after he died, this appeared on my screen:

“Anthony Begin #76810 — Gone/Released — Heaven Is for Real”

The Agony in the Garden

Heaven is for real, but for it to be a reality for us required an Exodus from the slavery of sin and death. That second Exodus commenced in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in the course of it, God exacted from Himself the same price — the death of His Son — that he imposed upon Pharaoh to bring about the first Exodus.

The Biblical account of Jesus and His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane opens the Passion Narrative of the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In the Gospel of John (18:1), the place is simply referred to as “across the Kidron Valley where there is a garden.” John, writing from a different tradition, cites only the betrayal by Judas there whereas the other Gospels precede that betrayal with the agony of Jesus at prayer.

Almost immediately preceding this in each of the Synoptic Gospels was the Institution of the Eucharist at what has been famously depicted by Leonardo Da Vinci as The Last Supper. This was the decisive turning point in Salvation History:

“Drink of it, all of you, for this is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink of it anew with you in my Father’s Kingdom.”

— Matthew 26: 28-29

Following this in the account of Saint Luke, Jesus addresses Peter about the spiritual warfare that is to come:

“‘Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.’ And [Peter] said to him, ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.’”

— Luke 22:31-34

Peter’s “readiness” for prison and for death will soon become an issue. From here the scene moves to the Mount of Olives where Jesus went to pray “as was His custom” (Luke 22:39).

Only the Gospels of Matthew and Mark name the place “Gethsemane.” Once there, Jesus withdrew from His disciples to pray. As you already know, the suffering and death he now faced would be set in motion by the betrayal of Judas who provided “the more opportune time” that Satan awaited when the Temptation of Christ in the desert failed (Luke 4:13), a scene depicted in “To Azazel: The Fate of a Church That Wanders in the Desert.”

Jesus, fully human in his suffering by God’s design, recoils not only from the image of suffering he knows to be upon Him, but also by the weight of the Apostolic betrayal just moments away. The betrayal by Judas is intensified by the dreadful weight of humanity’s sin for which Jesus is offered up as the Scapegoat — the Sacrificial Lamb of God — for the sins of all humanity.

For Hebrew ears, the account of Jesus at Gethsemane is a mirror image in reverse of a scene that occurred at this very same site 1,000 years earlier. It was a story not of a son obedient unto death, but of a son who betrayed his father. It was the agony of King David and his flight from his son, Absolom, and his traitorous revolt. As David learned that his trusted counselor, Ahithophel, had betrayed him in league with Absolom…

“David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot, and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went. David was told that Ahithophel was one of the conspirators with Absolom.”

— 2 Samuel 15:30-31

And, as with Judas 1,000 years later, Ahithophel hanged himself when the consequences of his betrayal weighed upon him.

In Saint Matthew’s account of the Gethsemane scene (26:37), Jesus left His disciples and brought Peter, James and John with Him to the place of prayer. Note that Peter, James and John witnessed Jesus raise the daughter of Jairus from death (Mark 5:37) and they were also witnesses to His Transfiguration in the presence of Moses and Elijah that I wrote of during this Lent in “Turmoil in Rome and the Transfiguration of Christ.”

In the Gospel of Luke (22:31ff) Jesus is alone and apart from the others as He prays in agony in the face of death: “Father if you are willing, remove this chalice from me; nevertheless not my will but yours be done.” I cannot tell you how often I have prayed that same prayer in the last 25 years. I pray it still.

In the Gospel, God answers the prayer of Jesus, not by removing the suffering, for His suffering is to be our Exodus, but by strengthening Him to endure it. And He will endure it unto death:

“There appeared to him an angel from heaven to strengthen him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.”

— Luke 22:43

In each of the Gospel accounts, Jesus returned to His disciples to discover that they have all slept through His agony. None were there to console Him except the angel sent from heaven while humanity slept.

Consoling the Heart of Jesus

The Gospel of Saint Mark presents a more vivid account of the inner suffering that betrayal and death brought to the heart of Jesus. Mark describes that Jesus “began to be greatly distressed and troubled” (Mark 14:33). The Greek of Mark’s Gospel used the terms έκθαμβεῖσθαι and άδημονεῖν which vividly express in Greek the depth of distress and anxiety that came upon Him. The comfort the angel brings is reminiscent of Psalm 42:

“Why are you cast down O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

— Psalm 42:12

The coming betrayal by Judas marks the climax of the ministry of Jesus who has left hints throughout the Gospel of Mark:

“And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly.”

— Mark 8:31

“The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”

— Mark 9:31

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles, and they will mock him, and spit on him, and scourge him, and kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

— Mark 10:33-34

So how do we, His disciples by Baptism and by the fidelity we claim, how do we console the heart of Jesus at Gethsemane? For the answer, I am indebted to Father Michael Gaitley, M.I.C. for his profound book, Consoling the Heart of Jesus which was the text for a six-week course offered here by the Marians of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy.

Like many, I believe I learn the most from Sacred Scripture when the circumstances of my life force me to live it. So picking up this book for the first time, I asked myself, “How can I console Jesus, who is happy in Heaven, while I am stuck in this hellhole called prison?” That’s what Pornchai Moontri called it in these pages in his post, “Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood.”

Father Gaitley has an answer called “Retroactive Consolation” that comes from the theology of Pope Pius XI and the Dominican theologian, Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. whom Father Gaitley quotes:

“During his earthly life and particularly while in Gethsemane, Jesus suffered from all future acts of profanation and ingratitude. He knew them in detail with a superior intuition that governed all times… Thus his suffering encompassed the present instant and extended to future centuries. ‘This drop of blood I shed for you.’ So in the Garden of Olives, Jesus suffered for all, and for each of us in particular.”

— Consoling the Heart of Jesus, P. 394

So, if His suffering is projected into the future, how can our consolation of Him at Gethsemane become retroactive into the past? What will awaken us from our sleep in the Garden of Gethsemane? Jesus Himself provides that answer, and it has something to do with our story about Anthony that began this post. It is laid out powerfully in the Gospel of Matthew:

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.’”

— Matthew 25:37-40

Now

“Arise. Let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.”

— Matthew 26:46

+ + +

Editor’s Note: Please share this Holy Week post with your contacts on Facebook and other social media. To prepare for a meaningful Holy Week and Easter, you may also like these other posts from along the Way of the Cross at Beyond These Stone Walls :

A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls

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

Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands

Simon of Cyrene at Calvary: Compelled to Carry the Cross

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb