Divine Mercy Reunites Pornchai Moontri and His Brother

Midway on life’s arduous path, Divine Mercy entered the lives of Pornchai Moontri and Fr. Gordon MacRae. When the road led to Thailand, Divine Mercy was there too.

April 12 , 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Pornchai Moontri entered the Catholic faith on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. To some who knew him, it was a most unlikely conversion story but it was a transformation in his very core. This story is my story as well. The Lord asked me to be an instrument in restoring life and hope to this prisoner even while in prison myself. Though Pornchai now lives on the far side of the world from me, he is still very much a part of my life and the life of this blog. His most recent post for these pages was the very moving “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand.”

As most readers of this blog know, Pornchai (which in Thai means “Blessing”) was my roommate for 16 years in the draconian confines of this prison. Out of both necessity and deprivation, we became each other’s family. Pornchai was not just a transient along the twists and turns of my life. I learned over time that our paths crossed for a divinely inspired reason.

With new information, I won a reprieve for Pornchai who was released after 29 years in prison. I did my best to accompany and support him through a gruesome five-month ordeal in ICE detention at the height of a global pandemic. He finally emerged free in Bangkok, Thailand on February 24, 2021 with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. The life he vaguely remembered before he was taken as a child of eleven was gone. Because of the posts I wrote about us, a small group of devout Catholics who formed Divine Mercy Thailand recruited Father John Hung Le and Khun Chalathip, a benefactor of Father John’s refugee work, to give Pornchai shelter. Mary herself chose them for this task just as she chose me.

That is not an exaggeration. It might seem strange to someone not versed in Catholic spiritual life, but at some point I became aware that through the intercession of Saint Maximilian Kolbe in both our lives, The Immaculata involved herself in a special way in Pornchai’s life and well being. Then she involved me through intricately woven threads of actual grace over time.

In 2022, in “Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare,” I wrote of the compelling signs of Mary’s interventions in our lives. After Pornchai’s conversion to the Catholic faith, we took part in the “33 Days to Morning Glory” retreat written by Marian Fr. Michael Gaitley who would become a friend to us. Depicted atop this post, our Consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary took place in 2013 on the Solemnity of Christ the King.

I once mistakenly believed that this path was all about me and my priesthood in exile, but the truth was confirmed for me when Marian Helper magazine published “Mary Is at Work Here” in 2014. The article by Felix Carroll includes these startling paragraphs:

“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group to be the first [invited to Marian Consecration]. The 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. (See the Chapter entitled “Pornchai Moontri”) .

“Pornchai experienced a dramatic conversion in no small part due to a friendship formed with fellow inmate and cellmate Fr. Gordon MacRae who chronicles their lives in his celebrated website, Beyond These Stone Walls. Fr. Gordon joined Pornchai in the Consecration and called it 'a great spiritual gift.' It opened a door to the rebirth of trust during a dark time for both men. Great suffering requires great trust.”

— Marian Helper, Spring 2014

From Dante’s Inferno to Purgatorio

Many readers already know the most painful parts of this story. Pornchai and his brother, Priwan, were two and four years old respectively when they were abandoned in rural Thailand by a young mother desperate to find work to provide for them. She traveled to Bangkok where she fell under the control of an evil man. She was but a teenager. Nine years later, when her sons were ages 11 and 13 with no memory of her, they were taken from Thailand to the United States where they both became victims of sexual and physical violence.

Pornchai and Priwan became homeless adolescents fending for themselves in a foreign land in the mid-1980s, and they became separated. I and others investigated this story, wrote about it, and ultimately, with God’s grace, brought their abuser to justice. In September 2018, thirty years after his ruinous offenses, Richard Alan Bailey was convicted in Maine of 40 felony counts of child rape.

I discovered that at some point their mother learned the truth, but when she vowed to seek justice for her sons, she was murdered. This account is told in an article that may shake your faith in the justice system but strengthen your faith in Divine Providence. It is, “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.”

In the sixteen years in which Pornchai lived in a bunk just above me in the Concord, New Hampshire prison, the first few years were a bit rough. Looking back, Pornchai today says that the rough part was all him. He never set out to harm anyone, but in a Maine prison at age 18, facing a dark future alone, Pornchai vowed to never again become someone’s victim. He kept people away with a constant state of anger. As a result, he spent the next seven years alone with his raging thoughts in the cruel madness of solitary confinement.

When Pornchai could be held in solitary no longer, the State of Maine decided to just get rid of him. He was chained up in a van and taken to another prison in another state. He could have been taken anywhere, and he had no idea where he was going, but he landed just one state away in New Hampshire. He ended up in a familiar place solitary confinement.

When he emerged months later, Pornchai could have been sent to any of three New Hampshire prisons each with multiple housing units reflecting varying levels of security. By some mysterious grace, he was moved in with me. It was providential that just before his arrival in New Hampshire,The Wall Street Journal published its first articles about my plight. Somehow, Pornchai read them.

The context for this story is essential. Understandably, Pornchai trusted no one. Just imagine his inner struggle when he learned that he was now to live in a prison cell with a Catholic priest convicted of sexual abuse. Others told me to sleep with one eye open, but it did not take long for Pornchai to learn that I was not at all like the man who destroyed his life.

When I offered Mass in my cell late at night, it was Pornchai who was sleeping with one eye open. He watched me, and later he questioned me. When I told him about the Mass he asked if he could stay awake for it. I taught him to read the Mass readings and I explained the Eucharist along with a restriction that he cannot receive the Body of Christ unless he came to believe. Did he dare to believe in anything good in this world?

Pornchai and I lived in the same cell for two years before I began writing from prison. When we spoke about an invitation I received to write for this blog, I told Pornchai that it might somehow find its way around the world to Thailand. I did not actually believe that myself, but that is exactly what happened.

Here is Pornchai’s perspective on the first year of this blog given to me in a recent phone call to Thailand:

“When I was living in the bunk above Father G he would sometimes hand some typed pages up to me. Sometimes I thought they were interesting. Sometimes they kept me awake, and sometimes they just put me to sleep. But one time — I don’t remember the post — Father G included some paragraphs from the book, Dante’s Inferno. [It’s the first part of a three-part book, The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri in 1307]. When I read the passage, I thought, “This is the story of my life!” Father G found it and here it is:

“Midway on my life’s journey, I went astray from the straight path and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was? I never saw so drear, so rank, so horrible a wilderness! Its very memory gives shape to fear. Death could scarce be more bitter. But since it came somehow to good, I will recount all that I found revealed there by God’s grace. How I came to it I cannot rightly say, so drugged and loose with sleep had I become when I first wandered from the True Way. But at the far end of that valley of evil, whose maze had sapped my heart with fear, I found myself upon a little hill, and there I lifted up my eyes...”

— Dante, The DivineComedy: Inferno, 1307

“Living with Father G., I thought I had finally left hell and now I was in Purgatory with him. I came to trust him. He was the only person in my life who always looked out for my best interest and never put his own first. So now I turn this story back over to Father G.”

From Dante’s Purgatorio to Paradiso

Learning from this blog about what we both faced in this prison without support or family, some readers came to our aid. Thanks to their modest gifts of support, we were suddenly eating a little better and were able to purchase things that made life here a little easier. The slow and tedious passage of time in prison sped up. I made a promise to Pornchai that he would never again be abandoned and stranded in life. I can only say that I am filled with gratitude, not only to our readers, but to God and our Mother Mary, the Immaculata, under whose mantle Saint Maximilian Kolbe led us both. He ratified a covenant with us when Pornchai was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. There was now meaning in all the injustice I had endured.

I began to write posts that would reach around the world to navigate a path home for Pornchai. There were small miracles of connection, one after another, and the lights of Divine Mercy began to illuminate both of our exiled souls. This story was not without setbacks and challenges, however.

In 2017, Pornchai and I became separated. It came at a most stressful time just as we learned that Pornchai must be deported to Thailand immediately upon leaving prison. I knew that the few years we had left together were crucial for his well being. What happened next was a miracle. There is no other explanation for it.

On July 17, 2017, I was summoned from my work in the prison law library. I was handed a few plastic bags and was told that I have one hour to unravel my life from the 23 years I had spent in that punitive and confining building and move to another place. I asked that Pornchai also be called from his work to help me. I was shaken, and did not want him to return that day just to find me inexplicably gone. As Pornchai helped me pack, our despondence was like a dark cloud. Prison has no knowledge of Divine Mercy and places no value on human relationships.

An hour later, we wheeled a small cart out of that building, across the long walled prison yard, up a series of ramps, and then in between some other buildings to a housing unit called Medium South. I knew about it, but I had never before seen it. A gate in the high wall opened up, and in we went.

I felt like Dorothy Gale having just crashed in the Land of Oz after a tornado uprooted our lives. After 23 years locked in with no outside at all — 13 of them with Pornchai — this new place was built around a park-like setting with outside access nearly around the clock. And there were flowers! People I knew came running down to carry my things. I was led to the top floor from where I could see over the walls into forests and hills beyond.

Then came this wonderful scene’s collision with a broken heart. From there, I watched as Pornchai passed all alone back through that gate down below, possibly never to be seen again by me again. Friendship means nothing in prison bureaucracies. We were powerless to change this and I was powerless to decline this move. On the next day after a sleepless night, I learned that Pornchai was also moved — but somewhere else. Our faith was shaken and it began to crumble.

Pornchai was moved to another unit. We both knew that no one ever returns from there. Not ever! Over the next two weeks I prayed daily asking Saint Maximilian, our Patron Saint ,to bring this before the Heart of Mary for a word to her Son. Surely, she could undo this knot. After all, it was upon her word that He changed water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1-10).

On the following Sunday, Pornchai was able to attend a Catholic Mass in the prison chapel. We had only a minute to speak after Mass. I asked him to trust, and to hand this over to our Mother. Pornchai just nodded in silence. Then I picked up a Missalette and saw a prayer, the Memorare. I asked Pornchai to pray with me:

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

Each day to follow was under a dark cloud. Three days later, on a Wednesday afternoon, I returned from my work in the prison law library. As the gate to Medium South slid open, another prisoner was waiting for me. I usually sit on a bench there for a few minutes before climbing up the 52 stairs to my cell, but the person standing there told me I was needed up there right away.

I arrived to find Pornchai unpacking and moving into the bunk above me where, just a few hours earlier, some other prisoner lived. The smile on Pornchai’s face told the story. “How did this happen?” I asked. Pornchai said, “I think you already know.” He had no explanation. He said he was suddenly called to an office and told to pack and move to Medium South, Pod 3-Bravo, Cell 4. He had no idea the address was mine until he got there and saw my possessions in the 60-square-foot cell.

We were able to spend the next three years becoming ready, and we were ready. Pornchai remained my roommate until September 8, 2020 when he was handed over to ICE for deportation to Thailand. There was another miracle yet to come, and I wrote of it in “For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand.”

Epilogue : A Prodigal Son and His Older Brother

It has long been my mission in life to restore the life of another person stranded in the twists and turns of this story. After an absence of 38 years, Pornchai’s brother, Priwan has been saving and hoping to travel to Thailand. For the first time since they were taken away in 1985, he will be reunited with Pornchai in Thailand. Priwan’s flight departs Boston on Divine Mercy Sunday arriving in Bangkok on the day after.

Priwan cannot remain there, but he wants to restore his Thai citizenship and the identity that was taken from him as Pornchai had already begun to do. Priwan will spend a month with Pornchai, the first time they have been together since the tragedy of their lives separated them 38 years earlier. I have promised to help, and that is my other prayer.

Mary is still at work here, and I am still in her service.

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Left: Pornchai greets his brother Priwan in the company of Khun Chalathip, his Thai tutor, upon arrival at the Bangkok International Airport. Right: Having arrived with clothing from the state of Maine, Priwan needed to find something more suitable to Thai weather. It was 113℉ that day. (Photos by Father John Hung Le, SVD)

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae:

Thank you for reading and sharing this Divine Mercy story. To help me in this Corporal Work of Mercy, or to support Beyond These Stone Walls, please see our “Contact and Support” page. You may also wish to read these related posts:

Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare

Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand

Loved, Lost, Found: The Chapter on “Pornchai Moontri”

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

And you must not miss...

Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

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And available until Pentecost:

A Personal Holy Week Retreat from Beyond These Stone Walls

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 the image for live access 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.”

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.

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.’”

— Consoling the Heart of Jesus, p. 95

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.”

— Consoling the Heart of Jesus, p. 96

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.