From Dorothy Rabinowitz: ‘Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth’

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist inspired poetic justice for a wrongly imprisoned priest with some obscure poetry that left a giant footprint on world history.

November 8, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Introductory Note: A few years ago I wrote a post to honor Veterans Day, and have reposted a link to it each year near November 11. History is important and if we ignore it we end up repeating it. In the photo above, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in 1941 to discuss a possible American entry into World War II after the Nazi invasion of Europe cast the entire free world into darkness. Strangely, their final decision was prompted by their trading two obscure poems each delivering to the other a message about vital events in history. Winston Churchill’s message to FDR was a pivotal moment. It was recently sent to me by Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz who inspired hope for me in the tyranny of darkness I faced. This is that remarkable story.

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As most readers know, I work in a library and though it is technically a law library it still gives me access to a world of books. Some of what is available there is not very helpful and not exactly literary but I still try to keep classic literature from being discarded to make room for the junk that too many prisoners want to read, such as graphic novels and comic books. Graphic novels fly off the shelves while Les Miserables collects dust.

The library has a fairly large poetry section, but what most prisoners are looking for is not Robert Frost or T.S. Elliot. They scour the shelves for snippets of love poems to plagiarize for their letters to girlfriends, both real and imagined. Longfellow languishes on the shelf while Cowboy Love Poetry blazes happy trails through the prison mail room.

I had also been scouring the poetry section. After the struggle described in some of our posts — such as “Dying in Prison in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State” — I received one day a surprising message from Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal with the subject, “Thoughts Between Deadlines.” It set me on a course of self-assessment in the face of struggle when she wrote:

“Do you have access to Google for information seeking? This isn’t the kind of information that moves legal proceedings, but it is a great source of empowerment nonetheless. I would ask you to look up just the line, ‘Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth.’ It should bring up the poem, written by the Victorian poet, Arthur Clough, who never wrote anything in the least memorable, except this one whose powers were such that, a hundred years after it was written, Winston Churchill sent it to Franklin Roosevelt.”

With this, Dorothy Rabinowitz certainly had my rapt attention pushing all the buttons — history, literature, and irony — that would draw me into a course of discovery. Between 2005 and 2022, The Wall Street Journal published a series of four major articles about my struggle culminating in the most recent, “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae.”

In all that time, Dorothy maintained a rather stolid interest, more inclined to uncover and report the facts of a difficult and nebulous story than its implications far beyond just me. In all these years, this message from her was the first contact that went to my struggle for justice and not just the discernment of facts.

With no access to Google or the internet, it took a few days for Dorothy’s message to get to me along with the results of the search she recommended. By telephone, I asked a friend to conduct the search that Dorothy recommended. To my surprise it took us to a remarkable but obscure poem, and I will get back to that in a moment. But first, the remainder of Dorothy’s equally remarkable message:

“The year was 1941. The English stood alone. America was not yet at war, but FDR was doing all within his power to get aid to them. The world faced a Europe overrun with triumphant Nazi troops. FDR had just won his fourth term and sent his new personal ally, the very Republican he had defeated — a heroic internationalist, Wendell Wilkie, who had been the standard bearer for an entirely isolationist Republican party — with a personal message of support to Churchill.”

There is more to the message, which I will get back to in a moment, but what made it so fascinating for me was my admiration for both Churchill and FDR. By 1940, Nazi Germany under Hitler occupied Poland, France and much of Europe with terrifying speed while America slept. The Battle of Britain (a very fine historical film) made clear that Hitler could not defeat the British air and naval forces under Churchill. Back to that in a moment as well.

Readers may have heard or read recent articles about newly discovered information about Pope Pius XII and the Vatican during the Nazi terror in Europe in the 1940s. A lot of ink has been spilled suggesting that Pope Pius was “Hitler’s Pope.” It was a slur derived from commentary about his reticence to publicly condemn Hitler and the Nazi Party during the war. The new information recently divulged centered on an archbishop advising Pope Pius who became concerned that Germany was going to win this war and a slaughter would ensue. It could have been the end of the Catholic Church. So with Nazi troops on his doorstep, and the rest of Europe under siege, Pope Pius became extremely cautious. The Catholic bishops of Holland issued a public statement in German condemning the Nazi deportation of Jews who had become Catholics to Auschwitz and other death camps. In retaliation, the Nazis raided convents and monasteries in Holland arresting anyone with Jewish roots. One result was the execution of Edith Stein who is now revered as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. This is a story I told in “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz.”

Poetic Justice

The origin of the term, “Poetic Justice” has been difficult to nail down. It appears to have been first used in the Sixth Century B.C. in reference to the Greek poet, Ibycus. His works were collected in seven books, of which only fragments survive. The manner of his death created a legend. Dying from an assault by robbers, the legend held, Ibycus called on a passing flock of cranes to avenge him. Near Corinth, one of the robbers saw the flock of cranes and cried out, “Behold the avengers of Ibycus!” His cry betrayed him and the cranes devoured him, a death described as “poetic justice.”

Dorothy Rabinowitz sent me the most stunning example of poetic justice in the modern era. Fears of Nazi domination of the Atlantic made it easier for Franklin Roosevelt to defy the American isolationists by increasing aid to Britain. When the U.K. depleted its financial reserves, FDR replaced them with U.S. funding for arms production. Under the “Lend-Lease” act of 1941, there were no terms for payback. Dorothy continued in her message:

“FDR’s message to Churchill included the Longfellow poem that ended, ‘Sail on, Sail on, O Union strong and great — humanity with all its hopes and fears is resting on thy fate.”

This, of course, sent me on a hunt for its source. I found it in a collection of poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow entitled, “The Building of a Ship” published in 1850. Remember that both FDR and Churchill had come to the realization that England alone held the fragile line against German invasion and global tyranny. Its collapse seemed just a matter of time. This epic poem sent by FDR to Churchill nearly a century after it was written concluded,

“Then too, sail on O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, are all with thee.”

I can readily see why FDR sent this to Churchill along with his diplomatic message about US funding for arms production. The demonic shroud of darkness that Hitler cast over all of Europe 83 years ago placed the rest of the world in a state of hopeless terror. Dorothy’s message to me continued:

“Churchill had no trouble grasping the importance of the pledge in this American poem, and recited it in a 1941 address to Parliament. As a return message, he sent to FDR the British poem I am writing to you about. You will see why I thought of you when I read it. Read it in the face of all the silences and rejections of appeals to justice that you have seen.”

Dorothy’s message was printed and snail-mailed to me. As soon as I received it, I called a friend to search for the poem she refers to. Its author is the British poet, Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861). Educated at Oxford, he became a tutor there during the Oxford Movement. Also called “Tractarianism,” one of the chief leaders of the Oxford Movement was Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman. Newman and the other adherents of the movement challenged a common view that the English Reformation constituted a complete break between Rome and the Church of England. The movement began in 1833 when the British government abolished ten bishoprics in Ireland. The Oxford Movement’s adherents warned that the Church of England was abandoning the principles of the 16th Century Reformers by allowing the Church of England to be dominated by secular authorities.

The Oxford Movement proposed that the Church of England could be saved from secularism only through a return to its Catholic origins. This became wildly controversial in the Church of England when Cardinal Newman published “Tract 90” in 1841 in which he attempted to prove that the Anglican 39 Articles of Religion were not inconsistent with Roman Catholic teaching. As a consequence of the Oxford Movement being suppressed, several hundred English clergy left the Church of England to become Roman Catholic, including Cardinal Newman himself. It was at this time that Arthur Hugh Clough left Oxford in protest against the Church of England’s 39 Articles of Religion, a struggle that informed his poetry.

Background (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED)

Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth

As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in her message to me, Arthur Clough wrote little that was memorable except this one poem, “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth.” A century after its writing, it had an oversized footprint on history. Here is the entire poem sent from Churchill to FDR:

Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been, they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.

Clough’s beautiful poem is a testament to the notion that whatever struggle we must take up and endure in this life, the struggle itself is worthy, even when what we fight against is unjust and impenetrable. This is sometimes difficult to see and accept, but what sort of person would I be if I did not struggle against injustice not only against me, but for all priests falsely accused for financial gain? Margaret Drabble, a poetry critic at Literary Hub wrote of the poem:

“This poem by Arthur Hugh Clough unfailingly brings tears to my eyes. It speaks of hope, and effort, and disappointment, and perseverance... The imagery is profoundly beautiful, and reminds me of the great beaches of my childhood, of Wordsworth’s immortal shore. I can feel those ‘tired waves, vainly breaking,’ and then the flooding fullness of the sea.”

Dorothy also described the poem in her message:

“Clough was unspecific in the references. There are references to military battles, but they are clearly only metaphors. Its imperishable eloquence is exactly the kind that fires resolve to win in the end, which I depend on, which we must all depend on. Read it, and let me know you found it.”

So, Dorothy, as you can see, I found it! “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth” is now enshrined on my cell wall. As you have suggested, I read it in the face of all the silences and rejections of appeals to justice that I have seen. It is a vivid reminder, as it was for Churchill and FDR, that some struggles are much bigger than their mere protagonists. This struck home for me when a prominent writer — an author and Catholic deacon in Pennsylvania where the priesthood and Church have been much maligned of late — published this review of Beyond These Stone Walls:

“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

— Deacon David Jones

With that, Dorothy, I stopped being a victim of this struggle and became a warrior.

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Note From Father Gordon MacRae: Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, so, for America, the struggle was availeth after all.

Please share this post. Please watch and listen to Dorothy Rabinowitz in a five-minute WSJ interview on this story.

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

Hitler’s Pope, Nazi Crimes and The New York Times

Catholic Scandal and The Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of a Moral Panic

November 11 is Veterans Day, a day set aside to remember all those who bravely risked much to win and defend our freedoms. Please honor them with me by sharing my post, “Veterans Day: War and Remembrance and the Cost of Freedom.”

May the Lord Bless you and keep you.

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.”

Lead, Kindly Light: A Christmas Card to Our Readers

Abraham first heard God 21 centuries before the Magi followed a star to Bethlehem. We now live in the 21st century after. At the center of all faith Christ is born.

December 21, 2022

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Dear Readers, Some elements of our Annual BTSW Christmas Card may seem a bit familiar to you. We have used some of these elements in our posts of Christmas past. Since 1949, The Wall Street Journal has published as its top editorial each Christmas Eve an outstanding piece of writing from the late Vermont C. Royster, the WSJ’s former Editorial Page Editor. His yearly repeated Christmas essay is “In Hoc Anno Domini,” (In this year of the Lord). It is one of the finest examples of historical Christian writing I have encountered, and one of the most faith-filled. Mr. Royster was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was a two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. So at the expense of sounding a bit pretentious, if The Wall Street Journal can get away with publishing an annual Christmas gem, then so can I.

I begin our Christmas Card this year with Vermont C. Royster and his “In Hoc Anno Domini.”

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression — for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

— Vermont C. Royster, The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 1949

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The liturgies of Christmas set out in the Roman Missal and Lectionary express the spirituality of the entire ecclesial body of the baptized into the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our communal past and hopeful future.

The Mass at Night for the Christmas Vigil begins with a moving recitation of the Roman Martyrology which places the Birth of the Messiah into a real historical context:

The twenty-fifth day of December when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world, when God in the beginning created heaven and earth, and formed man in His own likeness; when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace — In the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith, came out of Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century since the people of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt; in the tenth century since David was anointed King; in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel; in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the founding of Rome; in the forty-second year in the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace

— Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,

desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed since His conception, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and

was made man.

— The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh

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I am forced by circumstance to live in a place with men who are banished, not just from home and family and freedom, but too often also from hope. Some with even the darkest pasts have come into the light to thrill us with their stories of grace and true repentance and conversion. You have read of several in these pages and there are other stories yet to come. Some of these wounded men become saints, I am not fit to fasten their sandals. We live East of Eden, most justly so, but some not.

The Magi of the Gospel saw a star and heard good news, the very best of news: Freedom can be found in only one place, and the way there is to follow the Star they followed. If you follow Beyond These Stone Walls, never follow me. Follow only Christ.

My Christmas Card to you is this message, a tradition of sorts for Beyond These Stone Walls. My small, barred cell window faces East. It is there that I offer Mass for our readers. So my gaze is always toward the East, a place to which we were all once banished to wander East of Eden.

At the end of these cold and gray December days I step outside to watch toward the West as the sun descends behind towering prison walls. It reminds me of my favorite prayer,

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on;

The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead Thou me on.

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;

I loved to choose and see my path, but now, Lead Thou me on.

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,

Pride ruled my will; Remember not past years.

So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still will lead me on,

O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone.

And with the morn those Angel faces smile,

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

— Saint John Henry Newman

This moving prayer by Saint John Henry Newman has been set to music as a tribute to Saint John Paul II:

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My favorite Christmas hymn, “O Holy Night,” was originally based on a French poem entitled Cantique de Noël by Placide Cappeau in 1843. Composer Adolphe Adam set it to music in 1847. The English version (with small changes to the initial melody) is by John Sullivan Dwight. The hymn reflects on the birth of Jesus as humanity’s redemption.

This wonderful hymn has been performed by many noted vocalists over the last two centuries. Few have performed it with more beauty and heartfelt faith than Celine Dion. Celine today suffers from a neurological disorder that may inhibit her voice. Please offer a prayer for her. Celine Dion’s beautiful voice should be long remembered for her rendition of this most beautiful of Christmas hymns.

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Some of our Readers around the world live in difficult circumstances. There are many who come to this site from Ukraine besieged by war over the last year. Many others have lost loved ones and are now besieged by loneliness. I drafted this Christmas message as a place where perhaps we could all meet for a time in this Christmas Season. One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanowa. Today the Chapel has a real-time live feed for a most beautiful adoration chapel where people around the world can spend time in Eucharistic Adoration. We invite you to come and spend some quiet time this Christmas celebrating the rebirth of the Messiah in your own life.

As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:

Blessings to you all during this joyous Christmas Season. We are living in darker times, and this Christmas is like no other, but we are children of the Light and we are promised that the darkness will never overcome it. May God Bless you and keep you safe. Feliz Navidad!

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Please also visit our Special Events page.

Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare

In the 1970s, Fr. Seraphim Michalenko smuggled the Diary of St. Faustina out of Communist-occupied Poland. Forty years later he smuggled Divine Mercy into a prison.

April 20, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

In a 2022 post, “The Annunciation and the Consecration of Russia and Ukraine,” I wrote about an old and dear friend, Fr. Tony Nuccio, a priest who became my surrogate father at a time when I most needed one. I was 16 then, and lost. When I was 18, two years after I commenced the practice of my renewed faith, Father Tony brought the Cursillo movement to our parish. I was invited, but I did not want to go. When I finally caved in, I did as he asked: “Participate. Don’t anticipate.” But it wasn’t easy. I was 18, and I already knew everything!

A year later, at 19, I was asked by Father Tony to be a team member for a subsequent Cursillo weekend, and to present a talk — called a “Rollo” (pronounced “Roy-o”) in the Spanish language of Cursillo. Father Tony knew exactly what he was doing. The Rollo he assigned me to present was entitled “Obstacles to Grace.” I was, of course, terrified, believing that I had no frame of reference for such a topic. Father Tony laughed and said, “Trust me on this. You’re an expert in the field.”

He was right about that. Trust itself — or actually its almost total absence — was always the source of my expertise. Trusting others, trusting life, trusting faith, trusting God were the great challenges of my youth. There I was fifty years ago in 1972, a 19-year-old kid already battered by life instructing a group of adult Catholic men about obstacles to grace and how to overcome them. My own words were meager, but in preparing the Rollo, I stumbled upon a passage from Saint John Henry Newman.

I cannot recall how or where I found it, but the passage struck me as one of life's Essential Truths then and still does today. For my entire life since, I have been both challenged and guided by this passage. I committed it to memory a half century ago and it is still there:

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good;

I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”

— Saint John Henry Newman

Behold Your Son! Behold Your Mother!

Over the course of the last dozen years of writing from prison, several readers have sent me that same passage. They say that it reminds them of what happened in my life, and in Pornchai Moontri’s life as well. I believe, and many believe, that I have found the work that God has committed to me alone, a work He has committed to no one else. All the rest of the passage is simply about trust. This passage goes to the heart of Divine Mercy, and at age 19 I surrendered to it without ever even hearing the term. My natural inclination was to resist, but resistance was futile!

I know today that just about the time I was discovering the above passage from Saint John Henry Newman in 1972, Marian Father Seraphim Michalenko was in Communist-occupied Poland. While there he devoted his life to the cause of Divine Mercy and bravely smuggled the Diary of Saint Faustina — the Manifesto of Divine Mercy — to bring it to the free world. Divine Mercy would one day become for me the framework of my existence as a man, as a priest, as a prisoner.

Father Seraphim was appointed by the Vatican to be Vice-Postulator for the cause of canonization of Saint Faustina. Internationally known as an expert on her life and famous Diary, he became the catalyst for publishing it and documenting the miracles that became the basis for Faustina’s beatification and canonization. Pope Benedict XVI called Divine Mercy “the nucleus of the Gospel.”

Four years before his death in 2021, Father Seraphim was brought to this prison for a Mass. After Mass in the prison chapel, Pornchai Moontri and I were both asked to remain because Father Seraphim wanted to speak with us. I had no idea what to expect. We both knew about him but had no idea how he knew about us. Pornchai was anxious. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered. When Father Seraphim approached, he asked to speak with Pornchai first. Fifteen minutes later, a smiling Pornchai told me that I am next.

As Father Seraphim and I spoke, he asked about our connection with St. Maximilian Kolbe, how he entered our lives, and how we came to Divine Mercy. So I told him of my lifelong regard for the passage above from St. John Henry Newman and of how it has guided me. I remember saying that I am not certain of the “definite service” God has committed to me that He has committed to no one else. Father Seraphim leaned a little closer to me and said with quiet certainty “He is standing right over there.”

I want to emphasize this lest anyone think that it was me at the center of God’s attention in this story. It was never me. For some reason, the entire Divine Mercy apostolate in North America took up an interest in the life of Pornchai Moontri and committed him to the care of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is easy to scoff a bit at such a thought, but I first discovered it to be true when Marian Helper magazine published “Mary Is at Work Here” in 2014. The article, by Marian Helper editor Felix Carroll, included this startling passage that I have written about before:

“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group to be the first [invited to Marian Consecration]. That reason eventually was revealed. It turns 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... As [the book] reveals, Pornchai experienced a dramatic conversion several years ago in no small part due to a friendship formed with fellow inmate — and now cellmate — Fr. Gordon MacRae who chronicles their lives in his celebrated website. [Beyond] These Stone Walls has gained widespread public support for their cause, including from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles. Father Gordon joined Pornchai in the Consecration and called it ‘a great spiritual gift’ that opened a door to the rebirth of trust during a dark time for both men. Great suffering requires great trust.”

— Marian Helper, Spring 2014

Our Marian Consecration was the culmination of a 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat based on the book of the same title by Father Michael Gaitley, MIC. “Behold Your Son! Behold Your Mother!” That is the title that the Marians of the Immaculate Conception gave to an article of mine about how Divine Mercy entered our lives behind these prison walls. It began as a pair of December 2013 posts that were later combined into a single narrative by Marian Helper editor Felix Carroll for posting at the site of the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy. Felix said that this article “lit up our website as never before.”

As Spiritual Battle Rages

What happens to Divine Mercy when life begins to descend — as it does for many right now — into the discouragement and trials of spiritual battle when evil has the appearance of coming out on top? The rest of this story takes up the latter part of the passage quoted above by St. John Henry Newman: “He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about."

Sadness is not always a negative state of mind only to be avoided. Sometimes, we should just allow ourselves to become immersed in it. Imagine the tragedy of going through life without ever loving another human being whom you will one day miss with great sadness. Imagine never caring about someone else enough that absence leaves you in pain.

I had been in prison for 26 years on September 23, 2020. That month was among the saddest of my life, and yet the sadness was necessary and in the end, even welcomed. For the previous 15 years, every sign told me that I am powerless to do anything about my own unjust imprisonment, so I worked hard to become a catalyst of liberty for another. I wrote of that September day of desolate losses in a special tribute to a Patron Saint in “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.”

America was caught up in a torrent of grief and chaos then. The global pandemic made its way out of China and wreaked havoc in places like the one where I live. In an over-crowded prison, social distancing was impossible. The only step that could be taken to ward off a disaster was to shut everything down and lock everyone up. There is no protection from a pandemic in a place where 24 grown men share two toilets and two sinks. And when 12 of them are sick, there is nowhere to hide.

Meanwhile, at the height of the pandemic across the land, mobs of protesters became unhinged as the death of George Floyd at the hands of police played out ad infinitum on the news. Cities were ablaze with violence while the news media told us these were just peaceful protests. News media and government officials (and even some bishops) claimed that our churches posed a high risk for contagion while mobs of looting protesters, an even greater mobs amassed at the southern border, posed no risk at all.

The pandemic and all the social chaos could not have come at a worse time for me in those awful months leading up to “The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri.” I made that a link for those newer readers who may not already know of this story. Because of the pandemic, what should have been for Pornchai a few weeks in ICE detention awaiting deportation to his native Thailand — which is always a grueling experience — turned into five months. I am not sure who was suffering more from the ordeal, Pornchai or me.

I knew from experience that without help he could be easily lost in the ICE system so I worked from inside a 60-square foot prison cell in New Hampshire to coordinate a small team of advocates in the U.S., Thailand, and Australia to help guide Pornchai from a distance through the ICE minefield.

But the grief and losses I encountered were still not complete. Spiritual warfare chose that moment — from September to November of 2020 — to try to silence my voice. Father George David Byers, who had been helping me to post what I write, began to notice that at the very time my life was preoccupied with Pornchai’s departure, some of the content on These Stone Walls began to disappear. By the end of October 2020, a decision had to be made to take These Stone Walls down. Eleven years of writing and nearly 600 posts were simply gone. And so was my friend, into a cauldron of misery. We were both stranded and alone in our grief. But not for long.

Allies in Spiritual Battle

Living in a hellish environment with 70 men to a room in round-the-clock torment in a for-profit ICE facility in Louisiana, Pornchai was able to get out only one ten minute phone call each day. But he and I could not call each other. It was clear to me that he could not cope with this alone for five months, so one of our friends and helpers, Claire Dion in Maine, devised a way to help us both.

Though we could not call each other, Claire suggested that at a pre-set time each day, Pornchai and I could both call her on two different cell numbers, then she would put the phones together. It was not ideal, but it worked and it saved the day every day for five months. There were times when Pornchai met the limit of his endurance, but that simple reassuring 10-minute daily call renewed his trust in Divine Mercy, and mine.

That’s our friend, Claire, and her ingenious phone rescue pictured above. But my spiritual battles of the fall were just getting started. Soon after Pornchai left, I became miserably ill with Covid. There was no treatment so I just toughed it out for three weeks in October along with all the others in my living area. Our housing unit was quarantined, but that only meant temperature checks twice a day while locked in with our misery.

Then I received a handwritten letter from a stranger in New York who had stumbled upon this blog. Four years earlier, Father Seraphim told me that my mission is to be like that of St. Joseph in Pornchai’s life. In the very week These Stone Walls came down, the stranger’s letter told me that she found a post of mine about St. Joseph and was very moved by it. With a Ph.D. in computer science, she was well placed to understand what took place in the cyberspace at work against us. To my awesome surprise, I learned that she had quietly uploaded to her own server all 600 past posts and all the other content of this site just before it was all taken down. I thought everything was lost only to find out nothing was lost.

The new publisher volunteered to reconstruct the site on a new platform with a new name — Beyond These Stone Walls. This was happening in the final months of 2020 while we simultaneously struggled to overcome the obstacles of a global pandemic and ICE indifference to return Pornchai home. [He has been in Thailand for a year now, and I wrote of that year in “Pornchai Moontri: A Night in Bangkok, A Year in Freedom.”]

We still speak daily. I deeply appreciate the support of friends and readers that makes that possible — that made all of this possible. Despite hardship and pain, the great adventure of Divine Mercy has won this day, and has won these lives.

God knows what He is about.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: That “definite service” that God has committed to me did not end with Pornchai’s departure last year. Please consider helping me to help him and Father John Le, SVD in their ongoing missions of Divine Mercy. See Part Two of our Special Events Page to find out how.

To join Pornchai Moontri and me in the Association of Marian Helpers, call the Marian Helpers Center at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy at 1-800-462-7426.

Just a day before I wrote this post, Pornchai was invited to tour the Fr. Ray Foundation School in Pattaya, Thailand. At three sites in Thailand, The Father Ray Foundation provides a home and education for 850 underpriviledged and special needs Thai children. Our friends Father John Le, Pornchai’s Thai tutor, Chalathip, and Divine Mercy Thailand founder, Yela Smit, went with him. They sent photos!

It’s Lent. It’s Late. It’s Time to Find Our Way Home

Editor’s Note: In the photo above, Cardinal Timothy Dolan presides over Palm Sunday Mass in an empty Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

Like no other time in history, forces in our culture are driving us toward a rapid retreat from God and the tenets of faith. Lent is our time to decide who we are.

Writing the "Blessed Among Us" column for the February 2021 issue of This Day: Dai1y Prayer for Today's Catho1ic, Robert Ellsworth penned the story of Maryknoll priest, Servant of God Francis X. Ford. I was looking for the Mass readings for the First Sunday of Lent when I came upon Father Ford's story. One sentence caught my eye: He died in prison on February 21, 1952.

That was one year before I was born. Francis Ford was one of the first Americans to join the newly founded Maryknoll missionary society just out of high school in Brooklyn, New York in 1912. After priesthood ordination in 1920, he joined the first group of four Maryknoll priests on a missionary journey to China. It was there that he died, 32 years later, in a Chinese prison.

Father Ford spent many years in Kaying, in southern China. During that time he witnessed the Chinese Catholic population there rise to over 20,000. He chose to remain there during World War II, but after the war, during China’s Communist Revolution, he was imprisoned for suspected espionage. He was never tried, but during his imprisonment he was starved, beaten, and paraded before mocking crowds anxious to please the Communist regime.

During that time, the Chinese Communist government confiscated farm lands and equipment of the Church and at all American-supported missions, including Fu Jen University at Peking.

Priests in the areas most affected by Marxism were working under extensive restrictions. Some restrictions were self-imposed by the priests to avert Communist persecution of their people.

Wholesale arrests took place beginning in December 1950 when the American bishop of Wuchow and 21 Maryknoll missionaries were imprisoned. The usual charge was suspicion of espionage. Throughout this persecution, Father Ford never wavered from his faith. He wrote from prison:

“Grant us, Lord, to be the doorstep by which the multitudes may come to Thee, and if ... we are ground underfoot and spat upon and worn out, at least we shall become the King’s Highway to pathless China.”

— Servant of God Francis X. Ford, 1952

My first reaction to the story of Father Ford was to wonder what he may today think of the secret concordat signed by Pope Francis, and recently renewed, surrendering to the Chinese Communist government the authority to appoint Catholic bishops in effective abandonment of the Underground Church to which Father Ford gave his life.

But more on that in a future post. This one is about Lent and not politics. Well ... at the moment I actually have a hard time separating the two. Lent really is about politics, but only in the sense that conversion of the heart means putting — and keeping — our politics in their proper place. Politics are a means to an end — the end hopefully being a fair and just society functioning in defense of unalienable human rights.

But Lent is also about the End itself; our end. It asks some fundamental questions of us: Who are we? Where does our treasure lie? Where are we going spiritually? Are any of our recent struggles — to which we have given so much of ourselves and our attention “paving the King’s Highway” through a pathless humanity? Are the affairs that embroil us leading us and others to Christ?

Lost in a Lenten Wilderness

Since this post began with the story of an American priest who, though innocent, died in a Chinese prison, I am faced with the possibility that I, too, though innocent, may die in an American one. As the clock ticks into another Lent — my 27th in prison that feels more probable than possible. I am not sure what I am supposed to do with that probability. It is easy for us, as a society, to point to human rights abuses in China while the plank in our own eye blinds us to ourselves.

Stumbling into the story of Father Francis X. Ford was a gift to me. Just as in his Chinese prison, I, too, was beaten, starved, and paraded before humiliating mobs. None of that has happened lately. It was all long ago, but like Father Ford, it left me at a crossroads. I had to come, as he did, to accept my Cross as “pavement on the King’s Highway” for another. Like all of us, I ultimately came into this world from dust, and to dust I shall ultimately return. In the time and space in between, I have been assigned a task. As Saint John Henry Newman prayed, “I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.”

I confess that I was bitter for a time. I wanted revenge even more than I wanted justice. I consumed it, and then it consumed me until the great mystery of Divine Providence placed my friend, Pornchai Moontri in my path. He never did or said anything to make me think this, but he was like an immovable roadblock that would not let me pass. His life events of abandonment, being used, and then discarded into years of solitary confinement left him alone in the fires of Gehenna, that ancient place of human sacrifice to a false god (2 Kings 23:10).

It was there that we met, and I came to see that my bitterness would be just the right ingredient that would push him over the edge, lost in the abyss forever. I cannot adequately describe this today, but I was mysteriously driven by grace into something that I once ascribed to Pope Benedict XVI as he left the papacy: I had to devote myself to “The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

Fatherhood is waning in our culture, and the culture has a festering wound because of it. This absence is in no place more evident than in prison where eighty percent of the young men who land here grew up in fatherless homes. In Pornchai’s life, this wound was deeply felt. Abandoned by his first father, he was sacrificed to the fires of Gehenna by someone who exploited and abused him horribly, and then discarded him. Pornchai told me one day that I am the only person in his life to always act in his best interest.

I felt duty bound to make the sacrifices for Pornchai that others should have made, but did not. This became complicated. I had to all at once be his friend, his father, his priest, and a mirror of the Church that I had come to resent because it discarded me. I discovered that to accomplish what I was called to do, there could be no more “me.” In the process of sacrifice for another, my identity as a man and as a priest was restored. I cannot explain exactly how, but I never before in my life felt more like a father and a priest than the day Pornchai told me:

“I woke up today with a future when up to now all I ever had was a past.”

— Pornchai Moontri

It was not long after this that Pornchai was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. He chose, as you know, the name Maximilian as his Christian name. He chose it in honor of my Patron Saint, Maximilian Kolbe, whose apostolic witness, and undaunted devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was based on one immutable truth: “Love alone creates.”

You might recall that I began this post with the story of Father Francis X. Ford whose life I encountered as I searched for the Mass readings for the First Sunday of Lent. The Second Reading is from the First Letter of Saint Peter (3:18-22):

“Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God. Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the Spirit. In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison ...”

— 1 Peter 3:18-22

The Great and Terrible Adventure of Sacrificial Love

As much as we dislike suffering in any form, I have found that the mystery of Divine Providence sometimes causes suffering to make a surprising turn back onto itself. I wrote a post some time ago entitled, “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.” The account of Saint Maximilian’s gruesome death in an Auschwitz starvation chamber is painful. At the very same time, it is also hopeful.

Without the spontaneous sacrifice Maximilian made to exchange his life for a young, condemned prisoner, that man would never again have known freedom. His children, grandchildren and great grandchildren would never have been born. On a wider scale, the thousands of others suffering in Auschwitz who heard of this story were themselves inspired to respond to evil and suffering with their own noble defiance. And wider still, the world would have been deprived of this powerful account of the sacrifice of a father’s love that has inspired millions.

My friend Pornchai was not drawn to the Catholic faith because of anything he heard or read. It was because of something he witnessed, something that never wavered. Shortly after he was received into the Church, Pornchai asked one of his notorious “upside down” questions. His head would pop down from his upper bunk in the dark of our prison cell so that he appeared upside down as he asked, “Should we ask God for a happy ending when Father Maximilian never had one?”

I was left to ponder that question for days before I could answer that “You, Pornchai are his happy ending.” I do not know if it was adequate, and I ponder it still, but in the mystery of suffering, immense good has come from this saint. It leaves me in a terrible spiritual quandary that I have written before. I despise prison. I still, after 27 years, feel pangs of bitterness for being falsely accused, and waves of resentment for, as Father Richard John Neuhaus once described, “a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.”

But I shudder to think of who and where Pornchai might be today had I not been here. God did not send me to prison. That was the work of greedy, lying men and corrupt officials. But then God did something with it that I could never have imagined. People write to me now, expressing concern that I must be heartbroken by my friend’s absence. I am not. I miss him, but behind that is an inexplicable sense of peace that the task given to me by God — a task that could be given to none other — has been fulfilled by the great gift of something that I did not even know was within me: the sacrifices of a father’s love.

I still hate prison, false witness, and corruption — perhaps now more than ever — but I cannot second guess this magnificent work of Divine Mercy. Our Church, like the world in which it lives, is permeated with the influence of evil. It is also filled with the sacrifices of its heroes like Father Francis X. Ford, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, and the enduring presence of selfless sacrifice extended back over 2,000 years.

It’s Lent. It’s late. It’s time to find our way home. As Saint Peter once asked of Christ — putting all politics aside — “to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, died on February 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, at age 90 from Covid-19 complications. Father Seraphim was a priest of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He was also Vice-Postulator for the cause of sainthood for Saint Maria Faustina. He heroically smuggled her Diary out of Communist occupied Poland where it had been supressed. He then translated the Diary into English. Along with Saint John Paul II, Father Seraphim was globally considered to be one of the premier experts on Divine Mercy.

Father Seraphim was also a good friend to Pornchai Moontri and me. He came to this prison to interview both of us in 2014 during a retreat workshop on Father Michael Gaitley’s book Consoling the Heart of Jesus.

Pornchai and I invite you to help us honor Father Seraphim by reading and sharing this post written shortly after his visit with us: "Father Seraphim Michalenko on a Mission of Divine Mercy."

Please share this post!

Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Mid-Life Crisis

As major transitions loom for our friends behind These Stone Walls, Social Psychologist Erik Erikson was the catalyst for a midsummer night’s mysterious dream.

In eleven years of writing from prison for These Stone Walls, this has always been the most difficult time of year to produce a post. Labor Day is looming in the United States, and in 2020 it is on the latest date possible. It’s a time of staff vacations in prison so pretty much every department is understaffed. This year, Labor Day conspires with a pandemic for limited access to everything.

All outside vendors, visitors, volunteers, program facilitators, and medical providers are currently barred from entry. Visitors have been barred for months. What was once a three-hour visiting period twice per week with family or friends was reduced last year to ninety minutes. In the time of Covid-19 it is now reduced to a single monthly 45-minute no-contact visit from behind glass with masks, and it has to be arranged three weeks in advance.

And as you know by now, my friend Pornchai Moontri and I have the added stress of knowing that major change is coming but we know neither the day nor the hour. Each day I face the possibility that I could return from work to an empty cell and no chance to wish him well and give him my blessing. Such is the nature of prison.

We do have a plan for when Pornchai finally arrives in Thailand after an ordeal in ICE detention. I hope you have read our recent posts, Pornchai’s “Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind,” and my bombshell post, “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri.” These have been the most visited posts of the year during our most difficult days of the year. Now, more than ever, our faith in Divine Mercy is getting a workout.

All of this has conspired to create a perfect storm lending itself to anxiety and, for me, a mid-life crisis. It is not my first, nor will it likely be my last. When I told a friend that I think I am now having one, he sent me this story about a midlife crisis. It is not a true story - at least, I hope it isn’t true - but it made me laugh and I needed a good laugh right now. Maybe you do, too:

• “Approaching her sixtieth birthday, Mildred lapsed into a depression that sent her to a therapist. He diagnosed her downward spiral as a possible midlife crisis, and assured her that it is a very common phenomenon. The therapist suggested that Mildred take up something new and challenging, perhaps something adventurous.

• “‘Well, I’ve always wanted to try horseback riding,’ said Mildred. Affirmed as a great choice by the therapist, she stopped at the library and checked out a couple of books on horseback riding. When she felt she had a grasp of the rudimentary details, Mildred ventured out on a Saturday morning for her first ride.

• “Approaching the horse with some trepidation, Mildred placed her left foot into the stirrup, grabbed the crop atop the saddle just as the books suggested, and found mounting the horse to be surprisingly easy. Then the horse began an enjoyably slow but steady pace. As it worked up to a more pronounced gallop, however, Mildred found herself growing anxious.

• “The horse picked up a little more speed, but Mildred’s anxiety grew along with it. Fearing that she was slipping from the saddle, she began to panic. Clutching the horse in her panic as it gained speed, Mildred began to scream for help as she struggled to hold on for dear life. Then, just as Mildred began to tumble completely from the saddle, Walter the Wal-Mart Greeter rushed over, and unplugged the horse.”

Erik Erikson on the Origins of Our Midlife Crises

I have known and counseled many people in the midst of a midlife crisis. I’ve had more than one of them myself. It’s a time when values and beliefs are questioned and sometimes even abandoned. The concept is not at all new in psychology or literature. In a few past posts on These Stone Walls, I have written that Dante Alighieri began the Inferno, Part One of his famous 14th Century literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, with what may very well be world literature’s first description of a midlife crisis:

• “When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray. Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear. So bitter — death is hardly more severe! I cannot clearly say how I had entered that wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path. But to recall what good I found there, I must also tell you the other things I saw.”

I was once an avid student of psychology before studying theology. Dante put a spiritual spin on the “shadowed forest” of his midlife abandonment of ‘the true path.” That is fitting, for a midlife crisis is as much a spiritual phenomenon as a psychological one. Its evidence is just as Dante described it seven centuries ago.

Since Sigmund Freud became the Father of Psychoanalytic Theory in the early Twentieth Century, the various efforts to understand what makes us tick are fascinating. I once wrote a controversial TSW post about the secrets we keep even from ourselves entitled, “Be Wary of Crusaders! The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well.”

But I have since abandoned a good deal of psychoanalytic theory and practice as bunk. To be clear, the practice of it is often bunk but the science behind it is sometimes still helpful. There is one psychoanalytic pioneer, however, whose work has withstood the test of time and contrasts well with human experience.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Austrian-born Harvard social psychologist Erik Erikson developed his Stages of Psychosocial Development which today remains a standard for understanding how we develop psychologically. Much of his work became pivotal for comprehension of one particular stage of growth: adolescence, the most stressful time in the life of every parent. Erikson defined the central crisis of adolescence as one of identity verses role confusion.

Though he never used it, the term “Identity Crisis” has its origin in his work. For parents, an adolescent identity crisis results in experimentation, sometimes recklessly so, and a questioning of the parental status quo and value system. It is the time in which many parents are stressed to the limit.

The identity crisis is but one of Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial development. The other stages and their respective life crises are, in a nutshell: infancy (basic trust vs. mistrust), early childhood (autonomy vs. shame and doubt), preschool years (initiative vs. guilt), middle childhood (industry vs. inferiority), adolescence and its crisis of identity, young adulthood (intimacy vs. isolation), middle adulthood (generativity vs. stagnation), and late adulthood (integrity vs. despair).

My Midsummer Night’s Anxious Dream

For this post, my focus is on the backdrop of every midlife crisis. Erikson never actually used the term, but it clearly has its origin in his stages of development. It comes in between the last two of the eight stages, between middle and late adulthood when the human psyche naturally begins a nostalgic, and sometimes excruciating examination of the past and a measurement of one’s place in it. Our minds are very complex, as is this subject, so let me stick my neck out a little with a personal example.

Early in the morning of August 17, 2020, I was awakened at about 3:00 AM by a troubling dream that seemed to play out in epic performance. It needs a little background. I began religious life as a member of the Capuchin Order, one of the main branches of the Franciscans. It was while a member of the order that I began formal studies in psychology working toward both undergraduate and graduate degrees

My mentor in this was Father Benedict Groeschel who years later would part from the Capuchins along with the late, Father Andrew Apostoli to become founders of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Like them, I, too, left the Order on very good terms, but in a very different direction: to study for diocesan priesthood. I wrote about how that experience, from almost day one, became a crisis in its own right in “Priesthood, the Signs of the Times & the Sins of the Times.”

I don’t have to tell you where that change in my path ultimately led me. Now, at age 67, I look back over the decades and find myself spontaneously doing exactly what Erik Erikson predicted. My mind wanders often into a sort of inventory of my life and my place in it. All these years later, I find myself questioning my decision to leave my religious community, wondering to this day whether I did the right thing.

It’s interesting that I still, after forty years, refer to the Order is “my community.” The inner struggles that we have are often expressed in dreams, and in dreams my conflict is evident. The early morning dream of August 17 this year was no exception. It was both then and now. Dreams often have temporal confusion.

In the dream, I was in my Capuchin habit at Mass with my community, but I was also a prisoner having just been released on a sort of leave from prison. I was the age that I am right now, but everyone else in the dream was as they were back then. Except for my friend, Pornchai, who was with me at the Mass. In the dream, I was stricken by how out of place we were. Pornchai and I were deeply wounded by life while all the others present had been sheltered - just as I would want them to have been — from the sort of trials we have endured.In the dream, before the Mass ended, I had to leave. I removed my habit and left it there in the chapel. Others gathered at the door as Pornchai and I walked away. He asked me, “Where are we going?” I answered mysteriously, “We’re going to where this path leads.” It was then that I woke up, troubled, anxious and depressed. Only later in the day did I realize that the date was August 17, the day that I first professed vows in the Order forty-five years ago.

As I look back with some nostalgia, I realize that those years were among the happiest of my life. Then something happened that suddenly altered them. It is a story that I have never before told, but I know that someday I will tell it. It adds no light, but only more mystery, to the path I ended up upon.

That path led down a long and winding road to where I am right now, approaching 26 years in prison for crimes that never took place. This is not the sort of “community” I had in mind when I first discerned a vocation to religious life all those decades ago. It is also not lost on me that this condemnation and imprisonment began in 1994 on September 23, the feast day of the most famous of the Capuchin saints, Padre Pio, who would later insinuate himself behind These Stone Walls with us.

He Knows What He Is About

Over the last decade at These Stone Walls, we have told a story very much like the one Dante Aligheri told seven centuries ago in The Divine Comedy. It may have been divine, but it did not always feel much like a comedy. Like Dante, having strayed from the path I was on - though not by choice - I entered the dark wood of prison and brought the readers of These Stone Walls with me. Across this decade, we told a tale of all that I had found there, both the good and the bad. In the end, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the two.

My friend, Pornchai Moontri is an example. On the surface of life he was seen as just another bad actor who made terrible choices that led him on a path to prison. My recent post, “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri” pulled back the veil to reveal his life as a victim of horrific crime long before he was driven into one of his own.

Thanks to readers, that post found its way into several internet sites dedicated to addressing human trafficking. Pornchai’s story was told prolifically at These Stone Walls, but it remained hidden in plain sight until one of you shared it in just the right place. Whoever you were, you acted as a bond of connection between persons, a very important concept that I will return to below. In my midlife crisis dream, Pornchai asked me, “Where are we going?” I told him, “We’re going to where this path leads.” It seemed to me to be a strange response until I pondered it. Our path - the paths of all of us in life - lead along the threads of connection placed there by God through us - through the bad as well as through the good.

These Stone Walls became Pornchai’s religious community, the community of faith that formed him. His leaving, and leaving me behind, is painful, but at least one TSW reader has equated him to Timothy, the companion of Saint Paul. In that sense he is not leaving. He is being sent.

Where do I go from here? I have not even pondered that yet. My priority at the moment is to do what I can to spare my friend from the one-size-fits-all nightmare of ICE detention. Thanks to some of you sharing my posts in the right places, there is now a glimmer of hope for that. Just a glimmer, so please pray for that intention. I hope that in a month or two, These Stone Walls will have a voice from Catholic Thailand.

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From the voice of Saint John Henry Newman: “Some Definite Service.”

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

“Somehow, I am necessary for His purposes... I have a part in this great work. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connections between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

“Therefore I will trust him, whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him. If I am in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end which is quite beyond us.

“He does nothing in vain. He may prolong my life, He may shorten it, He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, he may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, hide my future from me - Still, He knows what He is about.”

— St. John Henry Cardinal Newman - March 7, 1848

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NOTE FROM FATHER GORDON MACRAE: Mine is not the only “Prison Journal” in circulation these days. I have just pre-ordered my copy of the soon-published Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell from Ignatius Press which promises to be a spiritual classic. You may also like these lesser classics from These Stone Walls:

• Priesthood, the Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times

• Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind

• Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

• Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence