Divine Mercy for Doubting Thomas and Other Spiritually Wounded

The Gospel on Divine Mercy Sunday is St John’s account of the spiritually wounded Thomas who would not know peace until surrendering his wounds to the Risen Christ.

April 23, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

There is a scene in the great World War II prisoner of war film, Stalag 17, in which an American Air Force officer (played by actor William Holden) negotiates with the German Commandant over the treatment of a fellow prisoner. I was dragged into a similar role here several years ago when I protested an injustice aimed at a friend.

For a long time I had managed to avoid efforts to recruit me for an Inmate Communications Committee (ICC), a group of eight chosen from 1,500 prisoners here. The ICC advocated for better prison conditions and due process. After protesting over another prisoner, I no longer had a valid excuse, so I reluctantly accepted.

From the start, I was saddled with doing all the writing, which included detailed minutes of every meeting for distribution to prison officials, a monthly summary of progress, and a quarterly newsletter.

The job — which payed nothing — was in addition to my Law Library job which payed next to nothing. It also meant writing endless memos, proposals, clarifications, and requests that I fielded each week. We succeeded in only about ten percent of the concessions we set out to obtain, and that is more or less on par with William Holden’s success rate in Stalag 17.

About the only high point is that I was also required to be present at a Jobs and Education Fair in the prison gymnasium twice a year. It was an effort to get the other 1,500 prisoners here into jobs, educational classes and programs, and typically about 500 showed up. Among the dozens of display tables set up, the Law Library and ICC were side by side, so I manned both.

The Veterans Affairs table was set up next to the ICC table. It was a nice display with information on veteran groups here, an annual POW/MIA Remembrance, and other programs. The table was staffed by my friend, John, whom I did not get to see as often as I would like. John was a Navy veteran in his mid to later thirties. He lost his leg during active duty in the Middle East before coming to prison. John told me that when he arrived here, his prosthetic leg was taken from him because of an infection at the amputation site with the result of consigning him to a wheelchair. John was very anxious to get the prosthetic leg back and get back on his feet again, but because of the fear of infection, the prison medical officials were withholding it. It was John, by the way, who told me of the release of my friend Martin, the U.S. Marine veteran I wrote about in “A U.S. Marine Who Showed Me What to Give Up for Lent.”

I told John that I would do some research to see if there was a precedent here that John might use to restore his prosthetic leg. Then, without thinking, I thanked him for “stepping up” to take charge of the Veteran’s table. I quickly apologized for my faux pas, but John had a good laugh.

Then he told me that he spent half his day thanking people for all sorts of small things: an assist out of the chair, a push up a steep ramp, picking up a dropped item. He said that my thanks was the first time in a long time anyone had thanked him for his service to others. That small, awkward gesture had a profound effect on John. As I left, he was beaming. I made a decision that I would find a way to help restore what he lost and get him out of that dreaded wheelchair.

I can sometimes become so aware of the spiritual warfare that engulfs me here that it diminishes my awareness of the wounds of others. We are all, in one way or another, wounded by life physically, emotionally, spiritually, and it dulls our senses.

It drives us onto self-centered islands of emotional distance and spiritual isolation. The wounds we carry foster pessimism and doubt, erode faith, and turn the joy of living into a crucible of mere existence. Peace evades wounded warriors, even in spiritual warfare.

Doubting Thomas

This is the great plague of our age. I receive lots of mail from readers asking me to pray for a husband or wife, a son or daughter, who has lost their faith in response to the wounds of life and the sheer weight of living. In a war with one’s self, faith is often the first to go and the last to come back. If this describes you or someone in your life, then pay special attention to the Apostle Thomas in the Gospel from Saint John on Divine Mercy Sunday.

There are some remarkable elements in Saint John’s account of the death of Jesus and all that came after the Cross. The first witness to the “Seventh Sign,” the Resurrection of Jesus, was a woman whose own demons Jesus had once cast out. I wrote of her and the evidence for her first-hand witness in “Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb.” I would like to reproduce a scene from that post that never took place, but it is one that I have long imagined.

“Mary came to the disciples, Peter and the others, hidden by fear behind locked doors, and said, ‘I have good news and not-so-good news.’ Peter asked, ‘What’s the good news?’ Mary replied, ‘The Lord has risen and I have seen him.’ Peter then asked, ‘What’s the not-so-good news?’ Mary said, ‘He’s on his way here, and He wants a word with you about last Friday.”

The focus is so intensely on Jesus in the Resurrection accounts that it is easy to forget the wounds of everyone else in this story. They are all living with the deeply felt trauma of loss, and not only loss, but with an overwhelming sense of utter discouragement. They are devastated and stripped of hope.

John, the Beloved Disciple, stood with the mother of Jesus at the foot of the Cross and watched Him die a most gruesome death at the hands of the Roman Empire, but at the behest of his own people, the Chief Priests who answered Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Mary Magdalene stood there as well, and watched. The others fled. Peter, their leader, denied three times that he even knew Jesus. All that had been promised and hoped for had been misunderstood, and now gone forever. The Chief Priests — emboldened when Pilate caved to their “We Have No King but Caesar” — sought only to round up the rest.

It was in this state of fear that Mary Magdalene showed up in the Upper Room where the Apostles were in hiding for fear of the mobs. She had news that defied belief. And when Jesus first appeared to them behind that locked door, His demeanor was the opposite of what I imagined above to be a human response to their abandonment of Him. “Peace be with you,” He said. It is not a reference to a state of peace between disputing parties or someone subject to Earthly powers. The word the Gospel used in Greek – Eiréné – has more to do with spiritual welfare than spiritual warfare.

It refers to a state of mind, heart and soul, the equivalent of the Hebrew “Shalom”, and its usage means harmony with God within one’s self. It is the same sense that the Prophet Isaiah used in his Messianic expectation of the Prince of Peace:

“For us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder and his name will be called ‘Wonder Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’”

— Isaiah 9:6

It is what Saint Paul refers to in his letter to the Colossians, “Let the peace of Christ reign in your hearts” (Col. 3:15). Once you have it, it is far more contagious than any pandemic. This peace is the foundation and gift of Divine Mercy.

But Thomas missed the whole thing. When he arrived and found them stunned and exuberant, he retreated into his own deep wounds. Thomas did not stay to see Jesus crucified. Like the others, he could not bear it. He and they fled when Jesus appeared before Pilate mocked, beaten, broken, as the accusing mob grew beyond control to threaten even Pilate himself, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” But Thomas saw enough to know that it was over, that all was lost, and all hope had gone out of the world. So when faced with the great risk of trusting and hoping again, he said,

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the nail marks, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

— John 20:25

Trusting Divine Mercy

For this, the Apostle is forever called, “Doubting Thomas,” but I see something more painful than his doubt. I see him also as hurting, defeated, robbed of hope. He had to touch the wounds of the Risen Christ because the wounds of the Crucified Christ had already touched him, had broken his heart, and devastated his faith, and destroyed all hope. As so many of you know only all too well, coming to trust again after such hurt is a very risky business.

I find it fascinating that the story of Thomas and his struggle with trust and hope after the events of Holy Week is the Gospel for Divine Mercy Sunday. When Jesus presented Himself to Thomas, and invited him to probe the wounds in his living hands and side, Thomas did not oblige. Instead, he surrendered his own wounds, and responded in a leap of faith, “My Lord and my God.” Pope Benedict XVI wrote of this in his magisterial book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week:

“In His two appearances to the Apostles gathered in the Upper Room, Jesus repeats several times the greeting, ‘Peace be with you’… It becomes the gift of peace that Jesus alone can give because it is the fruit of his radical victory over evil… For this reason Saint John Paul II chose to call this Sunday after Easter ‘Divine Mercy,’ with a very specific image: that of Jesus’ pierced side from which blood and water flowed.”

This image, revealed to Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska as the image of Divine Mercy, is that of the same wounds transfigured:

“I saw the Lord Jesus dying on the Cross amidst great suffering, and out of the Heart of Jesus came the two rays as are in the image.”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 414

“The two rays denote blood and water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls… Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter…”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 299

I recently wrote a post entitled “Thailand’s Once-Lost Son Was Flag Bearer for the Asian Apostolic Congress.” Most of our readers know the story of what led to Pornchai Maximilian Moontri’s Divine Mercy conversion. Starting at the age of two in rural Thailand, he knew only abandonment by the very people who should have taught him trust. Forced to forage in the streets for food, he was hospitalized for malnutrition. Then at age eleven he was taken from Thailand and forced into a life marked by violence, exploitation and abuse. At age 18, after several years of adolescent homelessness, he killed a man after being pinned to the ground in a struggle. Pornchai was sent to prison for life. While there, his mother, his only contact in the free world was murdered by the man who exploited him. After many years of solitary confinement, Pornchai was moved to another prison and spent the next 15 years as my roommate.

How does anyone emerge from such wounds? How does anyone ever trust again when all prior trust was broken? On Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, Pornchai took on a new name, “Maximilian,” after Saint Maximilian Kolbe who walked this path with him and led him to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In the course of this remarkable journey, Pornchai’s wounds never healed. They are with him for life, but they have been transformed. He is a powerful figure today in the realm of Divine Mercy because he has placed his wounds in the service of the Risen Lord. Back in October of 2024, Pornchai was invited to carry the flag of the Kingdom of Thailand in procession at the Fifth Asian Apostolic Congress on Divine Mercy held in the Philippines. In the scene atop this section, Pornchai Max proudly carries the flag of Thailand before a crowd of 5,000 pilgrims in honor of Divine Mercy.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one below speaks volumes. This is the Face of Divine Mercy.

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Father MacRae and Pornchai Moontri: An Interview on the Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio (15 minutes)

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And to honor our late Holy Father: “Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother.”

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.”

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.”

With Padre Pio When the Worst That Could Happen Happens

Inspired by Padre Pio’s surrender to sacrificial suffering, this priest wrongly imprisoned for 29 years still sees signs and wonders even in life’s darkest corners.

September 21, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

I write this week in honor of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, more popularly known as Padre Pio. He is one of the two Patron Saints of Beyond These Stone Walls and one who has had a living presence in my life behind these walls. The other, of course, is Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Pornchai Moontri and I share a somewhat mystical connection with both. A little time spent at “Our Patron Saints” in the BTSW Public Library might demonstrate how they have come to our spiritual aid in the darkest times of our lives here.

Though they were 20th Century contemporaries, Padre Pio and Maximilian Kolbe did not know each other except by reputation. Among the many letters of Padre Pio to pilgrims who wrote to him are several in which he urged suffering souls to enroll in the Militia of the Immaculata and Knights at the Foot of the Cross, the two spiritual movements founded by Maximilian Kolbe. I stumbled upon this after Pornchai Moontri and I enrolled in both. It is ironic that both saints were canonized by another saint. The lives of St. Padre Pio, St. Maximilian and St. John Paul II were lived with heroic virtue even as they suffered. I wrote of the latter two in a recent post that touched the hearts of many: “A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II.”

Padre Pio also had a global reputation for doing remarkable things, but he did them in the midst of remarkable suffering. After bearing the wounds of Christ for a half century he passed from this life on September 23, 1968, the date upon which the Church now honors him. On that same date, 26 years later, I was wrongly convicted and sent to prison for life after having tossed aside three chances to save myself and my freedom with a lie.

Since that day, September 23, 1994, Padre Pio has injected himself into my life in profoundly grace-filled ways. I have written of these encounters in multiple posts, but the two that seem to stand out the most are “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls” and one that delves into the deeper mysteries of his life and death, “I Am a Mystery to Myself! The Last Days of Padre Pio.” We will link to them again at the end of this post and invite you to read them in his honor this week.

Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane

As long as our lives are tied to this world, we will never resolve the mystery of suffering. Like so many of you, I, too, have been confronted with the paradox of suffering. We are trapped in it because, unlike God, we live a linear existence. We see only what has come before and what is now, but we can only imagine what is to come.

But God lives in the '“nunc stans,” the “eternal now” seeing all at once our past, present, and future. Some believers expect God to be the Director of the play that is our lives, but He is more a participant than a director. He allows suffering as a means toward a specific end, but the end is His and not necessarily ours. In my post, “Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane,” Jesus discovers that the very first of his suffering is that he is inflicted with a human heart. He asks God to take away the great suffering that is to come, “but Thy will be done.” It is an aspect of the truth of the Resurrection that Jesus brought both His Divinity and the human heart with him when He opened the Kingdom of Heaven to us.

I have encountered this same paradox about suffering, and did so again on the night before writing this post. It comes in the night as a nagging litany of “What-Ifs.” It consists of a series of inflection points, points at which, in my own history, my current state in life could have been avoided had I turned left instead of right. I have identified about five such times and places in my life when a different decision would likely have prevented all the unseen suffering that was to follow.

But “What-Ifs” are spiritually unproductive. They deny the sacrificial nature of at least some of what we suffer and they disregard the plan God has for our souls. During my most recent nighttime Litany of “What-Ifs,” I was reminded of that prayer by St. John Henry Newman that I wrote about in “Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare”:

“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 do not have the gift of foresight, but my hindsight is clear. Had I allowed myself to take any of those five alternate steps that I have been reminiscing about, then the work committed to me and no other could not have taken place, and a life and soul may have been lost forever. That life and soul became important to me, but only because it was a work God committed to me and no one else. It was the life and soul of my friend, Pornchai whom God has clearly called out of darkness. It is my great honor to have been an instrument of the immense grace that transformed Pornchai, but to be such an instrument means never to ask,”What was in it for me?”

So, if given the chance now, would I trade Pornchai’s life, freedom, and soul to erase the last 28 years of my own unjust imprisonment and vilification? Our Lord answered that question with one of his own: “What father among you would give his son a stone if he asks for bread?” (Matthew 7:10). This verse is followed just a few verses further by one that I wrote about recently in “To the Kingdom of Heaven Through a Narrow Gate”:

“Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

— Matthew 7:13-14

I could not have foreseen any meaning in what I suffered during my own agony in the garden. Such clarity is only in hindsight. Being sent to prison on false charges seemed to me the worst thing that could ever happen to a person — certainly the worst that could ever happen to a priest because a priest in such a circumstance is almost equally reviled by both Church and State. But today, when recognition of the alternative dawned — recognition that the life and soul of my friend would have been lost forever — I find that I can bear this suffering. I do not choose it. It chose me.

When Padre Pio Stepped In

The story of how Padre Pio stepped into my life as a priest and prisoner came also through Pornchai Moontri. Like Padre Pio himself, I had been shunned and vilified by Catholic activists in groups like S.N.A.P. and V.O.T.F. Out of fear, many other priests and Church officials joined in that shunning during my first decade in prison. The police, the courts, the news media, and the rumor mill in my diocese all amounted to a perfect storm that I was powerless to overcome. In 2002, the storm became a hurricane, first in Boston, then in New Hampshire and from there across the country.

In 2005, The Wall Street Journal’s explosive 2-part publication of “A Priest’s Story” altered the landscape. After it was published, Catholic League President Bill Donohue reached out to me with an invitation to write an article for the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst. My article, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud” was published in the November 2005 issue.

When I received that month’s issue, I was more stricken by its front-page revelation than with my own centerpiece article. It was “Padre Pio Defamed.” I was shocked to learn, for the first time, that Padre Pio suffered more than the visible wounds of the crucified Christ. He also suffered a cascade of slander from both secular and church officials with wild suspicions and accusations that he sexually abused women in the confessional resulting in multiple Church investigations. In 1952, the Congregation of the Holy Office placed in its Index of Forbidden Books all books about Padre Pio.

Heaven can be most forgiving. The bishop who suspended the priestly faculties of Padre Pio based on the rapid spread of false information was Bishop Albino Luciani. Just a few weeks ago after a miracle attributed to his intercession was confirmed, he was beatified as Blessed Pope John Paul I.

It is ironic — not to mention boldly courageous — that Pope John Paul II canonized Padre Pio in 2002 at the height of media vitriol during the clergy abuse scandal in the United States. One of the last investigations against Padre Pio was a 1960 report lodged by Father Carlo Maccari alleging, with no evidence, that Padre Pio had sexual liaisons with female penitents twice per week.

In the same month my Catalyst article was published, Tylor Cabot joined the slander in the November 2005 issue of Atlantic Monthly with “The Rocky Road to Sainthood.” He wrote, “despite questions raised by two papal emissaries — and despite reported evidence that [Padre Pio] raised money for right-wing religious groups and had sex with penitents — Pio was canonized in 2002.”

Fr. Maccari’s original slander also found its way into The New York Times. Maccari went on to become an archbishop. On his deathbed, Maccari recanted his story as a monstrous lie born of jealousy. He prayed on his deathbed for the intercession of Padre Pio, the victim of his slander.

A Heaven-Sent Blessing from Padre Pio

Also in November of 2005, Pornchai Moontri arrived in this prison after his experience of all the events I described in “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.” Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio teamed up to reverse in him a road to destruction in ways that I was powerless to even imagine. A few years later, in 2009, this blog was born and some of my earliest posts were about what Padre Pio and Maximilian Kolbe suffered in life on the road to becoming the spiritual advocates they have been for us and millions of others. Just after I wrote about Padre Pio for the first time, I received a letter from Pierre Matthews from Ostend, Belgium who had been writing to me since reading of me in The Wall Street Journal.

Learning of my faith despite false charges and imprisonment became for Pierre the occasion for his return to faith and the Church after a long European lapse. When he read my early posts about the plight of Padre Pio, Pierre excitedly told me of a mystical encounter he had with Padre Pio as a young man. A letter from his father to him at his boarding school in Italy instructed him to go to San Giovanni Rotondo to ask for the blessing of the famous stigmatist, Padre Pio.

When 16-year-old Pierre got there, a friar answering the door told him this was impossible. He then gave Pierre a blessed holy card and ushered him toward the door. Just then, while inside the cavernous Capuchin Friary, an old man with bandaged hands came slowly down a flight of stairs and walked directly to the surprised teenager. Padre Pio held Pierre there firmly with his bandaged hands while he spoke aloud a blessing and prayer. Pierre was stunned, and never forgot it.

Sixty years later, Pierre had a dream that this blessing from Padre Pio was for us, and he wanted to pass it on. He insisted that he must be permitted to become Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather when Pornchai was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010.

Pierre left this life in 2020 just as Pornchai was awaiting his deportation to Thailand, his emergence from prison and the start of a new life. To this day, we both hold Padre Pio in awe as a mentor and friend. He gave us spiritual hope when there was none in sight. His advice is profoundly simple and characteristically blunt:

“Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading. Please share this post so it may come before someone who needs it. And please Subscribe if you have not done so already. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls.

I Am a Mystery to Myself! The Last Days of Padre Pio

Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II

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!

Prison Journal: Jesus and Those People with Stones

For readers beyond these stone walls, stories from prison can be depressing. With an open heart some can also be inspiring, and inspiration is a necessity of hope.

March 30, 2022 by Father Gordon MacRae

Readers may recall the great prison film, The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins as wrongly convicted prisoner, Andy Dufresne, and his friend, Red, a role for which actor Morgan Freeman received an Academy Award nomination. The film was released in theatres on the same day I was sent to prison in 1994 so it was some time before I got to see it.

Readers of this site found many parallels between those two characters and the conditions of my imprisonment with my friend, Pornchai Moontri. For the film's anniversary of release, I wrote a review of it for Linkedin Pulse entitled, “The Shawshank Redemption and its Real World Revision.”

My review draws a parallel between the fictional prison that sprang from the mind of Stephen King and the prison in which I am writing this. One of the elements in my movie review was a surprising revelation. At the time Stephen King was writing The Shawshank Redemption, 12-year-old Pornchai Moontri, newly arrived from Thailand to America, had a job delivering the Bangor Daily News to his home.

One aspect of my review was about our respective first seven years in prison. I spent those years confined in a place that housed eight men per cell. I described the experience: “Imagine walking alone in an unknown city. Approach the first seven strangers you meet and invite them to come home with you. Now lock yourself in your bathroom with them and face the fact that this is what your life will be like for the unforeseen future.”

Pornchai spent those same seven years in prison in the neighboring state of Maine commencing at age 18. Those years for him were the polar opposite of what they were for me. He spent them in the cruel torment of solitary confinement. Years later, Pornchai was transferred to New Hampshire and I had been relocated to a saner, safer place with but two men per cell. We landed in the same place, but came to it with polar opposite prison anxieties: Pornchai had to recover from years of forced solitude while I was recovering from years of never, ever, ever being alone.

We survived together with a camaraderie that mirrored the one between Andy and Red that sprang from the mind of Stephen King. So you might understand why, in all the years of my unjust imprisonment, the year 2016 was personally one of the most difficult. After 11 years together in a cell in that saner place, Pornchai and I were caught up in a mass move against our will that sent us back to the dungeon-like place with eight men to a cell. We were told that it would be for only a few weeks. One year later, we were still there.

However, others suffered in that environment far more than we did. It was two years after we had engaged in the spiritual surrender of consecration “To Christ the King Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” We had inner tools for coping with loss and discomfort while others here had far less. Pornchai and I were well aware that many of the men with whom we had been living in that other, kinder place were also relocated. I was impressed to witness, in our first night there, Pornchai going from one eight-man cell to another to make sure our friends were safe and that the strangers now among them were civil. Pornchai had a knack for inspiring civility.

The Cast of This Prison Journal

After just three days there, one of the strangers assigned to our crowded cell with us decided he would ask to move because, as he put it to one of his friends, “Living with MacRae and Moontri was like living with my parents.” This was solely because I told him that he is not going to sell drugs out our cell window. His move came at just the right time. We were able to request that our friend, Chen, move to the now empty bunk in our cell. Speaking very little English, Chen had been thrown in with strangers. On the day I went to his cell to tell him to pack and come with us, it was as though he had been liberated from some other Stephen King horror story.

I live with an odd and often polarized mix of people. Among prisoners, about half become entirely engrossed in the affairs of this world, consuming news — especially bad news — with insatiable interest. The other half seem to live in various degrees of ignorant bliss about all that is going on in the world. They never watch news, read a newspaper, or discuss current events. They play Dungeons and Dragons, poker, and video games. While I was hunched over my typewriter typing “Beyond Ukraine” a few weeks ago, my current roommate had no idea anything at all was going on there.

Just as in the world, there are many evil things that happen in prison. People here cope with them by either blindly accepting evil as a part of the cost of living or they just never even acknowledge evil’s existence at all. These are not good options, nor are they good coping mechanisms. Acknowledging evil while also resisting it with all our might is the first line of defense in spiritual warfare. Many of the men in prison with me never actually embraced evil. They just didn’t see it coming.

Many readers have told me that they shed some tears while reading “Pornchai Moontri: A Night in Bangkok, a Year in Freedom.” Pornchai has often told me of how his appearances in these pages have changed his life. This was summed up in one sentence in his magnificent post: “I began to realize that nearly everyone I meet in Thailand in the coming days will already know about me.”

All the fears that Pornchai had built up for years over his deportation to Thailand 36 years after being taken from there just evaporated because of his presence in Beyond These Stone Walls. I once told him that he must now live like an open book. Exposing the truth of his life to the world could be freeing or binding. The truth of his life in this prison could be a horror story, a bad war movie, or an inspirational drama that people the world over could tune into each week, and what they will see would be entirely up to him. I do not have to tell you that his life became an inspiration for many, including many he left behind here. The evil that was once inflicted on him was gone, and only its traumatic echoes remain.

A few years ago, I began to write about some of the other people who populate this world. Some of their stories became very important, and not least to their subjects. Prisoners who had little hope suddenly responded to the notion that others will read about them, and what they read will be up to them. Some of these stories are beyond inspiring. They are the firsthand accounts of the existence of evil that once permeated their lives, and of actual grace when they chose to confront and resist that evil and turn from it. Their stories are the hard evidence of something Saint Paul wrote:

“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

— Romans 6:1.

Getting Stoned in Prison

My subtitle above does not mean what you might think it means. There is indeed an illicit drug problem in just about every prison, including this one. As long as there is money to be had, risks will be taken and human life will be placed in jeopardy. I recently read that the small state of New Hampshire has the nation’s highest rate of overdose deaths among people ages 15 to 50. This is driven largely by the influx of illegal drugs, especially lethal fentanyl.

But in the headline above, I mean something entirely different. The Gospel for Sunday Mass on April 3rd, the Sunday before Holy Week this year, is the story of the woman caught in adultery and her encounter with Jesus before a crowd standing in judgment and about to stone her (John 8:1-11). You already know that some prisoners are not guilty of the crimes attributed to them, but most are, and most of those have stood where that woman stood before Jesus. When prisoners serve their prison sentence, the judgment of the courts comes to an end, but the judgment of the rest of humanity can go on and on mercilessly.

It should not be this way. Our nation’s expensive, bloated, one-size-fits-all prison system leaves too many men and women beyond the margins of social acceptance. The first two readings this Sunday lend themselves to the mercy of deliverance from the past, not only for ourselves, but for others too.

“Thus says the Lord, who opens a way in the sea and a path through the muddy waters ... Remember not the events of the past; the things of long ago consider not. See, I am doing something new! Do you not perceive it? In the desert I make a way; in the wasteland rivers.”

— Isaiah 43:16-21

“Just one thing: Forgetting what lies behind, but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling in Jesus Christ.”

— Philippians 3:14

When this blog had to transition from its older format to Beyond These Stone Walls in November 2020, we learned that most of our older posts still exist, but must be restored and reformatted. In our “Beyond These Stone Walls Public Library” is a Category entitled, “Prison Journal.” In coming weeks, we will restore and add there some of the posts I have written about the inspiring stories of other prisoners.

But before that happens, I want to add my voice to that of Jesus. Please read our stories armed with mercy and not with stones. That is the Gospel for this week’s Sunday Mass, and it is filled with surprises. We are restoring it so that you may enter Holy Week with hearts open. Please read and share:

“Casting the First Stone: What Jesus Wrote on the Ground”

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Two important invitations from Father Gordon MacRae:

Please join us Beyond These Stone Walls for a Holy Week retreat. The details are at our Special Events page.

Also, thank you for participating with us in the Consecration of Ukraine and Russia on March 25, the Solemnity of the Annunciation. We have given the beautifully written Act of Consecration a permanent home in our Library Category, “Behold Your Mother.”

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You may also like these relevant posts:

The Measure By Which You Measure: Prisoners of a Captive Past

Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being

Cry Freedom! Saint Paul and a Prisoner of the Apocalypse

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner