“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Christians.
Who was Saint Dismas, the penitent criminal, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Salvation.
“All who see me scoff at me. They mock me with parted lips; they wag their heads.”
During Holy Week one year, I wrote “Simon of Cyrene, the Scandal of the Cross, and Some Life Sight News.” It was about the man recruited by Roman soldiers to help carry the Cross of Christ. I have always been fascinated by Simon of Cyrene, but truth be told, I have no doubt that I would react with his same spontaneous revulsion if fate had me walking in his sandals that day past Mount Calvary.
Some BTSW readers might wish for a different version, but I cannot write that I would have heroically thrust the Cross of Christ upon my own back. Please rid yourselves of any such delusion. Like most of you, I have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into just about every grace I have ever endured. The only hero at Calvary was Christ. The only person worth following up that hill — up ANY hill — is Christ. I follow Him with the same burdens and trepidation and thorns in my side as you do. So don’t follow me. Follow Him.
This Holy Week, one of many behind these stone walls, has caused me to use a wider angle lens as I examine the events of that day on Mount Calvary as the Evangelists described them. This year, it is Dismas who stands out. Dismas is the name tradition gives to the man crucified to the right of the Lord, and upon whom is bestowed a dubious title: the “Good Thief.”
As I pondered the plight of Dismas at Calvary, my mind rolled some old footage, an instant replay of the day I was sent to prison — the day I felt the least priestly of all the days of my priesthood.
It was the mocking that was the worst. Upon my arrival at prison after trial late in 1994, I was fingerprinted, photographed, stripped naked, showered, and unceremoniously deloused. I didn’t bother worrying about what the food might be like, or whether I could ever sleep in such a place. I was worried only about being mocked, but there was no escaping it. As I was led from place to place in chains and restraints, my few belongings and bedding stuffed into a plastic trash bag dragged along behind me, I was greeted by a foot-stomping chant of prisoners prepped for my arrival: “Kill the priest! Kill the priest! Kill the priest!” It went on into the night. It was maddening.
It’s odd that I also remember being conscious, on that first day, of the plight of the two prisoners who had the misfortune of being sentenced on the same day I was. They are long gone now, sentenced back then to just a few years in prison. But I remember the walk from the courthouse in Keene, New Hampshire to a prison-bound van, being led in chains and restraints on the “perp-walk” past rolling news cameras. A microphone was shoved in my face: “Did you do it, Father? Are you guilty?”
You may have even witnessed some of that scene as the news footage was recently hauled out of mothballs for a WMUR-TV news clip about my new appeal. Quickly led toward the van back then, I tripped on the first step and started to fall, but the strong hands of two guards on my chains dragged me to my feet again. I climbed into the van, into an empty middle seat, and felt a pang of sorrow for the other two convicted criminals — one in the seat in front of me, and the other behind.
“Just my %¢$#@*& luck!” the one in front scowled as the cameras snapped a few shots through the van windows. I heard a groan from the one behind as he realized he might vicariously make the evening news. “No talking!” barked a guard as the van rolled off for the 90 minute ride to prison. I never saw those two men again, but as we were led through the prison door, the one behind me muttered something barely audible: “Be strong, Father.”
Revolutionary Outlaws
It was the last gesture of consolation I would hear for a long, long time. It was the last time I heard my priesthood referred to with anything but contempt for years to come. Still, to this very day, it is not Christ with whom I identify at Calvary, but Simon of Cyrene. As I wrote in “Simon of Cyrene and the Scandal of the Cross“:
“That man, Simon, is me . . . I have tried to be an Alter Christus, as priesthood requires, but on our shared road to Calvary, I relate far more to Simon of Cyrene. I pick up my own crosses reluctantly, with resentment at first, and I have to walk behind Christ for a long, long time before anything in me compels me to carry willingly what fate has saddled me with . . . I long ago had to settle for emulating Simon of Cyrene, compelled to bear the Cross in Christ’s shadow.”
So though we never hear from Simon of Cyrene again once his deed is done, I’m going to imagine that he remained there. He must have, really. How could he have willingly left? I’m going to imagine that he remained there and heard the exchange between Christ and the criminals crucified to His left and His right, and took comfort in what he heard. I heard Dismas in the young man who whispered “Be strong, Father.” But I heard him with the ears of Simon of Cyrene.
Like a Thief in the Night
Like the Magi I wrote of in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear,” the name tradition gives to the Penitent Thief appears nowhere in Sacred Scripture. Dismas is named in a Fourth Century apocryphal manuscript called the “Acts of Pilate.” The text is similar to, and likely borrowed from, Saint Luke’s Gospel:
“And one of the robbers who were hanged, by name Gestas, said to him: ‘If you are the Christ, free yourself and us.’ And Dismas rebuked him, saying: ‘Do you not even fear God, who is in this condemnation? For we justly and deservedly received these things we endure, but he has done no evil.’”
What the Evangelists tell us of those crucified with Christ is limited. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel (27:38) the two men are simply “thieves.” In Saint Mark’s Gospel (15:27), they are also thieves, and all four Gospels describe their being crucified “one on the left and one on the right” of Jesus. Saint Mark also links them to Barabbas, guilty of murder and insurrection. The Gospel of Saint John does the same, but also identifies Barabbas as a robber. The Greek word used to identify the two thieves crucified with Jesus is a broader term than just “thief.” Its meaning would be more akin to “plunderer,” part of a roving band caught and given a death penalty under Roman law.
Only Saint Luke’s Gospel infers that the two thieves might have been a part of the Way of the Cross in which Saint Luke includes others: Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus’ cross, and some women with whom Jesus spoke along the way. We are left to wonder what the two criminals witnessed, what interaction Simon of Cyrene might have had with them, and what they deduced from Simon being drafted to help carry the Cross of a scourged and vilified Christ.
In all of the Gospel presentations of events at Golgotha, Jesus was mocked. It is likely that he was at first mocked by both men to be crucified with him as the Gospel of St. Mark describes. But Saint Luke carefully portrays the change of heart within Dismas in his own final hour. The sense is that Dismas had no quibble with the Roman justice that had befallen him. It seems no more than what he always expected if caught:
“One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ ”
The Flight into Egypt
The name, “Dismas” comes from the Greek for either “sunset” or “death.” In an unsubstantiated legend that circulated in the Middle Ages, in a document known as the “Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,” this encounter from atop Calvary was not the first Gestas and Dismas had with Jesus. In the legend, they were a part of a band of robbers who held up the Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt after the Magi departed in Saint Matthews Gospel (Matthew 2:13-15).
This legendary encounter in the Egyptian desert is also mentioned by Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom who, having heard the same legend, described Dismas as a desert nomad, guilty of many crimes including the crime of fratricide, the murder of his own brother. This particular part of the legend, as you will see below, may have great symbolic meaning for salvation history.
In the legend, Saint Joseph, warned away from Herod by an angel (Matthew 2:13-15), opted for the danger posed by brigands over the danger posed by Herod’s pursuit. Fleeing with Mary and the child into the desert toward Egypt, they were confronted by a band of robbers led by Gestas and a young Dismas. The Holy Family looked like an unlikely target having fled in a hurry, and with very few possessions. When the robbers searched them, however, they were astonished to find expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh — the Gifts of the Magi. However, in the legend Dismas was deeply affected by the infant, and stopped the robbery by offering a bribe to Gestas. Upon departing, the young Dismas was reported to have said:
“0 most blessed of children, if ever a time should come when I should crave thy mercy, remember me and forget not what has passed this day.”
Paradise Found
The most fascinating part of the exchange between Jesus and Dismas from their respective crosses in Saint Luke’s Gospel is an echo of that legendary exchange in the desert 33 years earlier — or perhaps the other way around:
“‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingly power.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”
The word, “Paradise” used by Saint Luke is the Persian word, “Paradeisos” rarely used in Greek. It appears only three times in the New Testament. The first is that statement of Jesus to Dismas from the Cross in Luke 23:43. The second is in Saint Paul’s description of the place he was taken to momentarily in his conversion experience in Second Corinthians 12:3 — which I described in “The Conversion of Saint Paul and the Cost of Discipleship.” The third is the heavenly paradise that awaits the souls of the just in the Book of Revelation (2:7).
In the Old Testament, the word “Paradeisos” appears only in descriptions of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:8, and in the banishment of Cain after the murder of his brother, Abel:
“Cain left the presence of the Lord and wandered in the Land of Nod, East of Eden.”
Elsewhere, the word appears only in the prophets (Isaiah 51:3 and Ezekiel 36:35) as they foretold a messianic return one day to the blissful conditions of Eden — to the condition restored when God issues a pardon to man.
If the Genesis story of Cain being banished to wander “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” is the symbolic beginning of our human alienation from God — the banishment from Eden marking an end to the State of Grace and Paradise Lost — then the Dismas profession of faith in Christ’s mercy is symbolic of Eden restored — Paradise Regained.
From the Cross, Jesus promised Dismas both a return to spiritual Eden and a restoration of the condition of spiritual adoption that existed before the Fall of Man. It’s easy to see why legends spread by the Church Fathers involved Dismas guilty of the crime of fratricide just as was Cain.
A portion of the cross upon which Dismas is said to have died alongside Christ is preserved at the Church of Santa Croce in Rome. It’s one of the Church’s most treasured relics. Catholic apologist, Jim Blackburn has proposed an intriguing twist on the exchange on the Cross between Christ and Saint Dismas. In “Dismissing the Dismas Case,” an article in the superb Catholic Answers Magazine Jim Blackburn reminded me that the Greek in which Saint Luke’s Gospel was written contains no punctuation. Punctuation had to be added in translation. Traditionally, we understand Christ’s statement to the man on the cross to his right to be:
“Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
The sentence has been used by some non-Catholics (and a few Catholics) to discount a Scriptural basis for Purgatory. How could Purgatory be as necessary as I described it to be in “The Holy Longing” when even a notorious criminal is given immediate admission to Paradise? Ever the insightful thinker, Jim Blackburn proposed a simple replacement of the comma giving the verse an entirely different meaning:
“Truly I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise.”
Whatever the timeline, the essential point could not be clearer. The door to Divine Mercy was opened by the events of that day, and the man crucified to the right of the Lord, by a simple act of faith and repentance and reliance on Divine Mercy, was shown a glimpse of Paradise Regained.
The gift of Paradise Regained left the cross of Dismas on Mount Calvary. It leaves all of our crosses there. Just as Cain set in motion our wandering “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden,” Dismas was given a new view from his cross, a view beyond death, away from the East of Eden, across the Undiscovered Country, toward eternal home.
Saint Dismas, pray for us.
+ + +
Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear
There is a back story to the Magi of Saint Matthew's account of the Birth of Christ, and it is the Gospel for the Epiphany of the Lord.
There’s a back story to the Magi of Saint Matthew’s account of the Birth of Christ, and it is the Gospel for the Epiphany of the Lord.
At Christmas by Fr Gordon MacRae
In early December each year, prisoners here can purchase a 20-lb food package from a vendor. They drop hints to their families, and those without families scrape and save their meager prison pay all year. No one here wants to pass up a chance to purchase food they otherwise won’t see again until next year. Most are practical about it. They skip the candy and cookies to buy more sustaining items like real coffee, and meal alternatives they can save for the worst days in the prison chow hall.
The packages arrived last week, and for days prisoners have been bringing me samples of their culinary creations. They come to my cell door with an endless parade of sandwiches, wraps, and pizzas. I learned long ago that refusing the food leaves a lot of hurt feelings. They not only insist that I eat it, but they insist on staying until I declare that their culinary skill surpasses all others. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas when I have to struggle into my pants in the morning.
There’s a point to these visits. Prisoners tell me about their own back stories, and the prospect of another Christmas in prison. They want to hear that they are not without hope. Most of all, they want to know that Christmas means more than the empty, shallow “holiday season” it has become on TV.
But this morning, my Japanese friend, Koji, stopped by with some coffee he brewed using an old sock. (Trust me, you don’t want the gory details!). Koji handed me a cup — it’s pretty good, actually — and asked, “What can you tell me about the Magi?” That was odd because I’ve been thinking of writing about the Magi for Christmas. I told Koji I’ll let him read this post when finished. Maybe he’ll bring me more coffee made with that old sock of his. Lord, give me the strength to bear my blessings! Anyway, there’s no better place to begin the Magi story than St. Matthew’s own words:
“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.’ When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet:
‘And you, 0 Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people, Israel.’
Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared; and he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.’ When they had heard the king, they went their way; and lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.”
Myth, Midrash, or Both?
This story, as Saint Matthew relates it, is a myth. But don’t get me wrong. That does not mean the story isn’t true. In fact, I firmly believe that it is true. The word, “myth,” coming from the Greek “mythos,” simply means “story,” and makes no judgement on whether a story is historical. Myth is not synonymous with falsehood despite how its more modern meaning has been twisted into such a conclusion. In theology and Biblical studies, myth simply denotes a story imbued with rich theological and symbolic meaning, but that does not mean it’s devoid of historical truth.
Biblical myth is distinguished from legends and “folklore” by the way it offers explanations about the facts of a story. In myth, the explanations stand whether the facts stand or not, and the value of the story does not depend on its historical accuracy. Perhaps the best example is the Creation story of Genesis, Chapter 1. In my post, “A Day Without Yesterday,” the great Belgian physicist, Father Georges Lemaitre, turned modern cosmology on its head with his theory of the Big Bang. For Pope Pius XI, this proof of a universe that begins and ends in history affirmed the elemental truth of Biblical Creation.
When I say that the story of the Magi is true, however, I mean truth in both senses. The understanding the story conveys is the truth. The historical facts of the story are also the truth, and we have no reason to doubt them.
The account of the Magi is also a “midrash.” Midrash is a Hebrew term meaning “interpretation.” It’s a characteristic of many of the reflections in the Aggadah — which in Hebrew means “narrative.” The Aggadah is a collection of Rabbinic reflection and teaching gathered over a thousand years. Midrash is a type of literature from the Aggadah that interprets Biblical texts by linking them together and discerning their hidden meanings.
Like myth, midrash is not a declaration that a Biblical passage is not historical or true just because it contains elements of other Biblical texts. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the Magi story points to many elements in Old Testament Scriptures. Jewish Christians hearing Saint Matthew’s account of the Magi, for example, would connect the Star in the East witnessed by the Magi with the star Balaam (a sort of Magus figure) envisioned arising out of Jacob in a dream-like account described in the Book of Numbers 24:17. Herod’s affront with the idea of a Hebrew King in the Magi account echoes Balaam’s vision as well. Herod is of the Edomite clan. In Balaam’s vision, the star arising out of Jacob is a portent that “Edom shall be dispossessed.” (Numbers 24:18).
The account of wicked King Herod feeling threatened by the life of the infant Jesus recalls clearly the Exodus account of a wicked Pharaoh who, having enslaved the Jews, seeks the life of the infant Moses. And in the Infancy Narrative of Saint Luke’s Gospel, the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth conceiving a child in their old age is clearly an echo of the Genesis story of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac.
In “Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us,” I wrote of how St. Luke drew many midrashic links with the Hebrew Scriptures in his account of the Angelic visit to Mary at the Annunciation. The account of Mary visiting Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea recalls David visiting the very same place to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant as told in 2 Samuel, Chapter 6. Even the story of the future John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb in the presence of Mary is midrashic. In 2 Samuel, David leaps for joy in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant. I find these echoes of the Old Testament to be fascinating, but they don’t leave the story’s historical truth in question, including the Magi story.
I have a modern analogy in my own family. I wrote about my father’s conversion in “What Do John Wayne and Pornchai Moontri Have in Common?” My father’s parents had four children. He grew up with two brothers and a sister. One of his brothers became a priest. A generation later, my father and mother had four children. I also grew up with two brothers and a sister. Both I and my father’s brother who became a priest were the second son in our families. Many of the stories of my own childhood have eerie echoes in my father’s childhood. This is what is meant by midrash.
The Epiphany is depicted in a mural titled “Adoration of the Magi” in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception at Conception Abbey in Conception, MO. Painted by Benedictine monks in the late 1800s.
The Gifts of the Magi
There are elements within our popular understanding of the story of the Magi, however, that history has added over the centuries. For example, nothing in Saint Matthew’s account indicates that the Magi were three in number. The sole hint is in the number of their gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And despite the popular Christmas carol, “We Three Kings,” there is nothing in Saint Matthew’s account to indicate that they were kings. This account became linked to a passage in Isaiah:
“And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising . . . they shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”
And linked as well was a passage about kings bringing tribute in Psalm 72:
“May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts”
Much theological symbolism for the gifts themselves was reflected upon later. Saint Ireneaus held that the Gifts of the Magi signify Christ Incarnate. Gold, a symbol of royalty, signifies Christ the King. Frankincense, used throughout ancient Israel in the worship of God, signifies divinity, and myrrh, an anointing oil for burial, signifies the Passion and death of the Messiah.
Saint Gregory the Great added to this interpretation with the Gifts of the Magi symbolizing our duty toward Christ in our daily lives. Gold signifies Christ’s wisdom and our deference. Frankincense signifies our prayer and adoration of Christ, and myrrh signifies our daily sacrifices as a share in the suffering of Christ. The names of the Magi — Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar — came out of a sixth century legend.
East of Eden
It’s widely held in Catholic scholarship that the Magi represent the first Gentiles to come to worship the Christ. There is one strain of scholarship that makes reference to the fact that they were astrologers who represented the world of magic. Most scholars see the Magi as followers of Zoroaster, an Indo-Iranian prophet who lived 12 centuries before Christ. Throughout the eastern world, followers of Zoroaster dominated religious thought for centuries. And yet there they are, kneeling in the presence of Christ. The symbolism is that as Christ reigns supreme, all other magic goes out of the world and loses its power and authority. It’s a beautiful and powerful image of the universal Kingship of Christ for all time, and the vast change his birth brought to the history of humankind.
I have an additional theory of my own about the hidden meaning of the account of the Magi, but I have been unable to find any reference to it in the work of any Biblical scholar, Catholic or otherwise. So I’m on my own in this wilderness of midrashic symbols. It’s true that the Magi represent all the world beyond Judaism coming into a covenant relationship with God through Christ. But great pains are taken by Saint Matthew to remind us repeatedly that the Magi are coming out of the East — and he capitalized “East.” It seems to me to be intended to designate more than just a compass point. The fact that they came from the East, and saw his star in the East, is repeated by Saint Matthew three times in this brief account.
In one of my posts on These Stone Walls — “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” — I wrote of how both Adam and Eve were banished East of Eden after the Fall of Man (Genesis 3:24). It was both a punishment and a deterrent. God then placed a Cherubim with a flaming sword to the East of Eden to bar Man’s return.
A generation later, after the murder of his brother, Abel, Cain was also banished. Cain “went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the Land of Nod, East of Eden (Genesis 4:14). The “Land of Nod” has no other reference in all of Scripture, and is widely interpreted to have its origin in the Hebrew term, “nad,” which means “to wander.” Cain himself described his fate in just this way:
“From thy face I shall be hidden; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
I count 21 references to an ill wind from the East throughout Sacred Scripture, but not one such reference after the Birth of Christ. An example is this one from the Prophet Isaiah:
“Measure by measure, by exile thou didst contend with them; he removed them with his fierce blast in the day of the east wind.”
For me, the Magi represent also those who have fallen, who have become alienated from God and banished East of Eden. They saw his star there, and followed its light. I am in a place filled with men who lived their entire lives East of Eden, and for them the Magi are a sign of Good News — the very best news. Freedom can be found in only one place: and the way there is the Star of Bethlehem.
Amid the Encircling Gloom
My cell window faces West so my gaze is always out of the East. On this cold and gray December day, the sun is just now setting behind the high prison wall, and glistening upon the spirals of razor wire like tinsel. Its final glimmer of light is just now fading from view. I am reminded of my favorite prayer, a gift from another wise man, Blessed John Henry Newman, and it has become a tradition of sorts as the Sun sets on These Stone Walls at Christmas. I can hear the Magi praying this as they follow that Star out of the East. On my 18th Christmas in prison, this is my prayer for you as well:
“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.”
The readers of These Stone Walls have cast a light into the darkness and isolation of prison this year. It’s a light that illuminates the path from East of Eden, and it is magnified ever so brightly, in my life and in yours, by the Birth of Christ. The darkness can never, ever, ever overcome it.
+ + +
Please share this post!
What do John Wayne and Pornchai Moontri Have In Common?
As Advent begins in the midst of some long-awaited changes and revisions in the Catholic Mass, I have been doing some thinking about the nature of change.
As Advent begins in the midst of some long-awaited changes and revisions in the Catholic Mass, I have been doing some thinking about the nature of change.
In “February Tales,” an early post at Beyond These Stone Walls, I described growing up on the Massachusetts North Shore — the stretch of seacoast just north of Boston. My family had a long tradition of being “Sacrament Catholics.”
I once heard my father joke that he would enter a church only twice in his lifetime, and would be carried both times. I was seven years old, squirming into a hand-me-down white suit for my First Communion when I first heard that excuse for staying home. I didn’t catch on right away that my father was referring to his Baptism and his funeral. I pictured him, a very large man, slung over my mother’s shoulder on his way into church for Sunday Mass, and I laughed.
We were the most nominal of Catholics. Prior to my First Communion at age seven, I was last in a Catholic church at age five for the priesthood ordination of my uncle, the late Father George W. MacRae, a Jesuit and renowned Scripture scholar. My father and “Uncle Winsor,” as we called him, were brothers — just two years apart in age but light years apart in their experience of faith. I was often bewildered, as a boy, at this vast difference between the two brothers.
But my father’s blustering about his abstention from faith eventually collapsed under the weight of his own cross. It was a cross that was partly borne by me as well, and carried in equal measure by every member of my family. By the time I was ten — at the very start of that decade of social upheaval, life in our home had disintegrated. My father’s alcoholism raged beyond control, nearly destroying him and the very bonds of our family. We became children of the city streets as home and family faded away.
I have no doubt that many readers can relate to the story of a home torn asunder by alcoholism, and some day soon I plan to write much more about this cross. But for now I want to write about conversion, so I’ll skip ahead.
The Long and Winding Road Home
As a young teenager, I had a friend whose family attended a small Methodist church. I stayed with them from time to time. They knew I was estranged from my Catholic faith and Church, so one Sunday morning they invited me to theirs. As I sat through the Methodist service, I just felt empty inside. There was something crucial missing. So a week later, I attended Catholic Mass — secretly and alone — with a sense that I was making up for some vague betrayal. At some point sitting in this Mass alone at age 15, I discovered that I was home.
My father wasn’t far behind me. Two years later, when just about everyone we knew had given up any hope for him, my father underwent a radical conversion that changed his very core. He admitted himself to a treatment program, climbed the steep and arduous mountain of recovery, and became our father again after a long, turbulent absence. A high school dropout and machine shop laborer, my father’s transformation was miraculous. He went back to school, completed a college degree, earned his masters degree in social work, and became instrumental in transforming the lives of many other broken men. He also embraced his Catholic faith with love and devotion, and it embraced him in return. That, of course, is all a much longer story for another day.
My father died suddenly at the age of 52 just a few months after my ordination to priesthood in 1982. I remember laying on the floor during the Litany of the Saints at my ordination as I described in “Going My Way,” a Lenten post last year. I was conscious that my father stood on the aisle just a few feet away, and I was struck by the nature of the man whose impact on my life had so miraculously changed. Underneath the millstones of addiction and despair that once plagued him was a singular power that trumped all. It was the sheer courage necessary to be open to the grace of conversion and radical change. The most formative years of my young adulthood and priesthood were spent as a witness to the immensity of that courage. In time, I grew far less scarred by my father’s road to perdition, and far more inspired by his arduous and dogged pursuit of the road back. I have seen other such miracles, and learned long ago to never give up hope for another human being.
The Conversion of the Duke
A year ago this very week, I wrote “Holidays in the Hoosegow: Thanksgiving With Some Not-So-Just Desserts.” In that post, I mentioned that John Wayne is one of my life-long movie heroes and a man I have long admired. But all that I really ever knew of him was through the roles he played in great westerns like “The Searchers,” “The Comancheros,” “Rio Bravo,” and my all-time favorite historical war epic, “The Longest Day.”
In his lifetime, John Wayne was awarded three Oscars and the Congressional Gold Medal. After his death from cancer in 1979, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But, for me, the most monumental and courageous of all of John Wayne’s achievements was his 1978 conversion to the Catholic faith.
Not many in Hollywood escape the life it promotes, and John Wayne was no exception. The best part of this story is that it was first told by Father Matthew Muñoz, a priest of the Diocese of Orange, California, and John Wayne’s grandson.
Early in his film career in 1933, John Wayne married Josephine Saenz, a devout Catholic who had an enormous influence on his life. They gave birth to four children, the youngest of whom, Melinda, was the mother of Father Matthew Muñoz. John Wayne and Josephine Saenz civilly divorced in 1945 as Hollywood absorbed more and more of the life and values of its denizens.
But Josephine never ceased to pray for John Wayne and his conversion, and she never married again until after his death. In 1978, a year before John Wayne died, her prayer was answered and he was received into the Catholic Church. His conversion came late in his life, but John Wayne stood before Hollywood and declared that the secular Hollywood portrayal of the Catholic Church and faith is a lie, and the truth is to be found in conversion.
That conversion had many repercussions. Not least among them was the depth to which it inspired John Wayne’s 14-year old grandson, Matthew, who today presents the story of his grandfather’s conversion as one of the proudest events of his life and the beginning of his vocation as a priest.
If John Wayne had lived to see what his conversion inspired, I imagine that he, too, would have stood on the aisle, a monument to the courage of conversion, as Matthew lay prostrate on the Cathedral floor praying the Litany of the Saints at priesthood ordination. The courage of conversion is John Wayne’s most enduring legacy.
Pornchai Moontri Takes a Road Less Traveled
The Japanese Catholic novelist, Shusaku Endo, wrote a novel entitled Silence (Monumenta Nipponica, 1969), a devastating historical account of the cost of discipleship. It’s a story of 17th Century Catholic priests who faced torture and torment for spreading the Gospel in Japan. The great Catholic writer, Graham Greene, wrote that Silence is “in my opinion, one of the finest novels of our time.”
Silence is the story of Father Sebastian Rodriguez, one of those priests, and the story is told through a series of his letters. Perhaps the most troubling part of the book was the courage of Father Rodriguez, a courage difficult to relate to in our world. Because of the fear of capture and torture, and the martyrdom of every priest who went before him, Father Rodriguez had to arrive in Japan for the first time by rowing a small boat alone in the pitch blackness of night from the comfort and safety of a Spanish ship to an isolated Japanese beach in 1638 — just 18 years after the Puritan Pilgrims landed the Mayflower at Squanto’s Pawtuxet, half a world away as I describe in “The True Story of Thanksgiving.”
In Japan, however, Father Rodriguez was a pilgrim alone. Choosing to be left on a Japanese beach in the middle of the night, he had no idea where he was, where he would go, or how he would survive. He had only the clothes on his back, and a small traveler’s pouch containing food for a day. I cannot fathom such courage. I don’t know that I could match it if it came down to it.
But I witness it every single day. Most of our readers are very familiar with “Pornchai’s Story,” and with his conversion to Catholicism on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. Most know the struggles and special challenges he has faced as I wrote in “Pornchai Moontri, Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”
But the greatest challenge of Pornchai’s life is yet to come. In two years he will have served twenty-two years in prison — more than half his life, and half the original sentence of forty-five years imposed when he was 18 years old. In two years time, if many elements fall into place and he can find legal counsel, Pornchai will have an opportunity to seek some commutation of his remaining sentence based on rehabilitation and other factors.
It is a sort of Catch-22, however. Pornchai could then see freedom at the age of forty for the first time since he was a teen, but it will require entering a world entirely foreign to him. On the day Pornchai leaves prison — whether it is in two years or ten or twenty — he will be immediately taken into custody under the authority of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, flown to Bangkok, Thailand, and left there alone. It is a daunting, sometimes very frightening future, and I am a witness to the anxiety it evokes.
For every long term prisoner, there comes a point in which prison itself is the known world and freedom is a foreign land. Pornchai has spent more than half his life in prison.
Even I, after seventeen years here, sometimes find myself at the tipping point, that precipice in which a prisoner cannot readily define which feels more like the undiscovered country — remaining in prison or trying to be free. I had a dream one night in which I had won my freedom, but entered a hostile world and Church in which I was a pariah, living alone and homeless in a rented room in hiding, pursued by mobs of angry Catholics. I know well the anxious fears of all the prisons of men.
Pornchai was brought to the United States against his will at the age of eleven. That story is told in deeply moving prose by Pornchai himself in “Pornchai’s Story.” I think we became friends because by the strangeness of grace I knew only too well the experience of having the very foundations of life and family and all security fall out from under me. Pornchai spoke a language that I understood clearly. The transformation of pain and sorrow into the experience of grace is the realm of God, and enduring it to one day lead another out of darkness is a great gift. In the end, who can ever say what is good and what is bad? It is not suffering that is our problem, but rather what we do with it when it finds us.
But what Pornchai faces in the future is daunting. With no opportunity for schooling as an abandoned child in Thailand, he never learned to read and write in Thai and hasn’t heard the Thai language spoken since he was eleven. He remembers little of Thai culture, has no prospects to support himself, no home there, no contacts, and no solace at all. Like Father Rodriguez in Silence, Pornchai will be dropped off in a foreign country, and left to fend for himself with no preparation at all beyond what he can scrape up from behind prison walls in another continent. Welcome to the new America!
Pornchai’s options are limited. He can try to bring about this trauma sooner by seeking commutation of his sentence at an age at which he may still somehow build a life in Thailand. Or he can remain quietly in prison another decade or more, postponing this transition until he is much older, with fewer chances for employment, but perhaps can find connections in Thailand.
These are not great choices. “Pornchai’s Story” got the attention of the Thai government and the Cardinal Archbishop of Bangkok two years ago, but the Thai government has been in chaos since, and the Archbishop has retired. All overtures to both since 2009 have been met by silence.
So in the midst of all this dismal foreboding, and in the face of a future entirely unknown, and perhaps even bleak, Pornchai Moontri became a Catholic. He embraced a faith practiced by less than one percent of the people who will one day be his countrymen again, and in so doing, he piled alienation upon alienation.
And yet this man who has no earthly reason to trust anything to fate, trusts faith itself. I have never met a man more determined to live the faith he has professed than Pornchai Moontri. In the darkness and aloneness of a prison cell night after night for the last two of his twenty years in prison, Pornchai stares down the anxiety of uncertainty, struggles for reasons to believe, and finds them.
I am at a loss for more concrete sources of hope for Pornchai. But like Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, whom I have quoted so often, I believe that “I am a link in a chain; a bond of connection between persons.”
Someone out there holds good news for Pornchai — something he can cling to in hope. I await it with as much patience as I can summon. Pornchai awaits it with a singular courage — the courage of conversion that seeks the spring of hope in the winter of despair.
Please share this post!
Be Wary of Crusaders! The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well
Some of Sigmund Freud’s map of the human psyche has been debunked in modern psychology, but Freud also knew well that some moral crusaders doth protesteth too much.
Some of Sigmund Freud’s map of the human psyche has been debunked in modern psychology, but Freud also knew well that some moral crusaders doth protesteth too much.
I have debated this post in my mind for days, arguing with myself whether I really wanted to write it. I have always dreaded offending people, and there’s just no way I’m going to be able to write this without someone feeling offended. But I also believe that simply not ever offending anyone is not a worthy goal for either a writer or a priest. I once asked a priest why he decided not to preach on the sanctity of life on “Respect Life Sunday.” He responded that he just doesn’t like offending anyone and someone is always offended when he preaches a pro-life homily. Sometimes, not offending anyone means avoiding ever speaking the truth.
It takes a degree of courage to point out the truth to ears that would rather not hear it. One newer reader of this blog has a recent example. Chris Tressa discovered Beyond These Stone Walls because Spero News reprints some of my posts. Spero News is sort of the online frontier. Like many sites, civil discourse takes a back seat to free flowing reader opinion. So Spero News posts pretty much anything anyone wants to say.
We can’t really fault Spero News for this when standards for civil discourse don’t apply on many Catholic sites as well. Some of the comments posted on just about any subject in the Catholic Church by readers of the National Catholic Reporter demonstrate the steep decline in online Catholic civility.
Spero News seems to have a lot of readers, but not a lot of comments. The relatively rare comments on my articles there are often printed and mailed to me. Some are very positive, but some are just outright attacks. I’m never offended, however. Invariably, the attacks are turned around by other readers and often backfire on their authors — who never identify themselves, by the way.
Sometimes this is even humorous. One writer identifying herself as an unnamed SNAP leader wrote in a comment that she finds it “despicable and deplorable” that an accused and convicted Catholic priest is given a voice online at a site called Beyond These Stone Walls. The sole comment posted in response made me laugh out loud:
“I clicked on that link and just spent several hours reading Beyond These Stone Walls. I found it to be riveting and uplifting. Thank you for telling us of this wonderful site.”
I don’t think that’s the response the SNAP writer hoped for, but Chris Tressa learned of BTSW in just that way. A man who leaves negative comments about priests throughout the Catholic online world posted a really toxic one on the Spero News reprint of one of my recent posts there. It was obvious that he didn’t actually read that post before spouting off, because he demonstrated in graphic prose the very points I set out to make. What was really of interest to me, however, was Chris Tressa’s comment in response:
“In one brief comment, the writer above used the term ‘pedophile priest’ five times, along with multiple variations of ‘child rape’ — all in just a few sentences of text. Who does that? To paraphrase Shakespeare, ‘The man doth protesteth too much, me thinks!’ This sounds to me like classic reaction formation. Is it time to visit the shrink?”
From an analysis of typical comments in Catholic media, it might appear that a lot of people have ongoing and extremely negative views about Catholic priests. That may not be the case. What’s really going on is that a relatively small number of crusaders are “seeding” the Internet with their comments. If you take the time — and have the stomach for it — to track comments throughout the Catholic online world, and at mainstream media articles about Catholic scandal, you’ll see the same few screen names over and over.
They seem to be everywhere, and Chris Tressa ran into one of them. They are on a very personal crusade, but what makes this so personal for them? As Chris Tressa asked, “Who does that?” Is it because they are victims of sexual abuse? Perhaps so, but I know MANY adult victims of sexual abuse who are not crusaders. This prison and prisons everywhere are filled with men who were seriously victimized as children. A number of the readers and supporters of Beyond These Stone Walls are survivors of childhood sexual abuse who resent the venom being spewed in their names.
But it’s also a fact that many of the most vocal crusaders at SNAP, Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), and Bishop-Accountability are not victims of sexual abuse. So what’s behind the nasty crusade of vilification and suspicion?
SNAP leaders offered to provide protesters with fake “Holy Childhood photos” to hold up for news cameras.
Classic Defense Mechanisms
We got a hint of the answer in the case of Dr. Steve Taylor, a Louisiana psychiatrist and member of SNAP who has been one of the more vocal advocates for an end to all civil rights for accused priests. Dr. Taylor has argued loudly for an end to any state respect for the seal of the Catholic confessional. Dr. Taylor was also the founder of a local chapter of SNAP. “We have faces now,” he bitterly exclaimed to legislators and news cameras while SNAP members held up the contrived “Holy Childhood photos” described in “SNAP Exposed” by Catholic League President Bill Donohue.
Over the last three years, Dr. Steve Taylor has lost his medical license to practice psychiatry. He is now serving a sentence in a federal prison convicted on multiple charges of possessing child pornography.
Before he was sentenced to prison, SNAP founder Barbara Blaine and anti-Catholic author Jason Berry both pleaded for leniency for Dr. Taylor citing that his “problem” does not undo or overshadow all the good he has done. I had this solidly in mind when SNAP leaders vilified Bishop Robert Finn, charged with a misdemeanor for not reporting a priest fast enough when the priest was allegedly discovered with child pornography.
The crusade against accused priests that Dr. Steve Taylor was on has many of the elements of classic reaction formation, a concept first proposed by the father of modern psychiatry, Sigmund Freud. His descriptions of human ego defense mechanisms and hysteria included this entirely unconscious phenomenon which he described as an attempt to cover up something unacceptable in oneself by adopting a stance in opposition to it. It is the formation of a reaction to an encounter with self. When something disdained is discovered there, defense mechanisms like reaction formation can develop into an elaborate ruse in which the thing feared in oneself becomes the thing attacked in others.
There are many modern examples. Congressman Mark Foley railed in Congress for bills targeting those who would sexually exploit young people. In 2006, Congressman Foley resigned after he was confronted with sending sexually explicit e-mail and text messages to teenage male pages working for the U.S. House of Representatives.
The televangelist scandals of the 1980’s involving famed TV preachers Jimmy Swaggart, PTL’s Jim Baker, and others also come to mind. Week after week, they railed against the licentiousness of the modern era while caught in their own sexual and financial scandals. Former New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer mercilessly prosecuted officials caught in prostitution and other crimes before he was himself arrested in a prostitution sting. In the 1970’s, Covenant House Founder, Father Bruce Ritter testified before Congress to expose what he called the rampant exploitation of homeless youth on America’s streets only to leave the country when several of the very young people he claimed to be saving accused him of sexual abuse.
Debbie Nathan on “Sybil” and Hysteria
Much of what Sigmund Freud brought to the field of psychology and its understanding of hysteria has been debunked. One of the latest debunkings — and one of the finest — is a book by Debbie Nathan entitled Sybil Exposed (Free Press, 2011). Debbie Nathan serves on the advisory board of the National Center for Reason and Justice. (For full disclosure, I should tell you that this heroic organization endorses Beyond These Stone Walls and assists in sponsorship of my own defense).
Debbie Nathan is also the author (with Michael Snedeker) of an earlier landmark book, Satan’s Silence, which exposed the great fraud behind the ritual sex abuse stories of the 1980’s. Debbie Nathan continues this theme in Sybil Exposed, a riveting account of the fraud perpetrated in the story of Shirley Mason, known to the world as “Sybil.” Debbie Nathan here exposes the truth behind the world’s most famous case of multiple personality ever brought to print and the silver screen.
Sybil, aided by an ambitious psychiatrist, claimed to have sixteen separate personalities brought on by a childhood traumatized by sexual and physical abuse. But Debbie Nathan exposed that it was all an elaborate hoax, a hoax that sold six million copies of Flora Rheta Schreiber’s 1973 book, Sybil. It turns out that neither the abuse nor the multiple personalities were real. In Sybil Exposed, Debbie Nathan has performed a great service to victims of the “hysteria prosecution” craze.
The story of Sybil was also a fraud on the American courts. The two decades from 1980 to 2000 saw multiple cases of “victims” claiming to have trauma-induced repressed and recovered memories of sexual abuse. Many men — including some Catholic priests — went to prison on those fraudulent claims. Some are still in prison. Writer Ryan MacDonald wrote of how the “psychological trauma” fraud played out in my own case in “Psychotherapists Helped Send an Innocent Priest to Prison.”
But “reaction formation,” one of Freud’s signature theories about hysteria and ego defense mechanisms, has survived all the debunking. One of the most advanced modern psychology studies demonstrating the power of reaction formation (Adams. Wright & Lohr, 1996) was on the topic of homophobia. It pointed out the difference between a moral belief that society should not promote homosexuality as a social good, and a more personal belief that society should persecute homosexuals. They are not one and the same. The 1996 study found that people who cross the line between a moral opposition and a moral crusade are often “protesting too much” a tendency in themselves that they find unacceptable.
Reaction formation also influences our views about what constitutes prejudice. Political or religious opposition to same-sex marriage, for example, is often — and wrongly — interpreted as active persecution and outright bigotry. I have known gay rights activists who interpret any opposition to their political goals and social agenda as religious persecution and a denial of their civil rights. This is the second way reaction formation is manifested. People who see all disagreement as judgment, condemnation, and persecution may really be passing judgment on themselves. I have read repeatedly that the Catholic Church “condemns gay people.” This is simply untrue.
Reaction Formation against Prejudice
American society since the 1960s has been especially conscious of any appearance of racial bias or prejudice, and has widely endorsed strong norms condemning prejudice. If Americans are led to believe that they may hold unacceptable prejudiced beliefs, or if they even believe that others are seeing them in this light, “they may respond with exaggerated displays of not being prejudiced” (Adams, Wright and Lohr, 1996).
The debate that surrounded same-sex marriage may have been an example of that response. When concerns were raised that same-sex marriage laws are an example of legislation and social reform by judicial fiat instead of by a democratic process, gay rights activists typically, and wrongly, dismissed the objection as bigotry. The media has given strength to that interpretation by underwriting it, and many Americans have withdrawn or silenced their opposition to same-sex marriage because of a politically correct fear of appearing prejudiced.
A striking example of how the fear of appearing prejudiced creates reaction formation is something that occurred in the Episcopal church in New Hampshire. The World Wide Anglican Communion has been in a state of civil war since the 2003 election of Bishop Gene Robinson. At the time he was nominated as bishop, he was a divorced, openly-gay man in a relationship with another man. This has played out in New Hampshire almost perfectly parallel to the Catholic sexual abuse crisis, but never the two shall meet.
And yet I have no doubt whatsoever that if Gene Robinson was not a gay man — if he was simply a heterosexual divorcee living with another woman, he would never have been a candidate for bishop in any U.S. Episcopalian diocese. This seems an example of a group so wishing to demonstrate its lack of prejudice that a new standard for its episcopacy was created. Bishop Robinson was not elected bishop in spite of being openly gay, but because of it. The global Anglican Communion has been torn asunder by this one example of reaction formation. Yet I have read repeatedly that one of the goals of “reform” groups like Voice Of the Faithful is to foster an American Catholic church that mirrors the Episcopal church and its “sensitivity” to politically correct American values. Thanks, but no thanks.
In New Hampshire, Bishop Gene Robinson campaigned for the passage of a same-sex marriage law. Once it was passed, he and his partner were among the first to enter a same-sex marriage in this state. Then he checked himself into rehab. Then he got divorced. Finally, having torn the entire Worldwide Anglican Communion asunder, he retired.
This same politically correct fear of appearing prejudiced has also radically altered the U.S. Bishops’ collective response to the Catholic sex abuse scandal. When the John Jay College of Criminal Justice was commissioned to study the causes and contexts, both the researchers and the bishops were left with a conundrum. The results were clear that this was not a crisis involving pedophilia as it is clinically defined — though that did exist on a much smaller scale. The problem was predominantly, and clearly, claims of homosexual predation of adolescent and young adult males during the sexual revolution of the 1960s to 1980s. There is no greater evidence of the power of reaction formation than when an entire institution would prefer the term “pedophile scandal” to “homosexual scandal” even when the facts say otherwise.
Truth and honesty are truly golden things, and most of you, in your own heart of hearts, know them when you see them. We are in a culture, however, in which the views of many are manipulated by the agendas of a few. But sometimes the few are themselves manipulated by the quirks of their own psyches. Be wary of crusaders. Freud and Shakespeare both knew the truth about them. Sometimes they doth protesteth too much.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us
The Gospel of Saint Luke opens with a news flash from the Archangel Gabriel for Zechariah the priest, and Mary — Theotokos — the new Ark of the Covenant.
Prisoners, including me, have no access at all to the online world. Though Wednesday is post day on Beyond These Stone Walls, I usually don’t get to see my finished posts until the following Saturday when printed copies arrive in the mail. So I was surprised one Saturday night when some prisoners where I live asked if they could read my posts. Then a few from other units asked for them in the prison library where I work.
Some titles became popular just by word of mouth. The third most often requested BTSW post in the library is “A Day Without Yesterday,” my post about Father Georges Lemaitre and Albert Einstein. The second most requested is “Does Stephen Hawking Sacrifice God on the Altar of Science?” Prisoners love the science/religion debate. But by far the most popular BTSW post is “Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed.” And as a result of it, dozens of prisoners have asked me for copies of the prayer to Saint Michael. I’m told it’s being put up on cell walls all over the prison.
Remember “Jack Bauer Lost The Unit On Caprica,” my post about my favorite TV shows? In the otherwise vast wasteland of American television, we’re overdue for some angelic drama. For five years in the 1980s, Michael Landon and Victor French mediated the sordid details of the human condition in Highway to Heaven. The series was created and produced by Michael Landon who thought TV audiences deserved a reminder of the value of faith, hope, and mercy as we face the gritty task of living. Highway to Heaven ended in 1989, but lived on in re-runs for another decade. Then in the 1990s, Della Reese and Roma Downey portrayed “Tess and Monica,” angelic mediators in Touched by an Angel which also produced a decade of re-runs.
Spiritual Battle on a Cosmic Scale
The angels of TV-land usually worked out solutions to the drama of being human within each episode’s allotted sixty minutes. That’s not so with the angels of Scripture. Most came not with a quick fix to human madness, but with a message for coping, for giving hope, for assuring a believer, or, in the case of the Angel of the Annunciation, for announcing some really big news on a cosmic scale — like salvation! What the angels of Scripture do and say has deep theological symbolism and significance, and in trying times interest in angels seems to thrive. The Archangel Gabriel dominates the Nativity Story of Saint Luke’s Gospel, but who is he and what is the meaning of his message?
We first meet Gabriel five centuries before the Birth of Christ in the Book of Daniel. The Hebrew name, “Gabri’El” has two meanings: “God is my strength,” and “God is my warrior.” As revealed in “Angelic Justice,” the Hebrew name Micha-El means “Who is like God?” The symbolic meaning of these names is portrayed vividly as Gabriel relates to Daniel the cosmic struggle in which he and Michael are engaged:
“Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to understand, and humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me. So I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to befall your people in the latter days . . . But I will tell you what is inscribed in the Book of Truth: there is none who contends at my side against these except Michael.”
— Daniel 10:12-14, 21
In the Talmud, the body of rabbinic teaching, Gabriel is understood to be one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham to begin salvation history, and later led Abraham out of the fire into which Nimrod cast him. The Talmud also attributes to Gabriel the rescue of Lot from Sodom. In Christian apocalyptic tradition, Gabriel is the “Prince of Fire” who will prevail in battle over Leviathan at the end of days. Centuries after the Canon of Old and New Testament Scripture was defined, Gabriel appears also in the Qu’ran as a noble messenger.
In Jewish folklore, Gabriel was in the role of best man at the marriage of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I found that a strange idea at first, but then it dawned on me: Who else were they going to ask? In later rabbinic Judaism, Gabriel watches over man at night during sleep, so he is invoked in the bedside “Shema” which observant Jews must recite at bedtime in a benediction called the Keri’at Shema al ha_Mitah:
“In the name of the God of Israel, may Michael be on my right hand, Gabriel on my left hand, Uriel before me, behind me Raphael, and above my head, the Divine Presence. Blessed is he who places webs of sleep upon my eyes and brings slumber to my eyelids. May it be your will to lay me down and awaken me in peace. Blessed are You, God, who illuminates the entire world with his glory.”
In a well written article in the Advent 2010 issue of Word Among Us (www.WAU.org) – “Gabriel, the Original Advent Angel,” Louise Perrotta described Gabriel’s central message to Daniel:
“History is not a haphazard series of events. Whatever the dark headlines — terrorist attacks, natural disasters, economic upheavals — we’re in the hands of a loving and all-powerful God. Earthly regimes will rise and fall, and good people will suffer. But . . . at an hour no one knows, God will bring evil to an end and establish His eternal kingdom.”
East of Eden
The Book of Tobit identifies the Archangel Raphael as one of seven angels who stand in the Presence of God. Scripture and the Hebrew Apocryphal books identify four by name: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. The other three are not named for us. In rabbinic tradition, these four named angels stand by the Celestial Throne of God at the four compass points, and Gabriel stands to God’s left. From our perspective, this places Gabriel to the East of God, a position of great theological significance for the fall and redemption of man.
In a previous post, “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden,” I described the symbolism of “East of Eden,” a title made famous by the great American writer, John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for it in 1962. I don’t mean to brag (well, maybe a little!) but a now-retired English professor at a very prestigious U.S. prep school left a comment on “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” comparing it to Steinbeck’s work. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Archangel Gabriel, but I’ve been waiting for a subtle chance to mention it again! (ahem!) But seriously, in the Genesis account of the fall of man, Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden to the East (Genesis 3:24). It was both a punishment and a deterrent when they disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:
“Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good from evil; and now, lest he put out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever,’ therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out, and to the east of the Garden of Eden he placed a Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every which way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”
— Gen.3: 22-24
A generation later, after the murder of his brother Abel, Cain too “went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, East of Eden.” (Genesis 4:16). The land of Nod seems to take its name from the Hebrew “nad” which means “to wander,” and Cain described his fate in just that way: “from thy face I shall be hidden; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:14). The entire subsequent history of Israel is the history of that wandering East of Eden. I wonder if it is also just coincidence that the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the only source of the story of the Magi, has the Magi seeing the Star of Bethlehem “in the east” and following it out of the east.
An Immaculate Reception
In rabbinic lore, Gabriel stands in the Presence of God to the left of God’s throne, a position of great significance for his role in the Annunciation to Mary. Gabriel thus stands in God’s Presence to the East, and from that perspective in St. Luke’s Nativity Story, Gabriel brings tidings of comfort and joy to a waiting world in spiritual exile East of Eden.
The Archangel’s first appearance is to Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth. Zechariah is told that he and his wife are about to become the parents of John the Baptist. The announcement does not sink in easily because, like Abraham and Sarah at the beginning of salvation history, they are rather on in years. Zechariah is about to burn incense in the temple, as close to the Holy of Holies a human being can get, when the archangel Gabriel appears with news:
“Fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife, Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John . . . and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God and will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah . . .’”
— Luke 1:12-15
This news isn’t easily accepted by Zechariah, a man of deep spiritual awareness revered for his access to the Holy of Holies and his connection to God. Zechariah doubts the message, and questions the messenger. It would be a mistake to read the Archangel Gabriel’s response in a casual tone. Hear it with thunder in the background and the Temple’s stone floor trembling slightly under Zechariah’s feet:
“I am Gabriel who stand in the Presence of God . . . and behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things come to pass.”
I’ve always felt great sympathy for Zechariah. I imagined him having to make an urgent visit to the Temple men’s room after this, followed by the shock of being unable to intone the Temple prayers.
Zechariah was accustomed to great deference from people of faith, and now he is scared speechless. I, too, would have asked for proof. For a cynic, and especially a sometimes arrogant one, good news is not easily taken at face value.
Then six months later “Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.” (Luke 1: 26-27). This encounter was far different from the previous one, and it opens with what has become one of the most common prayers of popular devotion.
Gabriel said, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” His words became the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that and centuries of “sensus fidelium,” the consensus of the faithful who revere her as “Theotokos,” the God-Bearer. Mary, like Zechariah, also questions Gabriel about the astonishing news. “How can this be since I have not known man?” There is none of the thunderous rebuke given to Zechariah, however. Saint Luke intends to place Gabriel in the presence of his greater, a position from which even the Archangel demonstrates great reverence and deference.
It has been a point of contention with non-Catholics and dissenters for centuries, but the matter seems so clear. There’s a difference between worship and reverence, and what the Church bears for Mary is the deepest form of reverence. It’s a reverence that came naturally even to the Archangel Gabriel who sees himself as being in her presence rather than the other way around. God and God alone is worshiped, but the reverence bestowed upon Mary was found in only one other place on Earth. That place was the Ark of the Covenant, in Hebrew, the “Aron Al-Berith,” the Holy of Holies which housed the Tablets of the Old Covenant. It was described in 1 Kings 8: 1-11, but the story of Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary draws on elements from the Second Book of Samuel.
These elements are drawn by Saint Luke as he describes Mary’s haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea. In 2 Samuel 6:2, David visits this very same place to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant. Upon Mary’s entry into Elizabeth’s room in Saint Luke’s account, the unborn John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. This is reminiscent of David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant in 2 Samuel 6:16.
For readers “with eyes to see and ears to hear,” Saint Luke presents an account of God entering into human history in terms quite familiar to the old friends of God. God himself expressed in the Genesis account of the fall of man that man has attempted to “become like one of us” through disobedience. Now the reverse has occurred. God has become one of us to lead us out of the East, and off the path to eternal darkness and death.
In Advent, and especially today the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we honor with the deepest reverence Mary, Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the new Ark of the Covenant. Mary, whose response to the Archangel Gabriel was simple assent:
“Let it be done to me according to your word.”
“Then the Dawn from On High broke upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet on the way to peace.”
— Luke 1:78-79
+ + +
Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post in honor of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. You may also like these related posts:
The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God
Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed
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.”