“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
Michael, Gabriel, Raphael: Allies in Spiritual Battle
On September 29, the Church honors the three named angels of Sacred Scripture, the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and on October 2, our Guardian Angels.
On September 29, the Church honors the three named angels of Sacred Scripture, the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and on October 2, our Guardian Angels.
September 29, 2021
“Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”
— Psalm 91:9-11
The September issue of “Give Us This Day,” a monthly prayer and liturgy guide for Catholics published by Liturgical Press, has a small tribute to the great Japanese novelist, Shusaku Endo. He died on the Feast of Michaelmas, September 29, 1996, at the age of 73.
Shusaku Endo was a Catholic convert best known for his acclaimed novel, Silence, which I read in my early years in prison. It had an enormous impact on me. It is a small book, about 200 pages, first published in Japanese in 1969. The focus of much of Endo’s writing reflects his struggles, as a translator described it, “with the anguish of faith and the mercy of God.”
I read it at a time when I, too, was struggling with both. It is sometimes less of a struggle, and therefore a temptation, to simply not believe. There is a scene in this powerful book that left me spellbound. The story is about a Portuguese Jesuit priest, Father Sebastian Rodrigues, who entered Japan in the 16th Century at the height of Christian persecution at the hands of the Shogun. That is the Japanese name for the military dictatorship ruling Japan from 1192 to 1867. The name is a contraction of the Japanese, “seii tai shogun” (“barbarian-hunting warriors”)
Father Rodrigues was among the “barbarians” hunted by the Shogun military, the samurai, under a constant threat of public torture and death. The scene that made me shudder most was a description of how Father Rodrigues entered Japan. Foreign ships were barred from its ports so the ship that bore him secretly approached a remote part of the 16th Century Japanese coast in the dark of night. The priest swam to shore in the pitch blackness with nothing but the clothes on his back and no idea of where, or to whom, he would go. The fear of the dark unknown and the courage it took to overcome it was vivid and staggering.
Darkness is itself a character in this highly symbolic book. Father Rodrigues spent a good deal of time in a brutal Shogun prison in a constant state of darkness and near starvation. At one point, in an intense scene of fear and despair, he asked — and it is from this that the book takes its title — “Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent?”
I have asked that same question many times in the dark of prison. For the character of Father Rodrigues, however, the silence of God was finally broken. He was tortured by the Shogun in order to force him into publicly trampling on the “fumie,” the Japanese term for a sacred icon. It was a crucifix. Despite the torture, Father Rodrigues refused and endured. Then he was forced to watch while 30 Christian converts were lined up one by one to take his place for torture unless he trampled on the crucifix. An inner voice came to him:
“Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know the pain of your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross!”
— Silence, p.171
Father Rodrigues trampled upon the crucifix.
Spiritual Battle
Upon first reading, that excerpt may seem a betrayal. However, digging a little deeper into the words that came to the priest unveils a profound soteriology, the theology of salvation. The priest bore his own suffering, but by his actions he redirected the suffering destined for his converts onto Christ. “It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”
I was surprised to learn that Shusaku Endo left this life leaving behind the life of his fictional tormented priest, Sebastian Rodrigues — on the Feast of Michaelmas. That was the old English name for the feast day of what was once called Saint Michael and All Angels on September 29. In the Catholic calendar it is now the Feast Day of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the only angels in the Bible whose personal names are revealed.
The September 29 date was established in the Sixth Century when on that same date the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels was dedicated on the Salarian Way in Rome. The feast day was called “Michaelmas,” meaning “the Mass of St. Michael.” In British custom, it was one of the “quarter days,” traditionally marked by the election of magistrates and the beginning of the legal and university terms. This may have been because — or the cause of — the designation of Saint Michael as the Patron of Justice.
It was on another date — the feast day of the Guardian Angels on October 2 — that I discovered in prison that the silence of God is but an illusion. God has spoken volumes throughout all of human history, and His megaphones are Scripture, Tradition, and the ongoing revelation of grace in our lives. Justice is also not just an elusive and singular event, but a cosmic guarantee, and Saint Michael is its manifestation.
This is a difficult concept that I will try to convey to whatever extent I understand it myself. Scripture suggests to us that the conflicts we face and the struggles we endure in our lives on Earth have an unseen spiritual dimension. The Catholic Biblical scholar, Scott Hahn expressed this in his terrific little book, Angels and Saints: A Biblical Guide to Friendship with God's Holy Ones (Image Books, 2014):
“St. Michael is mighty among the angels. The Book of Revelation (12:7ff) depicts him as the commander of the heavenly host of angels as they battle Satan and the rebellious spirits .... We know how the battle ends, and we know Michael is victorious (12:10). Still, the war will rage on until the final consummation of history.”
— Angels and Saints, p. 84
From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have invoked Michael as a guardian, patron, and leader in spiritual warfare. Our troubles and struggles in this world are not always simple anxieties over material discomforts, painful relationships, or the tragedies that occur in our lives. They are also manifestations of spiritual battle, and should be seen and resisted as such. People of deep faith recognize the spiritual battles within themselves and their environments, and rely on faith and spiritual allies to defend against them.
I have suggested before that priests especially are targets of spiritual warfare, inundated by constant temptation in a culture locked in spiritual combat between Heaven and hell. I have cited a Holy Week post of mine that exemplifies the most active goal of Satan: to prevent our reception of the Eucharist and undermine its truth. Every time I write about this, it is followed by days or weeks of spiritual struggle and painful events all around me. This is clearly a story “someone” does not want exposed. The post in which I first exposed this is “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”
The Art of War Requires Allies
For 23 years, I had been living in the Hancock Building in this prison complex. For the first six, though I had done nothing to warrant it, I was forced to live in a place with eight men per cell. Words cannot express the assault on the psyche and spirit that life in such a constant environment produced. Just about everyone living there was given an opportunity to move to better housing within a year. I was there for six years.
In that same six years, my friend, Pornchai Moontri, was in the neighboring state of Maine living in the spiritual madness of endless solitary confinement. We lived with polar opposite prison anxieties, and each was in its own way devastating.
In 2000, I was finally moved to a saner place with two prisoners per cell. In 2006, Pornchai Moontri arrived. For the next 15 years we lived in the same cell. Then, in 2016, both of us, along with 94 others, were forced in a mass migration back into the place with eight prisoners to a cell. It was because of a development in the prison that had nothing to do with us. We were promised a return to a better housing situation in a matter of weeks. One year later, we were still there.
In mid-July, 2017, I was summoned from my job as the legal clerk in the prison law library and handed a few trash bags. After 23 years in the dreaded Hancock Building, I was given one hour to unravel from it and move to another unit on the opposite end of this prison complex. I was told that Pornchai would be joining me there on the next day. After my arrival, another officer told me that Pornchai was supposed to come with me, but some unseen hand changed that order and he was to be sent somewhere else.
The next day, from a top floor stairwell outside the law library where I work, I saw Pornchai in the distance looking forlorn as he wheeled a cart in the opposite direction from where I now lived. I thought I would never see him again. It was a crushing blow for us both. I knew he would be facing deportation in a few years and now would face it alone. I cannot make sense of what happened next.
The outcome of this spiritual battle was stunning, but became so only when I sought help from our allies in spiritual warfare. I knew in my heart that I was called to bring some justice and hope to the burdens Pornchai carried. I described them in “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” Three weeks after our parting, I returned from work one day to find the person living in the bunk above me gone, and in his place was Pornchai Moontri. This never happens here. We were shocked, perplexed and overjoyed.
There were later signs that our allies summoned other allies behind the scenes who had come to know of us. On the day we were reunited, they were in just the right place at just the right time saying just the right things to just the right people. It was the most unlikely symphony of actual grace. Incredible!
This computer generated image depicts the constellation Triangulum and galaxy RD1, 12.2 light-years billion from Earth, formed in the early period of the Universe after the Big Bang.
3:00 AM in a Dark Prison Cell
I’m sorry if this gets a little weird. Just before all these clouds gathered on the horizon and our chaotic upheavals took place, I had a mysterious dream. It was early in the morning of October 2, 2016, the day the Church honors our Guardian Angels. Had I ever really believed in them? I do now.
I found myself at 3:00 AM standing and staring into a small stretch of sky that I could see beyond my barred cell window. There was an older man standing with me. I could see Pornchai fast asleep in his upper bunk. The older man was very familiar and someone I felt I implicitly trusted, but I cannot remember what he looked like. That part of the dream was erased when I awakened. He pointed to the sky and asked, “What do you see?”
I said, “I only see the prison lights.” “Look beyond the prison lights,” said the mysterious man. Then in the dream my vision suddenly changed. I was able to see far, far away into the vast darkness, and there in the center of my field of view I saw a constellation, a triangle of three stars. Within the triangle, the stars were joined by streams of glowing light. “It looks like neon,” I said stupidly in the dream. Then the companion said, “Michael dwells within the light.”
It seemed that I stood for a long time, mesmerized by this vision. Then I awakened in my bunk. It was very dark. I got up and walked to the window wondering whether it was a dream or real. I saw only prison lights, but I have since learned to look beyond them. I could not forget the simple statement that “Michael dwells within the light.” Later that morning, I called a friend to search an astronomy database to see if such a triangular constellation even exists. This was what was sent to me:
1998 — The Most Distant Object Yet Discovered: Astronomers have stumbled upon the most distant galaxy ever found, an object 12.2 billion light-years from Earth. It was announced on March 12, 1998. A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. So a light-year is a distance of 5.6 trillion miles. The distance of this object in miles is that times 12.2 billion. [Good luck with the math!]
A team of scientists led by astrophysicist Arjun Dey of John Hopkins University, was analyzing the light from a distant galaxy inside the Constellation Triangulum when they noticed the spectral signature of a faint and far more distant galaxy at its center. By taking longer exposures with the Keck-II telescope they were able to identify the new galaxy which is 90 million light-years farther away than the previous most distant galaxy discovered.
Based on knowledge that the universe is approximately 13 billion years old, “RD1” was formed soon after the Big Bang gave birth to the universe. By studying it, astronomers hope to learn how and when the earliest galaxies formed. Little is currently known about these early galaxies. A report on the discovery was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This, of course, rocked my world. You might recall from our recent post, “Fr. Georges Lemaitre, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang,” by priest and physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, that the Church and science are on the same page about the origin of the Universe in an instant, “out of nothing.”
In the Fifth Century, Saint Augustine proposed that in the Genesis story of creation, God’s declaration of “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) was the moment the angels were created. In the next verse (Genesis 1:4), God separated the light from the darkness. For Augustine, this was the moment the fallen angels were driven from Heaven by Saint Michael in the battle of the Heavenly Hosts.
This all left me with a profound sense that our stories are not just our own, nor are our struggles or pain. We are a collective part of an immense fabric God has woven toward a specific end. And we have allies who connect with us within the threads. I have written about three of them who now appear together in our BTSW Library under the Category, “Spiritual Warfare.” I also link to them here.
Angelic Justice: St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed
St Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us
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Most glorious prince of the heavenly armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness. Corne to the assistance of us whom God has created to His likeness, and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. Holy Church venerates you as her guardian and protector. To you the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. Pray therefore the God of peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer hold us captive and do injury to the Church. Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us. Take hold of the dragon, the ancient serpent which is the devil and Satan. Bind him and cast him into the abyss so that he may no longer seduce the nations.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, we beseech you to intercede for us at the throne of Divine Mercy. As you announced the mystery of the Incarnation to Mary, so through your prayers may we receive strength of faith and courage of spirit and thus find favor with God and redemption through Christ our Lord. May we sing with the angels and saints in Heaven forever the praise of God our Savior through your Annunciation: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
O Raphael the Archangel, lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us. Raphael, Angel of happy meeting, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for. May all our movements be guided by your light and transfigured with your joy. Angel, guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Hirn whose unveiled face you are privileged to gaze. Lonely and tired, crushed in spirit by the separations and sorrows of life, we feel the need of calling to you and pleading for the protection of your wings so we may not be as strangers in the province of joy. Remember the weak, you who are so strong, you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder in a land that is always at peace, bright with the resplendent glory of God.
Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse
The community of believers that left behind the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran awaited an apocalyptic battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.
The Angel Michael Binding Satan (“He Cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and Shut him up”), 1805 drawing by William Blake.
The community of believers that left behind the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran awaited an apocalyptic battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.
My annual Holy Week post this year was somewhat unusual. It profiled an announcement from the government of Israel about a new archeological discovery in the general region of Qumran in modern day Jordan. The discovery includes 2,000 year-old remains of the Bar Kochba rebellion against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem about 100 years after the Crucifixion of Jesus. My post was, “The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage.”
It told the story of Bar Kochba and a revolt by residents of Jerusalem against the secular suppression of their religious beliefs by Roman Emperor Hadrian in the Second Century AD. The story has many parallels with current events and especially with the growing “cancel culture” disdain for Catholics, our faith, and our public witness of that faith.
Several readers have since asked me to write about the Dead Sea Scrolls, their place in Salvation History, and their connection to Sacred Scripture. Understanding the mindset of those who created and left behind the Dead Sea Scrolls can inspire and empower our own struggle against forces in our own time seeking to eradicate and silence our religious convictions.
First, a little geography. It’s ironic that I am typing this post on my 68th birthday. In the 16 years Pornchai Moontri was here with me, he organized an annual birthday acknowledgment among prisoners I knew. Part of its ritual was the unveiling of a birthday card by a local inmate-artist. The cards were always insulting, but hilarious. One of them declared, “When Father G was born, the Dead Sea was only sick!” One of the other cards was about Latin being my first language. Hmmph!
Anyway, regarding the Dead Sea, Pornchai was not so far off the mark, but its geography is very interesting. It is the lowest inland body of water on Earth. Its surface is 1,290 feet below sea level, and it reaches a depth of 1,300 feet. It is fed by the Jordan River and several smaller streams. The Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18) have long been thought to lie under the waters of the Dead Sea’s southern end.
The term, “Dead Sea” is mentioned nowhere in Scripture. It was known as the Salt Sea in Genesis (14:3) and Deuteronomy (3:37). The Prophet Ezekiel called it the Eastern Sea. The Roman historian Josephus called it the Asphalt Sea. Owing to evaporation, its salt concentration is the highest of any body of water on Earth. Neither animal nor plant life can live in it or around it. But in Biblical times in the valley created by the Dead Sea, there were several settlements such as Qumran and Masada.
In 1947, quite by accident, scrolls were discovered in ancient jars in a cave near the Dead Sea by two nomadic Bedouin shepherds who sold them to antiquities dealers. The writings made their way to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. To the amazement of the Judeo-Christian world, the scrolls contained intact Hebrew and Aramaic books of the Bible composed between 250 BC and 70 AD, the latter being the date of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple mentioned in my post linked above.
In 1956, multiple excavations in multiple caves at the site yielded some 800 manuscripts containing complete scrolls and thousands of fragments of virtually every book of the Hebrew Bible. Some ancient apocryphal and Deuterocanonical texts were also discovered and I will write more about these below. A decades-long scholarly translation of the discoveries was set in motion. One of the translators was my late uncle, Jesuit Father George W. MacRae, a renowned Biblical scholar and expert in ancient Semitic languages and texts at Harvard University and the Institute Biblique in Jerusalem.
The Essenes: The Community behind the Scrolls
After decades of excavation and historical analysis, scholars have settled on the identity and origin of the group that created and preserved the scrolls. They arose in the years after the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BC. Hellenism — Greek civilization — spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean region after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Jerusalem, the center of Jewish thought, culture and religion, experienced a wave similar to the progressive “cancel culture” movement of today. The elite among the aristocracy of Jerusalem fostered a strong movement toward Hellenism, and the replacement of Judaism with Greek traditions.
The majority of the Jews in Jerusalem were conservative and resisted this movement. Most, however, did not have the voice and the influence of the left-leaning liberal elite. Signs of rebellion and civil unrest gave the newly installed king of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, the excuse he needed to suppress conservative thought and practices among the Jews. He did this by demoralizing them. In 168 BC, his army plundered the Temple and its treasury. They suppressed Jewish worship and the sacred Books of the Law, the Torah.
The final straw came with the “Abomination of Desolation” as described in the Book of Daniel (9:27). Antiochus took the Temple, removed the Torah, and replaced it with an altar to the mythological Greek god, Zeus. This triggered a revolution by Judas Maccabeas and his family which became the central story of the First Book of Maccabees. In 165 BC, the Maccabees led by Judas forcefully retook the Temple, deposed the statue of Zeus, and restored the sanctuary. They held it for eight days while awaiting reinforcements. This is the origin of the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah.
The two predominant religious sects in Jerusalem at that time, the Pharisees and Sadducees, were both tolerant at best, and at worst accommodating, to the Hellenist conquerors just as they would be to Caesar nearly two centuries later. I wrote of their plot in “The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’ .”
To those who have been paying attention to recent trends in our own time and culture, this should all have a ring of the familiar. Just as with the revolt of the Maccabees, resistance is not at all futile. So resist — with fidelity as your sword and Divine Mercy as your shield — the Abomination of Desolation that is being handed to us by the “woke” elite around us. Many have the spiritual depth of mud puddles.
Sorry for the editorial. By 150 BC, the accommodations of the Pharisees and Sadducees toward the wave of Hellenistic culture resulted in the emergence of a third religious identity in Israel, that of the mysterious Essenes. Jews returning from exile in Babylon heard of the successful revolt of the Maccabees and were inspired by it. Their communal reaction was to focus on fidelity to the Covenant. They came to be known by history as Essenes — Hebrew for “Pious Ones.”
The Essenes are not mentioned by name in Sacred Scripture. This was possibly due to the quiet and secret nature of their rebellion. The historian, Pliny the Elder, mentions them as having emerged as a community on the Western shore of the Dead Sea at a place that, by his description, could be none other than Khirbet Qumran. Philo and Josephus, two other historians of the period, describe the Essenes in more detail and their descriptions correspond seamlessly to what is now known of the record they left behind: the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Dead Sea Hosts a Living Faith
The Essenes lived as a structured community believing that over Israel’s entire history, God had prepared for this Community of the New Covenant. The Prophet Habakkuk wrote in this same period that for all those who observe the Law among the Jews, God will deliver from judgment because of their suffering and because of their faith in a Holy One. Habukkuk identifies their time as the final time, but now prolonged according to the mysterious plan of God. This was also a time when expectations of a Messiah and life beyond death became prominent themes in Israel.
In the decades after the Maccabean revolt that restored the Jerusalem Temple after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes, the concept of an apocalypse spread widely throughout Judaism. The prophetic witness of the Book of Daniel, composed at about the same time the Essenes formed, was highly influential. This influence continued well into the early Christian era.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls brought to light the existence of the Essene sect whose way of life was heavily influenced by apocalyptic ideas as a reaction to what they saw as the secular infringement upon their Jewish, and later Jewish-Christian, faith. These ideas included an emphasis on exploration of the heavenly mysteries and a sense of participation in the angelic realm. Their commitment to fidelity and a community of faith was to prepare them for an epic final battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness — a battle that raged in both the spiritual realm and the Earthly one.
The Essenes had an influence that reflected far beyond their separatist community hidden for twenty centuries in Qumran on the Western shore of the Dead Sea. Their emphasis on apocalyptic ideas came to be widely accepted. This included a belief in resurrection from the dead and eternal life, a belief that was embraced by the Pharisees and gradually entered the mainstream of Jewish faith by the time of Jesus. The argument could be made that this development was in preparation for the time of Jesus.
It is now widely believed among scholars that the Essenes had a connection with John the Baptist. In the Dead Sea Scrolls about their own community, they described themselves in words identical to those ascribed to John the Baptist in each of the Gospels (see Luke 4:18-19). Both were citing Isaiah 40:3, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
It also appears that the Essenes had an influence on the Gospel of John, the last of the four to come into written form around 90 AD. It was once believed that this Gospel was heavily influenced by Hellenistic philosophical ideas. The Dead Sea Scrolls made clear that John’s Gospel is solidly rooted in Jewish thought and traditions faithful to the Covenant, the Law and the Prophets.
The apocalyptic traditions of the Essenes were also influenced by the Book of Enoch, a Second Century BC work considered by Jewish scholars as a Deuterocanonical text. “Deuterocanonical” is a Scriptural term derived from Greek meaning “Secondary Canon.” Enoch and some other books considered to be deuterocanonical were accepted in the Jewish Canon of Scripture well into the time of Jesus until about 90 AD. After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple — a cataclysmic event for Judaism and one predicted by Jesus — the apocalyptic ideas of Enoch diminished.
Michael Contends With the Devil
Other books considered to be outside the Canon of Hebrew Scripture but later accepted in the Catholic Canon were Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, and the Book of Tobit which was analyzed here recently in “Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri.”
The Book of Enoch is especially interesting because it had a wide influence on the Essenes — and therefore is also prominent among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Enoch also had an influence on some early Christian writings of Jude, Barnabas, and Irenaeus. Among the Christian Patriarchs, Tertullian regarded it as Scripture while Augustine and Jerome saw it as apocryphal, but influential. In the New Testament Letter of Jude (Jude 9) the Apostle refers to a story that appeared nowhere else but the apocryphal book, The Assumption of Moses, and in references in the Book of Enoch. He wrote as though this account was highly familiar to both Jews and Jewish Christians:
“When the Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him [which would have been the purview only of God] but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.’”
The Letter of Jude included a reference to this story from an apocryphal book without explanation. This implies that the story was well known among the Jews of this period. In the story, Moses died in the desert without ever entering the Promised Land. Satan tried to take the body of Moses but the Archangel Michael fought him and won. Michael then escorted the physical body of Moses to Heaven. In the Hebrew Scriptures, only one other human being was taken into Heaven for eternity. It was Elijah. It is for this very reason that Moses and Elijah could appear with Jesus in the Gospel account of the Transfiguration (see Luke 9:28ff) where they represent the Law and the Prophets, the two pillars of Jewish tradition.
It is possible that the Essenes latched upon the Book of Enoch to preserve it. Though composed in their time (the Second Century BC) it is named for the Enoch of Genesis, father of Methuselah. Here is the Genesis account of Enoch: At the age of 65,
“Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years ... thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.”
Enoch appears, by adoption through the line of Joseph, in the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 3:37).
It was not lost on the writers of the Book of Enoch — or on the Essenes — that the number of his years was also the number of days in a single year. The Book of Enoch explores the Genesis reference to Enoch being taken bodily into heaven for 300 years, and is filled with visions of the cosmos, of angelic tours of the heavenly realm, of the abode of the dead awaiting redemption, and of a pre-existent Son of Man. It is likely that the Essenes sought to preserve it because it was Israel’s first example of a developed apocalyptic faith and the expectation of resurrection.
All of this apocalyptic tradition — and its call to arm for battle in spiritual warfare between light and a growing darkness — entered both Judaism and Christianity as a result of elitist secular values and their infringement upon our lives of faith. The Essenes were short lived. They died out along with the Jerusalem Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. That their legacy emerged into our world by “accident” 2,000 years later is a gift to our time.
And perhaps there is more of this gift to come. The apocalyptic message of Daniel, also influential to the Essenes, hints at books that are shut up until the end of time:
“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation ... but at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the Earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt ... But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end.”
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Writing from prison is difficult, and has become even more so in this time of pandemic. I rely on the postal service to mail my weekly post for scanning, and I am unable to make a photocopy so I mail the only copy I have. If there is a delay (there have been two late arrivals in the last four weeks) I have no way to inform readers.
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Please also share this post, and these related posts that appear herein:
The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’
Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri
and one I didn’t mention, but should have:
Free at Last Thanks to God and You!
The following is our first guest post by Pornchai Moontri in Thailand with a message of thanks and hope for our readers Beyond These Stone Walls.
Left to right: Pornchai Moontri, Yela Smit, Father John Le, SVD, and behind them the one who brought them together.
The following is our first guest post by Pornchai Moontri in Thailand with a message of thanks and hope for our readers Beyond These Stone Walls.
Introduction by Father Gordon MacRae : I will be forever in debt to our readers who have opened their minds and hearts to the plight of my friend, Pornchai Max Moontri. The task now ahead of him is immense. It was an ordeal getting Pornchai out of prison. Now we face the task of getting prison out of Pornchai. He needs the help and prayers of all of us to conquer this adjustment.
If you have read Pornchai's traumatic history best captured in “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri” — then you know that the last real home he knew was at age 11 before he was removed from Thailand. Fleeing from a nightmare existence in Bangor, Maine, he became a homeless teenager and then, at age 18, a prisoner.
For the last 29 years, his entire world consisted of a prison cell and a 300-yard walk to a woodshop where he became a proficient craftsman. Now he is dropped into the middle of Bangkok, Thailand. The adjustment ahead is immense.
Sensing his anxiety in a recent telephone conversation, I asked Pornchai what he is feeling and experiencing. What he said in response nearly brought me to tears. He said, “People have to understand that the only home I have ever had was in a prison cell with you.”
I choked on those words. In one sense, it is a testament to grace. Only Divine Mercy could make a prison cell feel like a home. But now Pornchai has the daunting challenge of leaving the traumas and trials of the past behind and living life in the light of Divine Mercy, a light that has captured him — has captured us both — in the great adventure of faith and hope.
I asked Pornchai to write candidly about this turning of the tide in his life. These are his words:
A Letter from Pornchai
To My Dear Friends Beyond These Stone Walls: I am at a loss for words, but I will try my best to tell you about where I am right now, and how I got here. A couple weeks ago, my friend, Father G, wrote about my return to Thailand after being away for 36 years. His Post was “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” It made me laugh in parts, and it also made me cry.
Father G left something out. This is something that I told him about in a phone call right after my first night in hotel quarantine solitary confinement. I have to first say that it was a lot nicer than my last stay in solitary confinement which lasted seven long years. Then I was sent to another prison where I ended up in a cell with Father G.
Sixteen years have passed since then. The story of all that happened in those years is filled, as Father G says, with pain and suffering but also with triumph. He says that he feels sad about my leaving, but more than anything, he says he feels “triumphant.” I feel that too, but I also feel deep gratitude. Both of those are sort of new to me.
I told Father G last week that as I lay on my bed in my first night in Bangkok on February 9 after 30 years in prison and a 25-hour flight to Bangkok, I was exhausted in every way you could think of, but I could not sleep. I was overwhelmed with many emotions. All I could think about was where I would be right now if I never met Father G.
There were so many “what-ifs” raging through my mind that night. What if Father G had never been sent to prison? What if he took the easy way out with the plea deal they tried to con him into 27 years ago? We would have never met. What if I was sent to some other state besides New Hampshire? What if Father G and I never ended up in the same place? What if he never started writing to the world Beyond These Stone Walls? What if all of you never even heard of me? What if Father G had been a weaker man? What if he moved away after all my efforts to block anyone from ever entering my life? If any one of those things happened, I know today, I would be lost forever.
Every one of these questions, and many more were answered in advance by God. My head was spinning that night as I thought of all the times in the last 16 years when I was turning down one road only to find Father G pointing me toward another. Prison also brought many low points in our story that could fill these pages and depress anyone reading them. That is the nature of prison, and 30 years of it means 30 years of low points.
Prison is a humiliating, empty, meaningless existence, but Father G and I changed that. As I lay sleepless in bed pondering my freedom in my first night in Bangkok, only the high points filled my mind. There are so many of them, too many to tell you about in a single post. You already know about many of them, but I will try to tell you again about the ones that changed my life the most.
The Sacrifice of Fatherhood
I will always remember the first time I walked into Father G’s cell before we became roommates. The first thing I saw was the mirror. There was a strange card with a balding man dressed half as a priest and half as a prisoner. I asked Father G, “Is this you?” That’s when I was introduced to Saint Maximilian Kolbe who became the source of how we lived as prisoners.
When Father G and I became roommates, I was not able to trust anyone. My life’s experiences imposed that on me. I would always be in my upper bunk so I could see anyone coming in and could get to them before they got to me. Life in homelessness on the streets followed by life in prison does this to you.
Once a week, late on Sunday nights after all the prisoner counts and the lights went out, Father G had this weird ritual. I would pretend to be asleep and would watch with one eye open. What on Earth is this strange guy doing? In a corner of the concrete countertop in our cell, he would set up a little book light, some books, and put something around his neck. Then he would take a round piece of bread and a few drops of something and hold them up before eating them.
So one day I asked him about this and he said he was offering Mass. Why? I asked him. He said that it is the one time and place where Heaven touches us. I asked him if I could also do it and he said, “Only if you agree to be the lector.” So Father G told me all about the Mass and I would from then on stay awake to join him. I would do the Mass readings as well. Without my knowing it, profound changes began to take shape inside of me.
Also in 2007, I was visited by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement who told me that I would be having a court hearing that could end with my deportation to Thailand. I was summoned to a place where video hearings are held in the prison. A Judge Shapiro told me that I am ordered deported to Thailand at the end of my sentence. I had nothing in Thailand, and no one. As Father G once wrote, I had no future, no hope, and no God. There was only Father G who never wavered.
Beyond These Stone Walls
And there were times when we became separated. Prison is set up to always demonstrate that we are powerless over our lives. We were sometimes pawns in what Father G described as “spiritual warfare.” Sometimes the agendas of others were imposed on us. One time, some unknown prison official added a note to Father G’s file saying that he has a history of violence. It was not at all true, but the note sat there for six years before some official spotted it and decided I should be moved away from him.
Such things are never reversed in prison, but he asked me to trust in God. I was forced to live with a transgender man while some gangster with a real history of violence was moved in with Father G. I prayed. Within 24 hours, it was exposed as a big mistake and I was moved back with Father G. Every time this sort of thing happened, and we were separated, it was reversed in just a few days. I began to feel that we had an invisible shield around us. Father G told me that our Patron Saints are our allies in spiritual warfare. I went from doubting this to very much believing it. I saw this with my own eyes.
When I was told that I must be deported to Thailand at the end of my sentence, it was hard for me to find any hope. I told Father G that in my own mind I had what I called “Plan B.” I thought my only option was to make sure that I never left prison. It was all I knew and I could not imagine another existence. Father G asked me to set “Plan B” aside because another plan will come along to take its place. He said, “We will just have to build a bridge to Thailand.” “Yeah, Right!” I thought. How are we going to do this from inside a prison cell? “Get real!”
Then one day in summer of 2009, Father G came into our cell after talking with someone on the telephone. He told me that someone asked him to write on a weekly basis for a blog from prison. I was sent to prison in 1992 and Father G in 1994. Neither of us knew what a blog was. He said it would be a sort of prison journal and people around the world would read it.
Father G found a British poem that he liked called “Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make.” He said we need a name for this blog so I suggested “These Stone Walls” so that’s what we called it until I left in September. Then it became “Beyond These Stone Walls.” Father G would sit at his typewriter on a Saturday morning with no idea what to write, then he would type all afternoon and mail his posts to Father George David Byers for scanning.
We could never see the site, but we got a monthly report which was a total mystery to us. In the first month we had 40 readers. In the next month, four times that, then month after month it turned into many thousands in many countries. We could not figure this out. In my writing class, I wrote a poem about his constant “tap-tap-tap” in our cell every Saturday. Here it is:
“My roommate is a rabid writer.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
He types until my mind winds tighter.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
He never has an unpublished thought.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
He types and types til my nerves are naught.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
My roommate’s also a real good friend,
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
And stays that way to the bitter end.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
And we all like the result, you see,
Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
Cuz some of what he types is ’bout me!”
TAP, tap. Tap, TAP, tap. Tap, TAP.”
Our Summons to Divine Mercy
From here on, my life began to change with what I once thought was just my own hard work. Not so. Today I see a powerful grace at work in that cell. I did not have a name for it then, but I do now. It’s called Divine Mercy. I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
In the time to follow, I earned my high school diploma with top honors. Then I earned two continuing education diplomas from the Stratford Career Institute in psychology and social work, and excelled in theology courses from Catholic Distance University. I became proficient in woodworking and model shipbuilding. You can see some of my work at “Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood.”
I never had much in life to brag about except maybe for one thing. Despite all the darkness, when I finally saw some light I walked toward it. I decided to become Catholic. Father G never even mentioned this to me. It was just the sheer force of grace. To honor him, I chose his birthday (April 9) as the date for my conversion, but the prison chaplain, a Catholic deacon, asked me to postpone it until the next day. It was Divine Mercy Sunday, something that would become the very center of my life.
Everything changed. Marian Helper Editor Felix Carroll read our blog (yes, it’s now “our” blog!) and he contacted me for an interview. He included my conversion story in his now famous book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions. You can read the chapter about me at “Pornchai Moontri: Mercy Behind Those Stone Walls.”
The book made its way to Thailand, and now, so have I. The bridge that I once thought was impossible was built right before my very eyes. I thank you, my friends, for I would not be here without you. It was your reading and sharing these writings around the world that made this story possible. You have been the instruments of a miracle.
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A Post Script from Father Gordon MacRae: I have been able to talk with Pornchai daily since his arrival in Thailand. This has helped much to ease him into this new chapter in his story. It is an immense task to go from 30 years in prison to a foreign land.
I have deeply felt gratitude to Yela Smit, Co-Chair of Divine Mercy Thailand, and Father John Le, SVD, from the Society of the Divine Word. Father John and his community have offered sanctuary to Pornchai to help in this transition. It is a great gift to which I have pledged some monthly support. Want to help? See how at our SPECIAL EVENTS page.
You may also want to read and share the posts referenced herein:
Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam
Please share this post!
St. Maximilian Kolbe Led Us into the Heart of Mary
A new battle in spiritual warfare; a new catastrophe behind these stone walls. Hope was at the brink as a Patron Saint spoke to broken hearts: “Behold your Mother!”
A new battle in spiritual warfare; a new catastrophe behind these stone walls. Hope was at the brink as a Patron Saint spoke to broken hearts: “Behold your Mother!”
“We fly to thy protection O holy Mother of God. Despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us from all danger, O ever glorious and blessed Virgin.Sub Tuum Praesiduum, 250 A.D”
I usually try to shield readers from the darker realities of prison, but in 2016 I wrote a rare post entitled “Hebrews 13:3: Writing Just This Side of the Gates of Hell.” I presumed wrongly that most readers would not want to know about what really happens in the shadowy background behind These Stone Walls, but that post turned out to be among the most read and shared of the year. The wildly popular site, SpiritDaily.com featured that post, and sent readers to it by the thousands.
Of all the posts that I thought might get Spirit Daily’s attention that one came as a total surprise. It was an eye-opener for many about just how bad a few bad days in prison can be. We lived in another place then, under far more trying circumstances. Violence and treachery were daily events there, and the constant vigilance needed to cope with them took a mental and spiritual toll.
We were delivered from that place two years ago. I had been confined there for 23 years, and my friend, Pornchai Moontri was there for twelve years after having spent thirteen years in another prison, including seven in that prison’s solitary confinement. I described the relative freedom of the place to which we were moved, and our arduous path to get there, in “Pornchai Moontri at a Crossroads Behind These Stone Walls.”
We hoped this new place would be free of the drug culture and the violence and shady deals it spawns, but this is still prison. There has been less of it, for sure, but it is always lurking in the background. Complicating this, I was warned recently by a spiritually astute reader who told me of a troubling dream. In it, I became a target of the Evil One and the snares with which he engages in spiritual warfare.
There was a time when I may not have taken such a dream seriously. That time has long since passed. To tell you the story that I must convey to you now requires that I include our most recent round of spiritual battle that took us once again into darkness. Brace yourselves, for this account brought us to the very brink of ruin.
On Saturday, July 20, 2019, at 8:30 PM, Pornchai Moontri walked out of our cell, as he does every night at that time, for the trek outside and down eight flights of stairs for med-call. At that time, prisoners line up in the dark to enter an office two at a time for prescribed medications. You may recall that Pornchai takes meds at night to treat PTSD and to inhibit nightmares. But they could not prevent the nightmare about to unfold.
It was 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Concord, New Hampshire that night. The frayed nerves of an already unstable balance among prisoners had begun to unravel. I was on a telephone call on my GTL tablet up in our cell while Pornchai waited patiently in line for his medications down below. Fifteen minutes after he left the cell in which I now write this, someone walked in and handed me a scribbled note with four ominous words: “Pornchai is being lugged.”
The Truth Will Set You Free … Maybe
“Being lugged” is prison-speak for being taken away in restraints to solitary confinement. If you know of Pornchai and his history, this had shocking reverberations. I quickly ended my call and went down below to find out what I could — which was not much. All I heard was a collection of muddled stories and conflicting accounts about a quick but brutal outburst of violence.
The initial story — the one told first and loudest — is too often the one that prevails. That story was that Pornchai violently assaulted two prisoners, sending one to the hospital. I was told that Pornchai may never be back. Two hours later, at 10:30 PM, officers showed up in our cell with bags. They asked me to pack all of Pornchai’s belongings and bring them down to the office for inventory — a sure sign that he may not be returning.
I cannot convey in words what that night was like. After thirteen years as Pornchai’s roommate — thirteen years of pulling him, in his own words, “out of a deep dark pit” and rebuilding a shattered life — all was wiped out in an instant. I was determined, however, to find out the real story and get at the truth. But in prison, “truth” is often clouded by dark agendas, gang ties, and identity politics at their worst.
Sunday brought another day of 100-degree heat. After a sleepless night pondering what could have happened, I approached the Unit Sergeant at 7:00 AM. I knew that if he filled the empty bunk in my cell, as would usually happen, then Pornchai could never return. There was a lot at stake. Many had just labored for years to bring about the elusive restorative justice that Australian attorney Clare Farr described in these pages: “When Justice Came to Pornchai Moontri, Mercy Followed.”
I asked the Unit Sergeant if he would wait two days to reassign Pornchai’s bunk until we could discover exactly what took place. He said he would leave the bunk empty until Wednesday — three days away — while he investigates the story told by the two “victims.” Fortunately, he and other dedicated prison staff members did not immediately buy the story as told. Their knowledge and experience of Pornchai did not support what they were first told.
Meanwhile, over the next three days, Pornchai languished in intense heat and sleepless solitary confinement. He was unable to communicate or to learn anything at all. He kept running what happened through his mind, wondering what he could have done differently. As the hours in solitary stretched interminably, his hope began to fray.
The immensity of loss began to weigh heavily as he fought against despair. This was the setback of all setbacks for him. He knew and trusted that I would be working on it, but he also knew that prison imposes grave limitations. He began to pray, asking his Patron Saint, Maximilian Kolbe, for guidance and the preservation of hope. As time wore on, however, darkness enveloped him.
Pornchai could not know that the real story slowly unfolded as several more reliable witnesses were summoned to give statements. Then staff had the tedious job of reviewing camera footage and other evidence to corroborate them. This is what was learned:
As Pornchai stood in line that night, just as his turn to enter the door to retrieve his medications was coming up, two prisoners rushed up on either side of him and cut into the line in front of him. He politely asked them to go to the end of the line, telling them that this is unfair to him and to all the prisoners waiting in line. The two then turned on him in hostile confrontation.
Not knowing Pornchai at all, one claimed to be an “ex Golden Gloves boxer” and then threatened Pornchai to stay out of their way. The second wasn’t waiting for a reply. He delivered two violent blows to Pornchai’s face. In a split second, Pornchai’s instincts for self-defense — and they are formidable — kicked in. The man who delivered the blows was delivered to the ground while “Mr. Golden Gloves” ran away.
It turned out that the two of them had devised a plan to attempt to retrieve and sell their prescribed drugs to help pay off their mounting debts for contraband Street drugs. It’s a process common in prison — or at least attempting it is common. Their plan required that they provide cover for each other to distract the person dispensing the meds.
They would then tuck the medication capsule into a cheek, and then pretend they swallowed it only to retrieve it for sale once out of view of security staff. Carrying out this plan meant having to present themselves for meds at the same time, and that meant cutting in line.
Now Comes a Patron Saint
The man who delivered the one-two punch into Pornchai’s face was taken to a hospital where he was found to have multiple injuries. As is protocol for such events in prison, the last man standing was presumed to be the aggressor and was taken away in restraints for a stint in solitary confinement. “Mr Golden Gloves” ran to his cell where he concocted a story about the out-of-control Asian who violently attacked them unprovoked. The truth slowly unfolded.
I commend the professionalism of officers here who did not jump to conclusions. It turned out that most of the real assailant’s injuries were the result of multiple other fights that he had been in. This is the stock in trade of the illicit drug scene in prison. But even after all of this became known by Monday night, I was still being told that Pornchai would not be returning.
So on that night, I did the only thing left to do. The one item of Pornchai’s that I had not packed, but held onto for safekeeping, was the St. Maximilian Rosary made for him by TSW reader Kathleen Riney in Texas. So once again facing a sleepless night, I spent it in prayer for Pornchai, asking his namesake, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, for his intercession.
As he always does, he reminded me early on Tuesday morning that I had neglected something. As I awoke at 5:00 AM after just an hour or two of fitful sleep, my first thought was that I should pray the Memorare. I imagined Saint Maximilian himself praying that same prayer in his final hours on the morning of August 14, 1941, when he did not starve to death fast enough to suit his captors.
“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 by this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen.”
As you know, Saint Maximilian was in that cell dying because he chose to sacrifice himself for the life of another prisoner. As I prayed the prayer, a thought came to me. I quickly rummaged through the “working on it” stack of paper in a corner of my tiny cell to find a copy of “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”
Armed with that document, I made my way in the dark of early morning to the offices down below, the scene of the “crime.” At 6:45 AM, the Unit Lieutenant arrived for his shift. A fair and “by the book” man, I asked for a few minutes. In his office, I gave him the copy of that post and challenged him: “Before you decide the fate of someone under your authority, I believe you should at least know the person and what has gone on in his life.” He said he would read it.
I learned later that Pornchai, after his third fitful night in solitary confinement also awoke at 5:00 AM, and he also asked for guidance from his patron saint who also reminded him to pray the Memorare. Sitting on the concrete floor in the dark, he did the best he could going solely on memory. “You know what is in my heart, Blessed Mother,” he prayed, “and thanks to Saint Maximilian I know what is in yours.”
Three hours past, then his cell door opened. In walked Lieutenant Brown, the rolled-up article still in his hand. “Mr. Moontri,” he said. “The investigation has cleared you of culpability in this matter. After all you have been through, it is time you had a break. I’ll try to have you out of here this afternoon.”
“Where am I going?” Pornchai asked. “Back where you belong,” the Lieutenant said.
Addendum
I returned from work that afternoon to a traumatized but much relieved roommate sitting on his upper bunk surrounded by plastic bags filled with the sum total of his worldly possessions. It was a while before he could speak. For the next hour, we both recounted those three days and nights from our own perspective. The saddest moment was when Pornchai told me that from the tiny window in his solitary confinement cell he could see up over a wall to the very top of the door of the cell that we live in. It only deepened his sadness and sense of loss.
After showering and sleeping — neither of which he was able to do in solitary confinement — Pornchai was up early the next morning waiting for Lieutenant Brown’s arrival down below. He asked the Lieutenant what has happened to the young man who punched him. “He is now where you were,” said the Lieutenant, “but he finally told the whole truth.” Pornchai asked if that man could be allowed to come back.
“He needs a time out for a month or two because of his behavior,” said the Lieutenant, “Why are you asking?” “Maybe I could work with him; maybe I could show him a better way,” said Pornchai. “Why?” asked the surprised Lieutenant. “It’s what someone did for me. It’s what our Mother would want from me,” said Pornchai. “It’s what I want from myself.”
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AN IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS FROM FATHER GORDON MACRAE:
In honor of Saint Maximilian Kolbe who points us always to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a special These Stone Walls Facebook Page is being launched on August 14. Please visit, “like” and follow this page.
Eric Mahl, and Pornchai Moontri: A Lesson in Freedom
For another 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat, our friends behind These Stone Walls sought the true source of freedom and brought a captive soul along for the ride.
For another 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat, our friends behind These Stone Walls sought the true source of freedom and brought a captive soul along for the ride.
I received an unexpected letter in the snail mail recently. It was startling, really, because it was hand written on plain white paper with absolutely nothing but its contents to signify its importance. It was from Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, a far more prolific writer than me, and the last person I expected to have time to write to me. What made its arrival so striking was how much it lifted me up from yet another round of spiritual warfare that came just before it.
I’ll get back to Father Gaitley’s letter in a moment. Things like our latest spiritual battle are very difficult to put into writing. Most people have had the experience of seeing their world unexpectedly disrupted. There are times when the solid ground upon which we stand just seems to collapse out from under us. There is no place where this happens more than in prison.
I returned to my cell one day weeks ago to find my friend and roommate, Pornchai “Max” Moontri packed and gone. He had apparently been summoned out of his job and told that he can no longer live with me and must move immediately. In a world in which we have little control over our lives, such things are a jarring and alarming experience.
Pornchai was forced to move in with a notorious transgender activist who was back in prison for the third or fourth time. Everyone around us, staff and prisoners alike, expressed their utter dismay and bewilderment with this arrangement. I was angry and perplexed that some bureaucrat for whom we are sight unseen could make such decisions for us and make them stick.
With the help of some dedicated prison staff members, it took 24 hours to get to the bottom of what happened and why. It turned out that this was the result of a bureaucratic decision set in motion in the prison computer system five years earlier when we lived in another place. It was not based on any reality anyone could determine. Once discovered, all was restored just as quickly as it was disrupted.
Pornchai was rattled but much relieved when he was able to move back with me the next day. Just how quickly this was rectified was even more startling to me. Sometimes when such decisions are made, even poor or unjust decisions, they are often not rectified at all. It could have taken weeks or months to fix this.
To ponder just how difficult such things can be here, take a new look at a moving August 16, 2017 post in which Mary herself decided how and where we would live. I mean that literally. It seems that she will just not be thwarted in her plan. That post was “Pornchai Moontri at a Crossroads.”
Father Michael Gaitley’s most welcome letter arrived right in the middle of all this madness. In it, he referred to Pornchai and me as “The Special Ops in The Marian Missionaries of Divine Mercy.” He asked for the support of our prayers for a writing project in which he is now engaged.
For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free
Readers may remember an important turning point in our lives behind These Stone Walls called 33 Days to Morning Glory (Part I – Part II). We were the first prisoners in the world to have an opportunity to take part in this retreat experience written by Father Gaitley. The Spring, 2014 issue of Marian Helper magazine carried a description of our experience with the above photo in an article by Felix Carroll entitled, “Mary Is at Work Here.” Here is a striking excerpt:
“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group of inmates to be the first. That 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.
“Moreover, before joining the Marians’ Evangelization Department a year ago and helping to spearhead the 33 Days initiative, Eric Mahl was also featured in the book. Eric and Pornchai met for the first time when Eric presented to the inmates during one of the six weekly meetings for the group retreat. ‘I felt like I met my brother, someone I’ve known my whole life,’ Eric said afterwards.
“Fr. Gordon MacRae — who chronicles his life in his celebrated website, TheseStoneWalls.com — joined Pornchai in [Marian] consecration and called it ‘a great spiritual gift’ that ‘opened a door to the rebirth of trust’ at a particularly dark time for both men.”
That was in 2014. In 2016, as the Jubilee Year of Mercy came to a close, I was asked by Marian Helper editor Felix Carroll to write an article entitled “The Doors That Have Unlocked,” about living out our faith in the Year of Mercy. My article included this brief paragraph about our 2014 Marian Consecration:
“Our consecration did not result in thunder and lightning. Our spiritual warfare continues. That’s the nature of prison life. Only in hindsight could we see the immense transformative grace that was given to us. The consecration to Jesus through Mary changed not only our interior lives, but our environment as well.”
I saw that “immense transformative grace” manifest itself again after our most recent trials that preceded Father Gaitley’s letter. The Marians were in the process of offering another
33 Days to Morning Glory retreat program in the prison. Catholic inmates were invited to consider taking part in it, but fifteen were required for the program and only thirteen signed up.
So, given that yet another set of dark days immediately preceded this for us, I asked Pornchai if he would like to sign us both up for a renewal. I said I felt that we were being strangely invited by the circumstances. And just as in 2014, we also both felt reluctant, but we have learned the hard way that reluctance is just another battleground in spiritual warfare.
Eric Mahl (left), a Marian lay aggregate, has helped spearhead the Marians’ evangelization efforts. Standing in front of New Hampshire State Prison for Men, he is joined by prison ministry volunteers Jean Fafard, Nate Chapman, David Kemmis, and Fr. Wilfred Deschamps.
A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
On Sunday, June 30, the third 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat commenced at the New Hampshire State Prison, and two of its participants had also been present for the first. To our great joy, Eric Mahl showed up from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for an opening presentation. It was a spellbinding meditation based upon that day’s Second Reading from St. Paul to the Galatians which Eric read:
“For Freedom Christ has set us free. For you were called to freedom, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
I love it when the Lord is ironic. The prisoners around us devoured Eric’s message giving voice to Saint Paul “For freedom Christ has set us free.” A team of Catholic Prison Ministry volunteers was on hand to begin our 33 Days retreat. Nate Chapman, David Kemmis, Jim Preisendorfer, Jean Fafard, Peter Arnoldy, Andy Bashelor, and Father Bill Deschamps comprise a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The next week, July 7, the first installment began. As happens with all spiritual endeavors here, we had to line up at random, and then count off by fours. All the ones would thus be at one small group table for the duration of the 33 Days. The same for twos, threes, etc.
Pornchai and I and our friend CJ — who we dragged along with us — all ended up at the same table, though not by any design of our own. You have met CJ in these pages before in a most important post, “Catholic Priests, Catholic Survivors, Moral Quagmires.”
That post was, in part at least, about how Pornchai and CJ share a similar trauma in their lives that is entirely unknown to each other. I pondered in that post how we could even begin to help him cope with what was taken from him and the impact it has had on his life. A number of readers commented and sent private messages that they are praying for CJ.
So there we were, sitting at this one table with Catholic Ministry volunteer Andy Bashelor. The first point for us to ponder after watching and listening to Father Michael’s Gaitley’s introductory video was, “Consider a special need in your life that you entrusted to the intercession of Mary or a favorite saint.”
A long, uncomfortable silence followed, and then Pornchai opened up. He mentioned our recent trials, and how, very early in our friendship, I challenged him to the great adventure of faith. He said that I told him that his way of doing things had not been working out so well, and invited him to try my way for awhile. Pornchai spoke with a crack in his voice about how doors then began to open, in both his future and his past.
Andy Bashelor, interrupted at that point and said, “I should tell you that I read a powerful article about you.” Then, (turning to me) he said, “And it was written by you.” Pornchai and I knew that he was speaking of “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”
Our friend CJ sat there mesmerized, instinctively knowing that something painful but important was now on the table. Pornchai went on to speak of how he was sent here after fourteen years in prison, seven of them in solitary confinement in a supermax prison. He spoke of how his life seemed without hope, of how he trusted no one and had no vision beyond prison. He spoke of how his very soul was imprisoned from a painful and traumatic past.
And then Pornchai spoke of a priest who saw him beaten and left in ruins on the side of the road, but did not pass by. He spoke of how he was led to Saint Maximilian Kolbe, and then to Mary, and then to Christ, and of how all has now changed. Pornchai then repeated something that always leaves me with a lump in my throat. He said he woke up one day and suddenly saw before him a future when up to then all he ever had was a past.
“Now there is hope,” Pornchai said triumphantly. He spoke of how setbacks no longer defeat him, and of how God has not waited for his prayers, but has opened doors one by one to bring light to both the traumas of the past and the worries of the future.
And all this while, the Holy Spirit was speaking through Pornchai to someone else. CJ sat there in stunned silence and spoke not a word. The next day he came to me in the prison library, clearly shaken. He was stricken to the core by what he heard, and asked me to help him begin the process of becoming Catholic. Then he asked me to ask Pornchai Moontri to help him face the past and teach him how to hope for a future.
“I can’t yet deal with how weird it is,” CJ said, “That I had to come to prison to learn what it means to be free.”
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. The great adventure of 33 Days to Morning Glory is a saving grace that my friend, Father Michael Gaitley, set in motion as a seminarian and published after just one year of priesthood. Today, over two million copies of 33 Days to Morning Glory are in circulation. To read more of what this has meant to us behind These Stone Walls please see these related sites and posts:
Behold Your Son / Behold Your Mother (Marian.org).
