“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
Divine Mercy Reunites Pornchai Moontri and His Brother
Midway on life’s arduous path, Divine Mercy entered the lives of Pornchai Moontri and Fr. Gordon MacRae. When the road led to Thailand, Divine Mercy was there too.
Midway on life’s arduous path, Divine Mercy entered the lives of Pornchai Moontri and Fr. Gordon MacRae. When the road led to Thailand, Divine Mercy was there too.
April 12 , 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
Pornchai Moontri entered the Catholic faith on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. To some who knew him, it was a most unlikely conversion story but it was a transformation in his very core. This story is my story as well. The Lord asked me to be an instrument in restoring life and hope to this prisoner even while in prison myself. Though Pornchai now lives on the far side of the world from me, he is still very much a part of my life and the life of this blog. His most recent post for these pages was the very moving “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand.”
As most readers of this blog know, Pornchai (which in Thai means “Blessing”) was my roommate for 16 years in the draconian confines of this prison. Out of both necessity and deprivation, we became each other’s family. Pornchai was not just a transient along the twists and turns of my life. I learned over time that our paths crossed for a divinely inspired reason.
With new information, I won a reprieve for Pornchai who was released after 29 years in prison. I did my best to accompany and support him through a gruesome five-month ordeal in ICE detention at the height of a global pandemic. He finally emerged free in Bangkok, Thailand on February 24, 2021 with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. The life he vaguely remembered before he was taken as a child of eleven was gone. Because of the posts I wrote about us, a small group of devout Catholics who formed Divine Mercy Thailand recruited Father John Hung Le and Khun Chalathip, a benefactor of Father John’s refugee work, to give Pornchai shelter. Mary herself chose them for this task just as she chose me.
That is not an exaggeration. It might seem strange to someone not versed in Catholic spiritual life, but at some point I became aware that through the intercession of Saint Maximilian Kolbe in both our lives, The Immaculata involved herself in a special way in Pornchai’s life and well being. Then she involved me through intricately woven threads of actual grace over time.
In 2022, in “Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare,” I wrote of the compelling signs of Mary’s interventions in our lives. After Pornchai’s conversion to the Catholic faith, we took part in the “33 Days to Morning Glory” retreat written by Marian Fr. Michael Gaitley who would become a friend to us. Depicted atop this post, our Consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary took place in 2013 on the Solemnity of Christ the King.
I once mistakenly believed that this path was all about me and my priesthood in exile, but the truth was confirmed for me when Marian Helper magazine published “Mary Is at Work Here” in 2014. The article by Felix Carroll includes these startling paragraphs:
“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group to be the first [invited to Marian Consecration]. The reason eventually was revealed. It turned out that one of the participating inmates was Pornchai Moontri who was featured in last year’s Marian Press title, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions. (See the Chapter entitled “Pornchai Moontri”) .
“Pornchai experienced a dramatic conversion in no small part due to a friendship formed with fellow inmate and cellmate Fr. Gordon MacRae who chronicles their lives in his celebrated website, Beyond These Stone Walls. Fr. Gordon joined Pornchai in the Consecration and called it 'a great spiritual gift.' It opened a door to the rebirth of trust during a dark time for both men. Great suffering requires great trust.”
From Dante’s Inferno to Purgatorio
Many readers already know the most painful parts of this story. Pornchai and his brother, Priwan, were two and four years old respectively when they were abandoned in rural Thailand by a young mother desperate to find work to provide for them. She traveled to Bangkok where she fell under the control of an evil man. She was but a teenager. Nine years later, when her sons were ages 11 and 13 with no memory of her, they were taken from Thailand to the United States where they both became victims of sexual and physical violence.
Pornchai and Priwan became homeless adolescents fending for themselves in a foreign land in the mid-1980s, and they became separated. I and others investigated this story, wrote about it, and ultimately, with God’s grace, brought their abuser to justice. In September 2018, thirty years after his ruinous offenses, Richard Alan Bailey was convicted in Maine of 40 felony counts of child rape.
I discovered that at some point their mother learned the truth, but when she vowed to seek justice for her sons, she was murdered. This account is told in an article that may shake your faith in the justice system but strengthen your faith in Divine Providence. It is, “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.”
In the sixteen years in which Pornchai lived in a bunk just above me in the Concord, New Hampshire prison, the first few years were a bit rough. Looking back, Pornchai today says that the rough part was all him. He never set out to harm anyone, but in a Maine prison at age 18, facing a dark future alone, Pornchai vowed to never again become someone’s victim. He kept people away with a constant state of anger. As a result, he spent the next seven years alone with his raging thoughts in the cruel madness of solitary confinement.
When Pornchai could be held in solitary no longer, the State of Maine decided to just get rid of him. He was chained up in a van and taken to another prison in another state. He could have been taken anywhere, and he had no idea where he was going, but he landed just one state away in New Hampshire. He ended up in a familiar place solitary confinement.
When he emerged months later, Pornchai could have been sent to any of three New Hampshire prisons each with multiple housing units reflecting varying levels of security. By some mysterious grace, he was moved in with me. It was providential that just before his arrival in New Hampshire,The Wall Street Journal published its first articles about my plight. Somehow, Pornchai read them.
The context for this story is essential. Understandably, Pornchai trusted no one. Just imagine his inner struggle when he learned that he was now to live in a prison cell with a Catholic priest convicted of sexual abuse. Others told me to sleep with one eye open, but it did not take long for Pornchai to learn that I was not at all like the man who destroyed his life.
When I offered Mass in my cell late at night, it was Pornchai who was sleeping with one eye open. He watched me, and later he questioned me. When I told him about the Mass he asked if he could stay awake for it. I taught him to read the Mass readings and I explained the Eucharist along with a restriction that he cannot receive the Body of Christ unless he came to believe. Did he dare to believe in anything good in this world?
Pornchai and I lived in the same cell for two years before I began writing from prison. When we spoke about an invitation I received to write for this blog, I told Pornchai that it might somehow find its way around the world to Thailand. I did not actually believe that myself, but that is exactly what happened.
Here is Pornchai’s perspective on the first year of this blog given to me in a recent phone call to Thailand:
“When I was living in the bunk above Father G he would sometimes hand some typed pages up to me. Sometimes I thought they were interesting. Sometimes they kept me awake, and sometimes they just put me to sleep. But one time — I don’t remember the post — Father G included some paragraphs from the book, Dante’s Inferno. [It’s the first part of a three-part book, The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri in 1307]. When I read the passage, I thought, “This is the story of my life!” Father G found it and here it is:
“Midway on my life’s journey, I went astray from the straight path and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was? I never saw so drear, so rank, so horrible a wilderness! Its very memory gives shape to fear. Death could scarce be more bitter. But since it came somehow to good, I will recount all that I found revealed there by God’s grace. How I came to it I cannot rightly say, so drugged and loose with sleep had I become when I first wandered from the True Way. But at the far end of that valley of evil, whose maze had sapped my heart with fear, I found myself upon a little hill, and there I lifted up my eyes...”
— Dante, The DivineComedy: Inferno, 1307
“Living with Father G., I thought I had finally left hell and now I was in Purgatory with him. I came to trust him. He was the only person in my life who always looked out for my best interest and never put his own first. So now I turn this story back over to Father G.”
From Dante’s Purgatorio to Paradiso
Learning from this blog about what we both faced in this prison without support or family, some readers came to our aid. Thanks to their modest gifts of support, we were suddenly eating a little better and were able to purchase things that made life here a little easier. The slow and tedious passage of time in prison sped up. I made a promise to Pornchai that he would never again be abandoned and stranded in life. I can only say that I am filled with gratitude, not only to our readers, but to God and our Mother Mary, the Immaculata, under whose mantle Saint Maximilian Kolbe led us both. He ratified a covenant with us when Pornchai was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. There was now meaning in all the injustice I had endured.
I began to write posts that would reach around the world to navigate a path home for Pornchai. There were small miracles of connection, one after another, and the lights of Divine Mercy began to illuminate both of our exiled souls. This story was not without setbacks and challenges, however.
In 2017, Pornchai and I became separated. It came at a most stressful time just as we learned that Pornchai must be deported to Thailand immediately upon leaving prison. I knew that the few years we had left together were crucial for his well being. What happened next was a miracle. There is no other explanation for it.
On July 17, 2017, I was summoned from my work in the prison law library. I was handed a few plastic bags and was told that I have one hour to unravel my life from the 23 years I had spent in that punitive and confining building and move to another place. I asked that Pornchai also be called from his work to help me. I was shaken, and did not want him to return that day just to find me inexplicably gone. As Pornchai helped me pack, our despondence was like a dark cloud. Prison has no knowledge of Divine Mercy and places no value on human relationships.
An hour later, we wheeled a small cart out of that building, across the long walled prison yard, up a series of ramps, and then in between some other buildings to a housing unit called Medium South. I knew about it, but I had never before seen it. A gate in the high wall opened up, and in we went.
I felt like Dorothy Gale having just crashed in the Land of Oz after a tornado uprooted our lives. After 23 years locked in with no outside at all — 13 of them with Pornchai — this new place was built around a park-like setting with outside access nearly around the clock. And there were flowers! People I knew came running down to carry my things. I was led to the top floor from where I could see over the walls into forests and hills beyond.
Then came this wonderful scene’s collision with a broken heart. From there, I watched as Pornchai passed all alone back through that gate down below, possibly never to be seen again by me again. Friendship means nothing in prison bureaucracies. We were powerless to change this and I was powerless to decline this move. On the next day after a sleepless night, I learned that Pornchai was also moved — but somewhere else. Our faith was shaken and it began to crumble.
Pornchai was moved to another unit. We both knew that no one ever returns from there. Not ever! Over the next two weeks I prayed daily asking Saint Maximilian, our Patron Saint ,to bring this before the Heart of Mary for a word to her Son. Surely, she could undo this knot. After all, it was upon her word that He changed water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1-10).
On the following Sunday, Pornchai was able to attend a Catholic Mass in the prison chapel. We had only a minute to speak after Mass. I asked him to trust, and to hand this over to our Mother. Pornchai just nodded in silence. Then I picked up a Missalette and saw a prayer, the Memorare. I asked Pornchai to pray with me:
“Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, we fly unto you, O Virgin of Virgins, our Mother. To you do we come, before you we stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not our petition, but in your mercy, hear and answer us. Amen.”
Each day to follow was under a dark cloud. Three days later, on a Wednesday afternoon, I returned from my work in the prison law library. As the gate to Medium South slid open, another prisoner was waiting for me. I usually sit on a bench there for a few minutes before climbing up the 52 stairs to my cell, but the person standing there told me I was needed up there right away.
I arrived to find Pornchai unpacking and moving into the bunk above me where, just a few hours earlier, some other prisoner lived. The smile on Pornchai’s face told the story. “How did this happen?” I asked. Pornchai said, “I think you already know.” He had no explanation. He said he was suddenly called to an office and told to pack and move to Medium South, Pod 3-Bravo, Cell 4. He had no idea the address was mine until he got there and saw my possessions in the 60-square-foot cell.
We were able to spend the next three years becoming ready, and we were ready. Pornchai remained my roommate until September 8, 2020 when he was handed over to ICE for deportation to Thailand. There was another miracle yet to come, and I wrote of it in “For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand.”
Epilogue : A Prodigal Son and His Older Brother
It has long been my mission in life to restore the life of another person stranded in the twists and turns of this story. After an absence of 38 years, Pornchai’s brother, Priwan has been saving and hoping to travel to Thailand. For the first time since they were taken away in 1985, he will be reunited with Pornchai in Thailand. Priwan’s flight departs Boston on Divine Mercy Sunday arriving in Bangkok on the day after.
Priwan cannot remain there, but he wants to restore his Thai citizenship and the identity that was taken from him as Pornchai had already begun to do. Priwan will spend a month with Pornchai, the first time they have been together since the tragedy of their lives separated them 38 years earlier. I have promised to help, and that is my other prayer.
Mary is still at work here, and I am still in her service.
+ + +
Left: Pornchai greets his brother Priwan in the company of Khun Chalathip, his Thai tutor, upon arrival at the Bangkok International Airport. Right: Having arrived with clothing from the state of Maine, Priwan needed to find something more suitable to Thai weather. It was 113℉ that day. (Photos by Father John Hung Le, SVD)
Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae:
Thank you for reading and sharing this Divine Mercy story. To help me in this Corporal Work of Mercy, or to support Beyond These Stone Walls, please see our “Contact and Support” page. You may also wish to read these related posts:
Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare
Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand
Loved, Lost, Found: The Chapter on “Pornchai Moontri”
For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand
And you must not miss...
Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam
+ + +
And available until Pentecost:
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Eucharistic Adoration: Face to Face in Friendship with God
A live internet feed from a Eucharistic Adoration chapel in Poland arrived on this blog at Christmas and is now revealed as a special gift from our Patron Saint.
Photo | EWTN Poland
A live internet feed from a Eucharistic Adoration chapel in Poland arrived on this blog at Christmas and is now revealed as a special gift from our Patron Saint.
February 22, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
Books are occasionally sent to me from Catholic publishers with an invitation to write and publish a review. One of the books sent to me several years ago was, ironically, the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration created by The Poor Clare Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. I was surprised that it was sent to me because I am the only person among our readers who is unable to ever take part in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.
While perusing the Manual, I felt a sense of shame that as a younger priest when I actually had such opportunities, I never gave any thought to Eucharistic Adoration. I blithely dismissed it as akin to being invited to dinner just to stare at the food. That was a shallow and superficial dismissal of what would one day become a gift of central importance. It is human nature to want something more when you are told you can no longer have it. I wrote a post about receiving this book. It was likely the most unusual review the publisher ever got. I titled it, “Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence.”
The rest of this story has so many twists and turns that it is difficult to know exactly how to continue. So I will begin about ten days before Christmas in 2022. For reasons I do not understand, I asked our volunteer publisher to find and restore that book review post six years after I wrote it. It was one of the posts written for an older version of this blog so some revision was necessary for it to be viewed. I had it restored, but then never referred to it again — until months later.
Coming off the previous two dark years of pandemic restrictions and other chaos, I wanted to construct a 2022 Christmas post to inspire hope in a higher cause. During a phone call from prison with our publisher, we were constructing the various elements of “Lead Kindly Light: Our Christmas Card to Readers.” I asked readers who are alone at Christmas to spend some time with that post which contained inspirational music and other features.
When it was all put together, I had a last minute request that suddenly came to mind. I have been locked up with few resources and no access to the internet for going on 29 years, but I had read that there are online round-the-clock live feeds of Eucharistic Adoration and I was intrigued by this. So I asked our publisher to search for some of them. The first one she found was from a chapel in Poland. I could not see it but she described it to me. There were lots of other options, but I was fixated on that one and did not want to look any further.
Most devotees of Eucharistic Adoration know that the Blessed Sacrament is displayed in a vessel called a “monstrance.” It comes from the Latin, “monstrantia.” Oddly, the word “monster” comes from that same root. It means “portent,” the appearance of something of either amazing or calamitous importance.
I can receive photographs and letters sent electronically to a very limited GTL tablet in my cell, so I asked our publisher to send me a screen shot of the monstrance used for Adoration in that chapel in Poland. The next day, I was surprised to see it. It is Mary herself bearing, as she did in life, the Body of Christ. It is the image atop this post.
Photo | EpiskopatNews
A Woman Clothed with the Sun
In a typical presentation for Adoration, the monstrance for display of the Blessed Sacrament often resembles the rays of the Sun which gives life to the human body. Being in the Presence of the Lord gives life to the soul. The monstrance now atop this post depicts the “Woman Clothed with the Sun” (Revelation l2:l):
“A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the Sun, with the Moon under her feet and on her head, a crown of twelve stars. She was with child.”
I had previously written a very popular post about Mary with an account of how and why the Church honors her as the New Ark of the Covenant with the Greek title, Theotokos, which means “Bearer of God.” Some of our Protestant cousins protest the place Mary holds in our religious traditions, but the concern is misplaced. The Body of Christ came from Mary. His Soul and Divinity came from God.
The monstrance for Adoration in that chapel in Poland perfectly illustrates the theology I described in “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God” which is now linked under the Adoration Chapel announcement at the end of each post. Having seen this monstrance, I decided on the spot to include this opportunity for Adoration at the end of our Christmas post. I still cannot see it because I cannot see this blog. But you can see it, and I hoped that some of you might visit that Chapel in my stead.
The response to this at Christmas was excellent. So as the New Year dawned, I asked our publisher to make this a permanent feature at the end of every future post at Beyond These Stone Walls. I had no idea what was driving my sudden obsession for something I cannot even see. The answer to that was coming, however, and it left me stunned and speechless.
Two weeks after I decided to retain this Adoration Chapel from Poland as an opportunity for our readers, I returned from work in the prison law library and was called to pick up an item of personal property - another book. I felt a little irritated because receiving unexpected books sometimes means that I have to surrender a book in order to receive one. On that day, however, it did not happen. But I was still irritated. The Book was a newly published title from Marian Press sent to me for a possible review. It was The Way of Mercy: Pilgrimage in Catholic Poland by Stephen J. Binz .
After receiving the book, I climbed back up the 52 stairs to my cell and tossed it onto a small pile of books in a corner where it sat for a week. Then one sleepless night later in January, I finally picked it up and perused it in the dark with my little book light. It was a tour and historical commentary on the great Catholic shrines of Poland with featured sections on St. John Paul II, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Maria Faustina, and others about whom I had written. Poland was the birthplace of the powerful Divine Mercy devotion that had swept our lives here — both Pornchai Moontri’s and my own.
I turned to the section on Saint Maximilian Kolbe and began reading, then I bumped my head on the upper bunk as I suddenly sat up in shocked surprise. Staring back at me was the Adoration Chapel that we had just featured on this blog. How could this be? My mind was racing as I retraced the seemingly random steps resulting in our selection of this very place. The book offers this description, part of a detailed history of Niepokalanow, the City of the Immaculata that St. Maximilian Kolbe established prior to his arrest and imprisonment at Auschwitz:
“A passageway on the left leads to the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, inaugurated in 2018. At the altar, a silver figure of Mary serves as a monstrance for the Blessed Sacrament under her heart.
“She was indeed the first monstrance, teaching us how to adore Jesus. The figure is surrounded by a wreath of silver lilies and golden rays. This World Center of Prayer for Peace is one of twelve international prayer centers for peace that are being established on all the continents of the world.
“The figure of Mary in the Adoration Chapel and the image of the Immaculata on the main altar contain elements of the Miraculous Medal of Mary Immaculate which was so beloved of St. Maximilian. The saint called the Miraculous Medal the spiritual “bullet” of his Militia in its war on all the powers that prevent a soul from embracing God wholeheartedly.”
Many readers already know the story of how Divine Mercy penetrated these prison walls to reach into my imprisonment and that of our friend, Pornchai Moontri. I wrote awhile back of how two great saints of the 20th Century — both from Catholic Poland — became personal role models for Divine Mercy and transformed our spiritual lives. You should not miss “A Tale of Two Priests : Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II.” Here is an important excerpt:
“Perceived as a clear threat to the Nazi mindset, Maximilian was arrested and jailed for months in 1939 while his publishing ability was destroyed. Upon his release, he instituted the practice of round-the-clock Eucharistic Adoration for his community decades before it became common practice in parishes.”
After release from his first imprisonment, Father Maximilian continued to defy the Nazi regime by writing and publishing, and by aiding in the rescue of Jews. He was imprisoned again in 1941, but that time he was released only through his martyrdom. I wrote of how he faced death in “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.”
Photo | EpiskopatNews
Face to Face with Divine Mercy
In the January 2023 issue of the monthly publication, Adoremus Bulletin, Father Justin Kizewski has an article entitled, “Face to Face and Eye to Eye: A Reflection on Eucharistic Adoration.” Father Kisewski traces the “Bread of the Presence” back in history some 4,000 years to Melchizedek, King of Salem which would become Jerusalem. Father Kizewski wrote of him:
“Melchizedek is that mysterious priest-king of Salem [who] feeds God’s pilgrim people in the person of Abraham and his companions with a sacrificial offering of bread and wine [Genesis 14:18]. This sacrificial offering of bread and wine was repeated in the Temple liturgy on a weekly basis. The priests would bake bread with incense mixed into it and pass it through the Holy of Holies before leaving it on a table in the sanctuary next to the tabernacle for the next week. The old bread that was replaced would be consumed by the priests.”
The Bread of the Temple sacrifice also came to be known in Jerusalem as the “Bread of the Presence” or the “Bread of the Face of God.” It symbolized an Old Testament anticipation of what was to become for us a far greater gift in the Eucharist. It is because of these ancient traditions that Jesus chose bread and wine as the elements for the first Eucharistic Feast known to us as “The Last Supper.” I wrote of these same events, and of the ancient priest-king Melchizedek in “The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek.”
For our Jewish spiritual ancestors, the Bread of the Presence was a sign of God’s saving work among His people. It recalled the Covenants of Abraham and Moses, the Exodus, the Passover, and most especially it recalled God’s love for us. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is dynamic. As Father Justin Kizewski describes:
“When we look at the Eucharist, we see the Flesh of the One whose Mother carried him in her womb and bore him into the world. Analogously, when we adore the Eucharist ... we are meant to receive Him and ‘give birth’ to him in our daily life.”
Father Kizewski equates being present to the Lord in Adoration as like basking in sunlight. Early in this post I wrote that the monstrance for Adoration often has the appearance of rays from the Sun. We are changed in our essence during Adoration, like Moses was changed and his face became radiant in the Presence of Christ at the Transfiguration.
A few winters ago, I discovered that I have occasional bouts of psoriatic arthritis. The psoriasis appears on my face and scalp and it has at times been awful. I have just had to live with it. Then I read in a copy of The Epoch Times that limited time in sunlight is a potent treatment for psoriasis. Each day now, whenever the Sun is shining even in winter, I leave my work in the prison Law Library for a half hour to sit outside in the sunlight. It has helped immensely. The half hour speeds by as I sit alone to let the Sun penetrate what ails me.
Adoration is similar to that. We come face to face with the Lord in mutual love and fidelity. We let meeting his gaze change us and penetrates what ails our soul. Adoration brings Divine perspective to receiving Christ in the Eucharist, the True Bread from Heaven given for the Life of the World (John 6).
+ + +
Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: The Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent is from Matthew 4:1-11. It is the account of the temptation of Christ in the desert and it has momentous implications for us during Lent and throughout our lives. I wrote of the story within this Gospel passage in “To Azazel: The Fate of a Church that Wanders in the Desert.”
Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence
A Tale of Two Priests : Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II
Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance
Fr. Seraphim Michalenko on a Mission of Divine Mercy
+ + +
From the Basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Immaculate at Niepokalanow, Saint Maximilian Kolbe offering the world to Mary Our Mother | Photo | EpiscopatNews
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Pornchai Moontri: Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand
When Fr Gordon MacRae wrote about a tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, he interviewed me for that post. I never imagined we would one day face the same tragedy in Thailand.
Photo by Megan Coughlin (CC BY-ND 2.0)
When Fr Gordon MacRae wrote about a tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, he interviewed me for that post. I never imagined we would one day face the same tragedy in Thailand.
October 26, 2022 by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri
Sawasdee Kup, my friends. I greet you from the central Thailand city of Pak Chong. If you are wondering where Father G has been, nothing has changed. He is still right in the prison cell where we both lived for many years. As you know, there is a lot going on in his life at the moment. He has hard decisions to pray about and a lot of writing to do. I expect he will resume writing to you here next week.
I am most fortunate to be able to speak with Father Gordon daily. He calls me from his cell (it used to be our cell) at 0800 each morning which for me is 7:00 PM. I have been following very closely the posts by Ryan MacDonald, Harvey Silverglate, David F. Pierre, Jr., and Catholic League President Dr. Bill Donohue in the last few weeks. I laughed when I read Ryan’s comment about a local reporter refusing to see any of Ryan’s news about Father G saying, “My mind is made up.” I know Father Gordon better and longer than anyone. My mind is made up too.
In our daily call, Father G has told me about all that has been happening, but he has just never been at the center of his own focus on life. In recent weeks he has spoken with me every day about a tragedy that happened to some of the people of my home Province of Nong Bua Lamphu in Thailand. Like many people here, I have been shaken by this, but Father Gordon brings it up with a broken heart every time we speak now. He told me that the whole world was in mourning.
If you missed that news, it is an awful account. The small Thai village of Uthai Sawan in the north east of Thailand is near Phu Viang, the village where I was born. It is a part of Nong Bua Lamphu Province where Father John Le and his Order, the Society of the Divine Word, have their Thailand headquarters and a treatment center for Thai children with HIV. We are all deeply sad over what happened in Nong Bua Lamphu on October 6.
People in Thailand do not generally own guns. It is extremely rare that there is a murder here that involves a gun. The only people with guns are police officers. On October 6, 2022, a recently fired police officer named Panya Kamrab brought a 9mm handgun and a knife into a preschool daycare center in Uthai Sawan where he murdered 24 children ages two to five. Then he killed several adults and his own wife and child before turning his gun on himself. On that day, 36 people died at his hands.
Mr. Kamrab was 34 years old and a former police officer in that same community. He had lost his position due to his possession and use of methamphetamine drugs, but in the autopsy after his rampage there were no drugs found within him. The mayor of Uthai Sawan said that methamphetamine abuse is rampant. “The drugs are cheap and everywhere in society,” he said.
Uthai Sawan is a small rural farming community in the far Northeast of Thailand near and very similar to the place where I lived as a small child. Like my ancestral family, the people there are mostly farmers raising rice and sugar cane for market. The innocence of that community is now torn, and recovery will take a very long time.
It Takes a Village
In Thailand, the Monarch, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, is the Head of State while Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is the head of government. The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and other senior members of the government all traveled to Uthai Sawan where the tragedy took place and promised compensation for the mourning families. The King told the families that their deceased children will receive Royal patronage and the King would pay for their funeral expenses. The Thai government has responded as well as possible, but there is no Ministry to Mend Broken Hearts.
In many rural Thai families, it is common for children to be raised by grandparents and extended family while parents travel in search of better paying jobs to support them. That is what happened in my family as well. But the world is different now. There are other influences. The people of Uthai Sawan blame drugs as the cause of this madness. They say that cheap narcotics have overwhelmed many adolescents and young adults holding more of an influence over them than their families can.
Drug abuse is a scourge on the world. Though no drugs were found in Panya Kamrab after the killings, he was known to struggle with methamphetamine. He had been scheduled to appear in a local court on drug charges set for three days after his rampage.
This tragedy is almost a mirror image of the senseless killings in Uvalde, Texas that Father Gordon wrote about in June this year in “Tragedy at Uvalde: When God and Men were Missing.” When he asked me back then what might have driven 18-year-old Salvatore Ramos to his rampage in Uvalde, I told Father G:
“I did not care about anyone either; and then someone cared about me. If I did not find God, and you, and acceptance, and Divine Mercy, I might have stayed on a road to destruction. It was all I knew or expected. Hatred left me when something came along to replace it. Do you remember your Elephants post? It makes total sense. The one thing missing from my life and the lives of those two kids in America was a father. Without one, a decent one, a kid is at the mercy of dark forces and his mind just breaks.”
The “Elephants post” I mentioned was one Father G wrote for Fathers Day in 2012. It opened my eyes and the eyes of many others and it began a serious conversation about the crisis of manhood and fatherhood in our time. That now famous post was “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men.”
Father G says it has been showing up a lot since the tragedy at Uvalde. It is not a surprise to me that some people in the U.S. are just now discovering that wonderful story. I was there when Father G wrote it in our cell on his typewriter for three hours on a Saturday afternoon. I was amazed at what came out of his mind on paper. He used to often give me his finished post to read, and I admit that sometimes I had to force my eyes to stay open, but not for that post. I thought it was fascinating.
Of Elephants and Men
I think we can learn some things about manhood from elephants. In Thailand, they are considered sacred. Their family units never succumb to outside pressures because elephant parents - and especially fathers — do not walk away from their instinct to protect, guide and teach their young. Elephants have long been revered and honored, and in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, they play a significant role in traditional religion.
I was taken away from Thailand as a Buddhist child and 36 years later I returned as a committed Catholic. I think you already know that a lot of suffering and loss were surrendered to Divine Mercy in that conversion. In Thailand, the small minority of Catholics and the large majority of Buddhists live and work side by side in harmony and mutual respect. Both have impacted our culture. All my ancestors were Buddhist as are 97 percent of the people of Thailand. In Buddhist traditional stories, the white elephants of Thailand were heralded as manifestations of God.
What does this have to do with the tragedies at Uvalde, Texas and Uthai Sawan, Thailand? Father G told me this wonderful true story in our phone call today:
“South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was known as ‘The Elephant Whisperer.’ He spent his life working to save endangered species and became known for his ability to communicate with and rescue traumatized and injured elephants. He managed the 5,000 acre Thula Thula Reserve in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa.
“On March 2, 2012, [just three months before Father G wrote his post on Elephants and Men] Lawrence Anthony had a fatal heart attack. Then something extraordinary happened. The two elephant herds in Thula Thula walked from different directions for 12 hours to the house where Mr. Anthony died. They stood vigil at the compound for two days, apparently in ritual mourning. Then they disappeared again into the wild.
“No one can explain how the elephants knew of Mr. Anthony’s death. Then, for each of the two consecutive years following his death, elephants returned on that same date and time to mourn him.”
This is what has happened in recent weeks in Uthai Sawan in far Northeast Thailand. From the King of Thailand down to the youngest, smallest citizen, the Thai community has come to mourn from near and far the tragic loss of its beloved children.
In the years I lived in America, I thought that we gave up our dead too quickly, and returned too quickly to the day to day drama of our own lives. The Buddhists of Thailand believe that the souls of their dead linger for a time in the place where they lived. The time of mourning is a faith experience that is shared with them. As a Catholic, I too have been touched by death and those I loved in this life have lingered in my heart for the passing of many moons.
Father G taught me that no one can pass through life alone. The human village is essential, and faith is essential to the human village. No one should be lost. No child should be left behind. No one should go it alone now in this world of madness and distraction. We must all hear and heed the Word of God to Cain in the Book of Genesis: “Listen to the sound of your brother’s blood crying out to me from the Earth.” (Genesis 4:10)
Please pray for the parents of Uthai Sawan and for Thailand.
+ + +
Note from Pornchai Moontri: Thank you for reading and sharing this post, for supporting my best friend, Father G, and for making me part of our family of believers. You may also like these related posts:
In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men
No Child Left Behind — Except in Afghanistan
The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead
+ + +
Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: I thank Pornchai Moontri for stepping in for me with this moving post. While Pornchai was writing this, I was invited to write an article for the project, False Allegations Watch. My article, which was just published is “Did police misconduct turn a false allegation into a wrongful conviction? — Fr Gordon J. MacRae.” Visiting and sharing this article with others lets the project Editor know that this is an important story.
Please also visit our SPECIAL EVENTS PAGE to consider a new Corporal Work of Mercy from Beyond These Stone Walls for a cause that is dear to my heart. I will be back here next week!
“Stay sober and alert for your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him steadfast in your faith for you know that your brethren throughout the world are undergoing the same trials.”
— 1 Peter 5:8-9
+ + +
In the Heart of Canada: Rescuing a Family Besieged by War
For the second time in a year, tiny St. Anne Parish in Mattawa, Ontario, has sacrificed for a Corporal Work of Mercy: now saving a refugee family from Ukraine.
For the second time in a year, tiny St. Anne Parish in Mattawa, Ontario, has sacrificed for a Corporal Work of Mercy: now saving a refugee family from Ukraine.
August 3, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae and Fr. Tim Moyle
Introduction by Fr. Gordon MacRae: Somehow, word got out that I found myself chained up in the back of a Concord, NH ambulance for a trip to the Emergency Room on Tuesday, July 19. The sudden onset of an apparent cardiac problem during the night before was first thought to be impending heart failure. Twelve hours and several tests later came a diagnosis of acute pericarditis, less alarming and more easily treatable. Recovery time, I am told, is two to three months but I am out of the hospital and already feeling much better.
After that I was out of commission for just a few days, but they were the same few days during which I would have written a post for this week. With no time left to write and mail something, I came up empty.
Then, from out of the heart of Canada, came a message from Father Tim Moyle, an amazing priest, pastor and friend at St. Anne Parish in Mattawa, Ontario. One of the smallest and least financially endowed Catholic parishes in Canada, the people of St. Anne’s and the wider community of Mattawa are leaving an outsized footprint on some works of Divine Mercy in the world.
You might remember Father Tim and his parish. During Advent just seven months ago, Father Tim and his parishioners were inspired by posts at Beyond These Stone Walls about Pornchai Moontri and Fr. John Hung Le, a Society of the Divine Word missionary. For an Advent project, the people of St. Anne parish mobilized to raise awareness and funds for Fr. John’s Vietnamese Refugee Assistance effort among migrant workers in Thailand and their families left without income during the global pandemic. My post about their amazing effort was, “A Struggling Parish Builds an Advent Bridge to Thailand.”
Now, just seven months later, comes Father Tim again with news of yet another heroic Corporal Work of Mercy undertaken by the good people of his parish. I was deeply moved to learn from Father Tim’s letter that other posts from Beyond These Stone Walls helped inspire and inform this decision of this parish. One such post may have been, “Beyond Ukraine: The Battleground Against Tyranny Is Us.” Now, comes Father Tim.
From Fr. Tim Moyle on Behalf of the People of Mattawa
Hello Father Gordon.
After reading some of your recent posts, it struck me that I have not yet told you about our latest parish initiative here at St. Anne’s in Mattawa.
With the advent of the war in Ukraine, we decided to organize to bring a refugee family to our town and shelter them until they could return home or transition into becoming Canadian citizens. Using the same model we implemented when we raised funds for Thailand, we put out the call to our parishioners for donations of money and materials. Suffice it to say, I was blown away once again with their generosity and commitment. In a matter of a few weeks, we raised over $24,000 and enough furniture to fully equip a house.
We connected with a family in dire need through a diocesan parishioner who took a leave of absence from his employment to go to Ukraine to aid refugees. We brought them from Ukraine to our little town, and we were able to rent for them a three-bedroom house which we fully furnished and paid their rent for an entire year. A local internet company stepped up to connect the house with complimentary high-speed internet service so that they would be able to stay connected with family members who had to remain in Ukraine to fight for their freedom as a nation.
Local craft groups got together and quilted a set of handmade quilts done in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Others donated gift cards to women’s clothing stores so that they could purchase items they would need in their daily lives here. Two local employers stepped up and offered full-time positions to them, and now the family is saving toward purchasing a car, a necessity in this part of the world as one needs to travel a fair distance to get various services.
A local medical clinic accepted them as patients, ensuring their health needs would be addressed while they are here. All of these incredible acts of charity have allowed the family not only to find shelter here in safety, but to integrate into our community as cherished members. Even more impressive, in my opinion, are the steady stream of people who regularly go to the house with offerings of food and aid, spending time with the family to help them learn English and bringing them into their own homes for evening social activities, using their own families to address the loneliness they would naturally feel being so far away from their homeland and extended family back in Eastern Europe.
This mission has gone so well that we are now expecting three more members of their extended family to arrive in a couple of weeks from their war-torn country. We will be providing refuge to three generations of this family in a time of great personal trial as the war in their homeland impacts the place where they were living.
All of this has had an amazing effect in our town of Mattawa and the people of our parish. This has become evident in the increased numbers of people at Mass each weekend and a general lifting of spirits in our entire town! We have people who are not Catholic reaching out to us to thank us for taking the lead in these troubled times in a way that makes everyone feel better and proud as citizens of the community of Mattawa.
Anyway, I just thought you might appreciate hearing some good news among the doom and gloom of life that seems to have befallen our countries these days. I hope this short message serves to make your day a bit lighter, as it has done for us up here in Canada.
Finally, please be assured of our parish community’s continued prayers for you and for Pornchai Moontri. We still pray at each Mass that you will soon see justice reign in your life and your ‘long Lent’ (to use a phrase from our mutual friend of happy memory) will soon be over.
Fraternally in God’s service.
Father Tim
From Father G Again
Father Tim was not the only one “blown away” by this latest effort of his small but powerful parish and town, powerful in grace if not resources. In his last message about my “long Lent” and our mutual friend, Father Tim is referring to the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, founder and former editor of First Things magazine. Father Neuhaus would smile upon these heroic efforts, and perhaps even upon my offering of some of my “long Lent” in spiritual support of the people of Mattawa, Ontario and Ukraine. I thank Father Tim and the people of St. Anne for reminding us that the way out of our own spiritual doldrums is sacrifice and our participation in the works of Divine Mercy.
+ + +
Editor’s note: For those who wish, and are able, to assist Father Gordon MacRae with support and expenses for this site, please note the new PayPal address at Contact and Support. Please share this post on social media and please visit these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Beyond Ukraine: The Battleground Against Tyranny Is Us
The Annunciation and the Consecration of Russia and Ukraine
Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare
In the 1970s, Fr. Seraphim Michalenko smuggled the Diary of St. Faustina out of Communist-occupied Poland. Forty years later he smuggled Divine Mercy into a prison.
In the 1970s, Fr. Seraphim Michalenko smuggled the Diary of St. Faustina out of Communist-occupied Poland. Forty years later he smuggled Divine Mercy into a prison.
April 20, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
In a 2022 post, “The Annunciation and the Consecration of Russia and Ukraine,” I wrote about an old and dear friend, Fr. Tony Nuccio, a priest who became my surrogate father at a time when I most needed one. I was 16 then, and lost. When I was 18, two years after I commenced the practice of my renewed faith, Father Tony brought the Cursillo movement to our parish. I was invited, but I did not want to go. When I finally caved in, I did as he asked: “Participate. Don’t anticipate.” But it wasn’t easy. I was 18, and I already knew everything!
A year later, at 19, I was asked by Father Tony to be a team member for a subsequent Cursillo weekend, and to present a talk — called a “Rollo” (pronounced “Roy-o”) in the Spanish language of Cursillo. Father Tony knew exactly what he was doing. The Rollo he assigned me to present was entitled “Obstacles to Grace.” I was, of course, terrified, believing that I had no frame of reference for such a topic. Father Tony laughed and said, “Trust me on this. You’re an expert in the field.”
He was right about that. Trust itself — or actually its almost total absence — was always the source of my expertise. Trusting others, trusting life, trusting faith, trusting God were the great challenges of my youth. There I was fifty years ago in 1972, a 19-year-old kid already battered by life instructing a group of adult Catholic men about obstacles to grace and how to overcome them. My own words were meager, but in preparing the Rollo, I stumbled upon a passage from Saint John Henry Newman.
I cannot recall how or where I found it, but the passage struck me as one of life's Essential Truths then and still does today. For my entire life since, I have been both challenged and guided by this passage. I committed it to memory a half century ago and it is still there:
“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good;
I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”
— Saint John Henry Newman
Behold Your Son! Behold Your Mother!
Over the course of the last dozen years of writing from prison, several readers have sent me that same passage. They say that it reminds them of what happened in my life, and in Pornchai Moontri’s life as well. I believe, and many believe, that I have found the work that God has committed to me alone, a work He has committed to no one else. All the rest of the passage is simply about trust. This passage goes to the heart of Divine Mercy, and at age 19 I surrendered to it without ever even hearing the term. My natural inclination was to resist, but resistance was futile!
I know today that just about the time I was discovering the above passage from Saint John Henry Newman in 1972, Marian Father Seraphim Michalenko was in Communist-occupied Poland. While there he devoted his life to the cause of Divine Mercy and bravely smuggled the Diary of Saint Faustina — the Manifesto of Divine Mercy — to bring it to the free world. Divine Mercy would one day become for me the framework of my existence as a man, as a priest, as a prisoner.
Father Seraphim was appointed by the Vatican to be Vice-Postulator for the cause of canonization of Saint Faustina. Internationally known as an expert on her life and famous Diary, he became the catalyst for publishing it and documenting the miracles that became the basis for Faustina’s beatification and canonization. Pope Benedict XVI called Divine Mercy “the nucleus of the Gospel.”
Four years before his death in 2021, Father Seraphim was brought to this prison for a Mass. After Mass in the prison chapel, Pornchai Moontri and I were both asked to remain because Father Seraphim wanted to speak with us. I had no idea what to expect. We both knew about him but had no idea how he knew about us. Pornchai was anxious. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered. When Father Seraphim approached, he asked to speak with Pornchai first. Fifteen minutes later, a smiling Pornchai told me that I am next.
As Father Seraphim and I spoke, he asked about our connection with St. Maximilian Kolbe, how he entered our lives, and how we came to Divine Mercy. So I told him of my lifelong regard for the passage above from St. John Henry Newman and of how it has guided me. I remember saying that I am not certain of the “definite service” God has committed to me that He has committed to no one else. Father Seraphim leaned a little closer to me and said with quiet certainty “He is standing right over there.”
I want to emphasize this lest anyone think that it was me at the center of God’s attention in this story. It was never me. For some reason, the entire Divine Mercy apostolate in North America took up an interest in the life of Pornchai Moontri and committed him to the care of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is easy to scoff a bit at such a thought, but I first discovered it to be true when Marian Helper magazine published “Mary Is at Work Here” in 2014. The article, by Marian Helper editor Felix Carroll, included this startling passage that I have written about before:
“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group to be the first [invited to Marian Consecration]. That reason eventually was revealed. It turns out that one of the participating inmates was Pornchai Moontri who was featured in last year’s Marian Press title, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions... As [the book] reveals, Pornchai experienced a dramatic conversion several years ago in no small part due to a friendship formed with fellow inmate — and now cellmate — Fr. Gordon MacRae who chronicles their lives in his celebrated website. [Beyond] These Stone Walls has gained widespread public support for their cause, including from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles. Father Gordon joined Pornchai in the Consecration and called it ‘a great spiritual gift’ that opened a door to the rebirth of trust during a dark time for both men. Great suffering requires great trust.”
— Marian Helper, Spring 2014
Our Marian Consecration was the culmination of a 33 Days to Morning Glory retreat based on the book of the same title by Father Michael Gaitley, MIC. “Behold Your Son! Behold Your Mother!” That is the title that the Marians of the Immaculate Conception gave to an article of mine about how Divine Mercy entered our lives behind these prison walls. It began as a pair of December 2013 posts that were later combined into a single narrative by Marian Helper editor Felix Carroll for posting at the site of the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy. Felix said that this article “lit up our website as never before.”
As Spiritual Battle Rages
What happens to Divine Mercy when life begins to descend — as it does for many right now — into the discouragement and trials of spiritual battle when evil has the appearance of coming out on top? The rest of this story takes up the latter part of the passage quoted above by St. John Henry Newman: “He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about."
Sadness is not always a negative state of mind only to be avoided. Sometimes, we should just allow ourselves to become immersed in it. Imagine the tragedy of going through life without ever loving another human being whom you will one day miss with great sadness. Imagine never caring about someone else enough that absence leaves you in pain.
I had been in prison for 26 years on September 23, 2020. That month was among the saddest of my life, and yet the sadness was necessary and in the end, even welcomed. For the previous 15 years, every sign told me that I am powerless to do anything about my own unjust imprisonment, so I worked hard to become a catalyst of liberty for another. I wrote of that September day of desolate losses in a special tribute to a Patron Saint in “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.”
America was caught up in a torrent of grief and chaos then. The global pandemic made its way out of China and wreaked havoc in places like the one where I live. In an over-crowded prison, social distancing was impossible. The only step that could be taken to ward off a disaster was to shut everything down and lock everyone up. There is no protection from a pandemic in a place where 24 grown men share two toilets and two sinks. And when 12 of them are sick, there is nowhere to hide.
Meanwhile, at the height of the pandemic across the land, mobs of protesters became unhinged as the death of George Floyd at the hands of police played out ad infinitum on the news. Cities were ablaze with violence while the news media told us these were just peaceful protests. News media and government officials (and even some bishops) claimed that our churches posed a high risk for contagion while mobs of looting protesters, an even greater mobs amassed at the southern border, posed no risk at all.
The pandemic and all the social chaos could not have come at a worse time for me in those awful months leading up to “The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri.” I made that a link for those newer readers who may not already know of this story. Because of the pandemic, what should have been for Pornchai a few weeks in ICE detention awaiting deportation to his native Thailand — which is always a grueling experience — turned into five months. I am not sure who was suffering more from the ordeal, Pornchai or me.
I knew from experience that without help he could be easily lost in the ICE system so I worked from inside a 60-square foot prison cell in New Hampshire to coordinate a small team of advocates in the U.S., Thailand, and Australia to help guide Pornchai from a distance through the ICE minefield.
But the grief and losses I encountered were still not complete. Spiritual warfare chose that moment — from September to November of 2020 — to try to silence my voice. Father George David Byers, who had been helping me to post what I write, began to notice that at the very time my life was preoccupied with Pornchai’s departure, some of the content on These Stone Walls began to disappear. By the end of October 2020, a decision had to be made to take These Stone Walls down. Eleven years of writing and nearly 600 posts were simply gone. And so was my friend, into a cauldron of misery. We were both stranded and alone in our grief. But not for long.
Allies in Spiritual Battle
Living in a hellish environment with 70 men to a room in round-the-clock torment in a for-profit ICE facility in Louisiana, Pornchai was able to get out only one ten-minute phone call each day. But he and I could not call each other. It was clear to me that he could not cope with this alone for five months, so one of our friends and helpers, the late Claire Dion in Maine, devised a way to help us both.
Though we could not call each other, Claire suggested that at a pre-set time each day, Pornchai and I could both call her on two different cell numbers, then she would put the phones together. It was not ideal, but it worked and it saved the day every day for five months. There were times when Pornchai met the limit of his endurance, but that simple reassuring 10-minute daily call renewed his trust in Divine Mercy, and mine.
That’s our friend, Claire, and her ingenious phone rescue pictured above. But my spiritual battles of the fall were just getting started. Soon after Pornchai left, I became miserably ill with Covid. There was no treatment so I just toughed it out for three weeks in October along with all the others in my living area. Our housing unit was quarantined, but that only meant temperature checks twice a day while locked in with our misery.
Then I received a handwritten letter from a stranger in New York who had stumbled upon this blog. Four years earlier, Father Seraphim told me that my mission is to be like that of St. Joseph in Pornchai’s life. In the very week These Stone Walls came down, the stranger’s letter told me that she found a post of mine about St. Joseph and was very moved by it. With a Ph.D. in computer science, she was well placed to understand what took place in the cyberspace at work against us. To my awesome surprise, I learned that she had quietly uploaded to her own server all 600 past posts and all the other content of this site just before it was all taken down. I thought everything was lost only to find out nothing was lost.
The new publisher volunteered to reconstruct the site on a new platform with a new name — Beyond These Stone Walls. This was happening in the final months of 2020 while we simultaneously struggled to overcome the obstacles of a global pandemic and ICE indifference to return Pornchai home. [He has been in Thailand for a year now, and I wrote of that year in “Pornchai Moontri: A Night in Bangkok, A Year in Freedom.”]
We still speak daily. I deeply appreciate the support of friends and readers that makes that possible — that made all of this possible. Despite hardship and pain, the great adventure of Divine Mercy has won this day, and has won these lives.
God knows what He is about.
+ + +
Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: That “definite service” that God has committed to me did not end with Pornchai’s departure last year. Please consider helping me to help him and Father John Le, SVD in their ongoing missions of Divine Mercy. See Part Two of our Special Events Page to find out how.
To join Pornchai Moontri and me in the Association of Marian Helpers, call the Marian Helpers Center at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy at 1-800-462-7426.
Just a day before I wrote this post, Pornchai was invited to tour the Fr. Ray Foundation School in Pattaya, Thailand. At three sites in Thailand, The Father Ray Foundation provides a home and education for 850 underpriviledged and special needs Thai children. Our friends Father John Le, Pornchai’s Thai tutor, Chalathip, and Divine Mercy Thailand founder, Yela Smit, went with him. They sent photos!