The Doors That Have Unlocked

By Felix Carroll and Father Gordon MacRae | Marian Helper

Winter 2016-2017

At the outset of the extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis decreed that prisoners who pass through the doors of their cells may receive the indulgence usually attached to passing through a designated Holy Door if they turn their hearts to God’s mercy. With that in mind, we reached out to Fr. Gordon J. MacRae, an inmate at New Hampshire State Prison, to share with us his thoughts on living the faith during this Jubilee Year. Father MacRae writes for the award-winning blog TheseStoneWalls.com at the behest of the late Cardinal Avery Dulles. Here’s his surprising response:

On Sept. 23, 1994, I was taken to prison with a 67-year sentence after three times refusing a “plea deal” that would have released me after one year. It’s a tough story that has been extensively covered, including a series in The Wall Street Journal.

For the last 23 years, I have lived in a harsh world of concrete and steel, an asphalt jungle surrounded by high walls and razor wire. It’s a world where prison gangs vie for influence, for control of young minds and the suppression of hope. It was into this world that a profoundly powerful grace has unfolded. This tough story is now no longer about justice or injustice alone. It’s now about Divine Mercy, a term once foreign to this imprisoned world. It started with a series of what seemed to be mere “accidents.”

Two lives converge

Refusing to plead guilty came with a price steeper than just the length of my sentence. For my first seven years in prison, I was confined with seven other men in a cell built for four.

Unbeknownst to me, a person who was to become pivotal to this story of Divine Mercy spent that same seven years in a prison in a neighboring state confined in a polar opposite circumstance: the utter cruelty of solitary confinement. Pornchai Moontri was brought to the United States from Thailand at age 11. His story is told wonderfully, painfully, powerfully by Felix Carroll in his celebrated Marian Press book, Loved, Lost, Found.

After a series of moves and seemingly unrelated events, Pornchai’s life and mine converged. He was moved to this prison eight years ago. He and I became cellmates, sharing a two-person cell. Two years after his arrival, in 2010, Pornchai announced his decision to become Catholic. He chose my birthday to be baptized and confirmed, but due to other seemingly unrelated “accidental” events, it was postponed until two days later. On Sunday, April 11, 2010, Pornchai was received into the Church. It also just so happened to be Divine Mercy Sunday, the day in which the Lord promised “all the divine floodgates through which graces flow are opened” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 699).

Mary comes knocking

A few years earlier, I had introduced Pornchai to St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose image in both his priestly and prisoner garb is fixed above the mirror in our cell. Pornchai was so inspired by his life and sacrifice that he took the name “Maximilian” as his Christian name. Pornchai-Max was called from darkness into a wonderful light, and his response to that call has led other prisoners here to examine the direction of their own lives.

Three years later, in 2013, the transformation — not only of Max, but of our prison — took another major step. The Marian Fathers sponsored a group of volunteers to introduce into prison the consecration to Jesus through Mary using the 33 Days to Morning Glory group retreat written by Fr. Michael Gaitley, MIC. It was the first such effort in any prison, and Max and I were invited.

There was just one problem: We were not going. We did not understand what the retreat was all about, and in the previous months we had been hit with a barrage of trials and disappointments, small things that add up painfully behind prison walls. In the midst of this spiritual warfare, I asked Max if he wanted to attend, and he responded with a sullen, “Not really.” I felt the same way.

However, these Marian-trained volunteers were not giving up so easily. After missing the first session, we learned that it would be repeated for the “stragglers.”

“I think that’s us,” I told Max. We also learned that St. Maximilian Kolbe appears prominently in the 33 Days book and retreat. “So I guess we’re going,” said Max.

Several others who had originally opted out also changed their minds. The retreat culminated in our consecration on the Solemnity of Christ the King, Nov. 24, 2013.

Seeing signs in a cellblock

Our consecration didn’t result in thunder and lightning, and our spiritual warfare continued. That’s the nature of prison life. Only in hindsight could we see the immense transformative grace that was given to us. This consecration to Jesus through Mary changed not only our interior lives, but our environment as well.

In the months to follow, many other inmates signed up for subsequent 33 Days group retreats. Several pris­oners converted to Catholicism as a result. Others, such as our friend Michael Ciresi, have come home to their Catholic faith, which they had abandoned. Of the 60 prisoners in this one cellblock, a full 20 percent have entered into Marian consecration.

The Marian-trained prison volunteers have returned to guide two additional groups of prisoners to consecration through 33 Days to Morning Glory and have also led our original group through two other retreat programs in Fr. Gaitley’s Hearts Afire program.

“Part of the risk of real mission and service is the uncertainty of whether it will make any difference,” said Jim Preisendorfer, one of the volunteer retreat leaders. This risk paid off.

Moreover, in this Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I were invited by Fr. Gaitley to become Marian Missionaries of Divine Mercy, a group committed to consciously and deliberately trying to win the whole world for God through the two powerful spiritual weapons of Divine Mercy and Marian consecration.

On Divine Mercy Sunday 2016, in the prison chapel, Jim witnessed our commitment to the Missionaries’ life and mission.

Walking across the walled prison yard on the way back to our cell that day, Max and I felt like the disciples who met the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus (see Lk 24:13-53). Having once seen life as not worth living, Max, holding his Marian Missionaries handbook, turned to me and said, “How did this happen?”

In announcing the Jubilee Year of Mercy, which began last Dec. 8, the Holy Father spoke of how the thresholds of prison cells can signify inmates’ passage through a Holy Door, “because the mercy of God is able to transform bars into an experience of freedom.”

We’re thankful for the Holy Father’s beautiful gesture. But it seems Mother Mary beat him to it.