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Setting Forth the Truth Plainly
Aug. 16th, 2013 05:08 pmTherefore, since through God’s mercy
We have this ministry,
We do not lose heart.
Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways;
We do not use deception,
Nor do we distort the word of God.
On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly
We commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience
In the sight of God.
(2 Corinthians 4:1-3)
I suppose one of the reasons I value my blog is because it gives me the time to make sense of the seemingly random events that occur in my life. By that I mean that my writing allows me to try and figure out the meaning of those incidents whose memory just hangs around. Many times in my life, I’ve observed, heard, or experienced a moment or event that seems to linger with me long after it occurred, staying with me, and haunting me until I figure out its significance, or give up trying. Many months ago, during Lent, two things happened that gave me pause – forcing me to wonder if a bigger message wasn’t being communicated to me. The first happened in jail, when I was leading a discussion with inmates about a video series we were watching, and the second occurred when my daughter Prisa called me to share the contents of an email she had received from my younger brother, Eddie. I intended to write about those incidents back in February, but never got around to doing so. Ultimately I forgot about them, or thought I did, until recently, when I was clearing out a conference bag of old notes, handouts, and programs. There I came across my notes of a talk by Father James Martin at the Religious Education Congress. I didn’t stay for the whole session, but while there, Father Martin spoke about one of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola – something called the Daily Examination of Conscience. Contrary to it being just an inventory of sins, as I expected, he explained that this was actually a type of meditation that invited a person to reflect on the events of the day so that they might recognize where God was present. The idea struck a chord with me, and reminded me again of the two incidents in February. Father Martin said people and events could reflect the presence of God, and I found myself wondering if my two experiences hadn’t in fact been God Moments! Were they moments when God’s finger poked through that sacred, gossamer membrane that separates His Kingdom from our senses, and tapped me on the shoulder? I found my mind floating back to those two events that occurred so many months ago, but still lingered, restlessly, at the outer edges of my mind.
Early in January, Gavin, the Head Chaplain at the jail, encouraged my partner Issac and I to try something different with the inmates we met with on Wednesday nights. He had been circulating a twelve-week video series called A.D.: The Early Years of the Church, to the other volunteer chaplains with very positive results, and he believed that the men in our cellblocks would benefit from it as well. Based on the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of St. Paul, the series depicted fictionalized stories of the early Church after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It showed how the apostles, especially Sts. Peter and Paul, first assumed the role of evangelists, living and preaching the Good News proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth, to the people living near Israel, and around the Mediterranean Sea. The discussions could even be facilitated by a Study Guide, which the series provided, that plotted the action of the stories, highlighted important events and quotations, and suggested questions to ask. However, although this structured, lesson-plan format suited me perfectly, it went against Gavin’s preferred approach to our ministry. According to Gavin, there was really only one question I needed to ask the men at the end of every viewing: how does this story relate to you and your life? It was his belief that if the programs, videos, or discussions we offered the inmates did not immediately relate to them, we were wasting their time. For him, Catholic dogma and religious doctrine were of secondary importance after the spiritual needs of the men – and the men needed to find personal relevance in what we offered them. This is what we’re attempting to do through our regular Finding The Way programs, and he wanted it replicated in the video series.
“Trust the men!” Gavin would tell us, if we hesitated at presenting the more doctrinaire and dogmatic portions of our program. “You don’t have to come all prepared and organized with the right answers. All you have to do is ask questions and listen to what the men have to say. They will always surprise you with the truth.”
I don’t think I really got what Gavin was talking about until the fifth week of the series.
Looking back, I see now that I was set up for the impact of one particular evening by an earlier episode that focused on Saul’s conversion on the Road to Damascus and the response of the Christian community. I recall being really excited about the implications of this segment, wanting to portray Saul as a zealous, orthodox Jew who was converted through a true “epiphany” – a flash of spiritual inspiration that changed him forever. Although the men patiently went along with this line of thinking for a while, Jesse, one of our regular attendees who often quoted chapter and verse of the Bible, soon took it in another direction with some very personal insights:
“I really got it after Paul was baptized, and he went to the synagogue to tell his story. They wouldn’t believe he’d changed! Paul really opened up to them, saying that God’s ways had been dark to him until he was shown the Light of Love. But the Christians rejected him and refused to trust him. They called him names and wanted to stone him. That’s something like what happens to us when we get out of jail or prison. We tell people that we’re different, that we’ve changed, but not many are willing to believe us, or give us a chance”.
Those statements suddenly provoked a lot of conversation among the men. They started sharing stories of how fellow inmates and guards refused to take their own conversions seriously, believing that they were incapable of changing their lives and becoming better men. These skeptics mocked them when they gathered together for Prayer Call, or when they left their cellblocks to join our sessions. They were ridiculed for reading the Bible and refraining from cursing and swearing, and they were often called fags and jotos, and considered weak. To my surprise, they also started mentioning the metaphors that were used in the video, and quoting actual pieces of dialogue. Reggie, another regular, noted that just as God blinded Paul before he was able to see the light of truth, so too many of the inmates did not experience God until they were arrested and jailed.
“Just like Paul said”, Reggie quoted, ‘he has brought the night on me’. “We don’t see God until we hit rock bottom in jail”.
But again it was Jesse, picking up on another metaphor, who brought the session to a close on a more positive and inspirational note.
“Just remember to never lose hope, brothers,” he said encouragingly, sitting in a front row chair and looking back to address all the men behind him. “God’s love and mercy will seek us out and find us, even here in jail. Paul said that all the time he was denying Jesus, and hunting down his followers, God was actually chasinging him. ‘Like yeast fermenting in the dark’, Paul said, ‘His grace was working within me – unwanted, unbidden. I was a horse disdainful of its rider, kicking against the whip. Now I submit to the horseman.’ That’s you and me he’s talking about, brothers,” Jesse said emphatically. “We’re the wild horses kicking against the whip! Have faith that God will never give up on us; we can only give up on Him. Let’s submit to God like Paul did!”
A few weeks later, the discussion that provoked this essay occurred.
We saw two episodes that night. The first began by showing how the gospel was spreading throughout the Mediterranean, with Peter in Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas bringing the teachings of Jesus Christ to the Jews and Gentiles in Antioch. Peter’s teachings in Jerusalem eventually enflamed the Jewish population and he was arrested for preaching heresy. That episode ended with Peter in jail, showing him at prayer, and recalling Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, before his betrayal. The final segment started with Paul preaching and teaching in Corinth and Ephesus, to Gentile and Jews alike, and Peter back in Jerusalem, trying to settle the dogmatic debates over circumcision and dietary Judaic laws. Many of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and Romans served as material for the dialogue in this story. In one scene, he noted, “it is no easy work to bring the good news, yet the hardship is softened by God’s grace, for God’s love permits the working of the yeast of his word through signs and wonders”. In another, new converts were quoting his words to each other about understanding how God works through people. Ultimately, Paul returned to Jerusalem for Passover, only to further outrage the Jews by bringing a Gentile into the temple, and ending up being arrested, imprisoned, and sent to Caesarea for trial. It was there, while in prison, that he repeated his powerful message about Faith, Hope, and especially Love (1Corinthians13) to the friends who came to visit and encourage him.
They were two powerful episodes, and I had excitedly filled my notebook with questions and quotations. But there remained only 15 minutes for discussion, and rather than orchestrating and directing the line of thinking, as I had tried to do the weeks before, I felt it was more important to simply gauge the men’s reactions to the messages in this story.
“So,” I began, “what scenes or messages affected you most? Did you see any relationship between you and the lives of Peter and Paul, or the people in the story?”
“I never thought I had so much in common with Peter and Paul”, Jesse responded quickly, starting the conversation. “People think of them as big time saints and apostles. I forgot they spent a lot of their time in jails and prisons. I mean they weren’t arrested for the same kinds of things as I was, but we’ve been in the same types of places, dealing with the same types of inmates, guards, and judges. I really liked that scene with Peter praying in jail. I’ve felt that way lots of times; ready to give up and lose faith. But he wasn’t praying for his release or for a shorter sentence. He just placed himself in God’s hands, saying ‘not my will, Lord, but your will be done’. His prayer was short, and to the point: ‘Lord, I believe. Lord, I hope. Lord, above all, I love, Amen.’ That’s the way I try to pray. It shouldn’t be about me, but about trusting in God.”
“The guys in the Temple sure spent a lot of time arguing”, Reggie added quickly, jumping right into the discussion, “especially about circumcision. They reminded me of some ministers at home, and even some guys in prison, who are always quoting scripture, and arguing about what the Bible really means about this and that. They kind of lose the real message. Those guys are arguing while Paul and Barnabas are slowly spreading the Word, person-by-person, and family-by-family. You know, this series showed me how Christianity really spread after the Resurrection. The Good News of Jesus simply became the “yeast” that slowly grows and expands. Those new Christians just proclaimed the presence of God within us by what they said, and how they lived. We are the ‘clay jars’ that Paul mentions in 2nd Corinthians. We become the real ‘instruments for the Good News’. We are Church, and God works in us and through us”.
Reggie’s words provoked a sudden visualization of the Baptismal ceremony in my mind, and Christ’s final exhortation to “go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of time”. With that image in mind, I suddenly felt compelled to ask a spontaneous question for which I had no prepared answer. What if no one answers? I feared for a moment.
“So,” I asked, apprehensively, “if what Reggie says is true, are WE really being called to be evangelists of the Gospel? How can we be evangelists, especially here in jail?”
Thankfully, a large hand on a muscled arm immediately shot up from the middle of the group. Although he had been a regular participant in many past discussions at other times, Siaki had been strangely quiet during all the previous discussions in the A.D. series. Tonight, however, he gave the powerful testimony that shook my understanding of ministry and evangelism.
“Yeah,” he said emphatically. “We ARE being called to be evangelists; each and every one of us – especially here! We’re being called to be Disciples of Christ by what we say and what we do to each other. That’s what an evangelist does! That’s the main thing I got out of this series. I was a knucklehead just like Paul. I chose a life of alcohol, anger, and violence. And because of those choices, I was arrested and thrown in jail time after time. But God wouldn’t give up on me, even when I wouldn’t change. He kept working on me, “like yeast fermenting in the dark”. God’s grace was working on me until I finally broke. This last time in jail has been my ‘road to Damascus’. I was finally knocked flat and broken down. I hit bottom and had to finally take an honest look at my life, and see what a disaster I’d made of it. I’m facing multiple life sentences now. I’m looking at losing my kids and family, and yet I’m at peace. I finally woke up to the God inside me, and saw that He’d been there all along, offering me forgiveness and Freedom. Not freedom like a release from jail, but real Freedom – Freedom to become the person I really am, the person that God created. So I take each day at a time, learning who I am, how the Devil tempts me, and how to be better. I learn from the brothers around me. We’re capable of great love and compassion, if we just let ourselves show it and accept it. It’s not about traveling to other places and converting people. We’re evangelists in the way we help each other, how we read the bible, and how we gather for prayer. Just like Paul said, “it is no easy work to bring the good news”, and it’s not easy gathering to pray. Other men see us as weak, and they make fun of us and call us names when we get together for Prayer Call. They think cussing, name-calling, and bullying makes them strong, when all they’re really doing is trying to hide their own fears. I think real evangelists just act out Christ’s gospel of love; they walk the talk.”
Siaki’s words brought the session to a close and thoroughly challenged me. I had not expected that type of answer, and I was haunted for a long time by his passionate testimony and its implications to all the men around him – including me. Here I was, a so-called “chaplain”, a volunteer in the Catholic Ministry to the Incarcerated, but I didn’t feel at all like an evangelist. In fact the word evangelist intimidated the hell out of me. For me evangelists were epitomized in my image of Maryknoll missionaries. These were the Catholic priest and nuns who went off to foreign lands to teach and convert new souls for Christ. They were modern saints willing to lay down their lives for the Gospel, just like St. Peter and St. Paul. I was neither a saint nor a catechist, and I certainly didn’t measure up to Siaki’s description of an evangelist. I don’t think I lead a very religious life – and as to praying in public! I struggle to pray even in private, and my daily choices and actions tend to be motivated more out of self-interest and a desire for leisure, than for love. But rather than writing about that evening in my journal the following morning, which I sometimes do to work out my ambivalent feelings about something, I cowardly chose to put it aside and ignore it. I believed that with time my unease and disquiet over Siaki’s testimony would dissolve and eventually go away. But then my daughter called and resurrected the issue once again at the start of Lent.
Prisa’s call began rather routinely with Kathy answering the phone, and chatting with her about her daughter, Sarah, school, and plans for Easter vacation. Then Kathy passed the phone to me, saying Prisa wanted to tell me something. Expecting to also talk about Sarah, I was surprised when she told me of an unexpected gift and email she had received from my brother, her Uncle Eddie. The gift was a book called Rediscover Catholicism, written by Mathew Kelley, a convert to the religion. She knew something of the author, having heard him speak at a past Religious Education Congress, but she was mostly touched by Eddie’s sentiment in sending it not only to her, but also to ALL his nieces and nephews.
“Wow,” I said, wondering about his motivations. “That’s a pretty courageous thing to do.”
“Yeah,” Prisa agreed, “it was also a really sweet thing to do. I thought you’d like to know about it.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “Yeah, I appreciate the news. Could you do my one favor though? Would you mind forwarding his letter to you? I’d really love to read what he said.”
“Sure”, she replied, “I’ll send it right away”.
This is what it said:
Lent, 2013
To my nieces and nephews,
Greetings from your favorite uncle who lives in Monrovia!
I hope this letter finds you well. Usually your grandmother is in charge of passing out religious books but I’m encroaching on her territory as part of my own observance of Lent.
I honestly don’t know where each of you is in regards to your spiritual journeys. I do know however, that you started out in the Catholic Church (C’mon, I was an eyewitness to lots of baptisms).
These are probably the worst times for the church in my lifetime. Let’s face it, when you have to take ridicule from a self-righteous Bill Maher, you know that things are bad. I refuse to believe (like many secular pundits do) that the church is an evil entity whose time is over. I think the church has made despicable mistakes in the last several years but I don’t think that this is a reason to abandon it. In fact, these times have made me hold onto it more closely.
There are a lot of smart, beautiful things in Catholicism but the shame of it is that many of the faithful don’t really take the time to appreciate them. That’s why I’m sending you this book. This is a thoughtful, well-written testament from a convert to Catholicism. Every few pages have given me food for days of thought and reflection.
I’m not going to ask for any book reports but I would encourage you to give this book a try. If you want to get a preview of what it is about, you can see a filmed presentation by the author at: www.catholictvaustin.com.
I think I’ll stop there. If you want to chat (or argue) with me, you can reach me by email or phone. I sincerely hope that you are having a great year and that you seek to always be the best version of yourself.
With love,
Eddie.
As I finished the letter, I started wondering if the tone and content wasn’t a bit on the evangelical side? Although it wasn’t written in the flamboyant, revivalist fashion of an Elmer Gantry, it did show a sharp interest and concern for the spiritual wellbeing of our nieces and nephews. Normally I would say that my brother Ed has never been overly religious. Like all of his three brothers, he attended Catholic schools through high school, was confirmed in the Catholic faith, and served as an altar boy. His most active religious period was in college, when he attended Loyola Marymount University and joined a Jesuit outreach program called Search. In it he participated as a member and facilitator in many Kairos-type retreats aimed at sparking and maintaining a spiritual relationship with God. For many years he remained affiliated with our home parish church in Venice as lector, reading the scripture selections at Sunday masses. Eventually he married, moving to Monrovia with his bride, where he settled into what I’d call, a secularly moral and privately spiritual life. So this email and gift encouraging a rediscovery of Catholicism came as somewhat a surprise to me. I would hazard to guess that the religious practices, habits, and beliefs among the members of my Mexican-American, Catholic family could best be measured on a long religious spectrum. At one extreme there are people with very traditional and orthodox Catholic beliefs and practices, while at the other end there some religiously non-practicing, Christian secularists. I don’t think anyone is an atheist or agnostic, but we are all travelers moving along that religious spectrum, changing positions as we get older, wiser, raising families, or dealing with life’s misadventures and tragedies. There was also an unwritten family rule that although we might argue about religion with each other, we never (except for our mom) tried to impose our religious practices or beliefs on another family member. Was Eddie breaking that code with his gift and letter? Was he intruding into their private lives and foisting his own religious beliefs on our nieces and nephews?
Before reaching a conclusion, I re-read the letter. Everything Eddie said was true. The Catholic Church, as an institution, “has made despicable mistakes” in the past, and will probably continue making them in the future (look what the hierarchy is doing to the nuns in the LCWR). After all, it is an institution run by men, many of them old and dogmatically conservative. But, as he added, “there are a lot of smart, beautiful things in Catholicism” too. One only had to read the writings of the saints and mystics to know that this was true, even when those same saints and mystics were scorned and ostracized by the institutional Church. It finally struck me that Eddie wasn’t really trying to convert or change anyone; he was simply going “public” with his feelings about the Catholic Church, and inviting his relatives to learn more about it. It was as if he was saying to them: “Look, we have this wonderful storehouse of knowledge about the Kingdom of God in the Church. It tells us that through the Good News in the Gospel we can connect with God. Why keep it a secret? The Catholic Church is a vehicle for this connection. It’s a method for men and women to gather together in His name to find The Way”. I concluded that Eddie just didn’t want to keep this knowledge “under a bushel” anymore, so he came out with this letter.
I wish I could tell you that I immediately saw the relevance of what Eddie did with what Siaki said about evangelism on that night in jail – but I didn’t. Oh, I was very proud of Eddie for writing that letter, and a little envious. I even briefly toyed with the idea of working out my reluctance in writing through an essay for my blog, but I was afraid to pursue it. It was only many months later, while looking over my notes from Father Martin’s talk about recognizing the presence of God in the events of a day that it hit me. I finally had to admit that God had been trying to tell me something all along, while I was working at not listening. He spoke to me in the video series, A.D., in Gavin’s advice to listen, in the words that Jesse, Reggie, and Siaki shared during discussions, in Prisa’s phone call, and in the actions and writings of my brother Eddie. So, what did I think He was trying to tell me?
As I noted above, I’ve always fought the idea of being a member of a ministry, or being mistaken for a preacher or an evangelist. I am uneasy when people identify me as a chaplain in Prison Ministry. I’ve never felt like a chaplain and I’m certainly not a minister or a preacher! If a friend or relative praised me for performing one of Christianity’s 7 Corporal Works of Mercy or one of the Jewish mitzvahs (acts of kindness), I simply shrugged. As far as I was concerned all I was doing was showing up and participating in discussions with other men. But to be honest, I haven’t just considered myself a participant. As a retired secondary school teacher and administrator, I naturally fell into the familiar role of facilitator and discussion leader. I tended to separate myself from the topics being discussed and tried to stimulate responses in others – always believing that I had an answer to the questions I ask. I think God was trying to tell me to step down and join the men’s group, so I could better hear what they had to share and teach me. Looking back now, I see that their contributions to our discussions were astonishing in their sophistication, truth, and compassion. While I was hung up on making comparisons and identifying symbols and metaphors, they were relating the Acts of the Apostles to their own lives and struggles, and searching for personal meaning. Siaki’s passionate testimony to my unprepared question hit me like an indictment. As far as he was concerned, evangelists simply demonstrated Christ’s gospel in how they lived, what they said, and the quality of their prayer. For him it wasn’t about preaching, converting, or indoctrinating, it was simply struggling to be with God at all times. I was so stunned by its simplicity that it took Eddie’s example in a letter to his nieces and nephews to finally demonstrate how it’s done. I need to live my Faith and not be ashamed or embarrassed to express or show it. Christ did commission me to follow him, and that is a ministry.
I think Henri J. M. Nouwen, a Dutch-born, Catholic priest and spiritual director, said it best: "Ministry means the ongoing attempt to put one's search for God, with all the moments of pain and joy, despair and hope, at the disposal of those who want to join this search, but do not know how"
As St. Paul and the men in our group pointed out during our discussions on A.D., and Eddie through his letter - being a follower of Christ and the Gospel is hard. It is hard to finally accept our need for God's love and His presence within us. It is hard to truly love your neighbor as ourselves, and it is hard to pray. We can't do it alone, and so we need the support of God through prayer, and the support of other men and women through church. The men in jail call our weekly sessions together, church, and so it has become for me. Once a week I go to my Men's Group in jail. That is my ministry. There, for one night a week, we become Christ's church, and we gather to pray and help each other maintain our relationship with God and become better men. That's what ministry has become for me, and that's how I work at being an evangelist of the Gospel.
We have this ministry,
We do not lose heart.
Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways;
We do not use deception,
Nor do we distort the word of God.
On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly
We commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience
In the sight of God.
(2 Corinthians 4:1-3)
I suppose one of the reasons I value my blog is because it gives me the time to make sense of the seemingly random events that occur in my life. By that I mean that my writing allows me to try and figure out the meaning of those incidents whose memory just hangs around. Many times in my life, I’ve observed, heard, or experienced a moment or event that seems to linger with me long after it occurred, staying with me, and haunting me until I figure out its significance, or give up trying. Many months ago, during Lent, two things happened that gave me pause – forcing me to wonder if a bigger message wasn’t being communicated to me. The first happened in jail, when I was leading a discussion with inmates about a video series we were watching, and the second occurred when my daughter Prisa called me to share the contents of an email she had received from my younger brother, Eddie. I intended to write about those incidents back in February, but never got around to doing so. Ultimately I forgot about them, or thought I did, until recently, when I was clearing out a conference bag of old notes, handouts, and programs. There I came across my notes of a talk by Father James Martin at the Religious Education Congress. I didn’t stay for the whole session, but while there, Father Martin spoke about one of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola – something called the Daily Examination of Conscience. Contrary to it being just an inventory of sins, as I expected, he explained that this was actually a type of meditation that invited a person to reflect on the events of the day so that they might recognize where God was present. The idea struck a chord with me, and reminded me again of the two incidents in February. Father Martin said people and events could reflect the presence of God, and I found myself wondering if my two experiences hadn’t in fact been God Moments! Were they moments when God’s finger poked through that sacred, gossamer membrane that separates His Kingdom from our senses, and tapped me on the shoulder? I found my mind floating back to those two events that occurred so many months ago, but still lingered, restlessly, at the outer edges of my mind.
Early in January, Gavin, the Head Chaplain at the jail, encouraged my partner Issac and I to try something different with the inmates we met with on Wednesday nights. He had been circulating a twelve-week video series called A.D.: The Early Years of the Church, to the other volunteer chaplains with very positive results, and he believed that the men in our cellblocks would benefit from it as well. Based on the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of St. Paul, the series depicted fictionalized stories of the early Church after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It showed how the apostles, especially Sts. Peter and Paul, first assumed the role of evangelists, living and preaching the Good News proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth, to the people living near Israel, and around the Mediterranean Sea. The discussions could even be facilitated by a Study Guide, which the series provided, that plotted the action of the stories, highlighted important events and quotations, and suggested questions to ask. However, although this structured, lesson-plan format suited me perfectly, it went against Gavin’s preferred approach to our ministry. According to Gavin, there was really only one question I needed to ask the men at the end of every viewing: how does this story relate to you and your life? It was his belief that if the programs, videos, or discussions we offered the inmates did not immediately relate to them, we were wasting their time. For him, Catholic dogma and religious doctrine were of secondary importance after the spiritual needs of the men – and the men needed to find personal relevance in what we offered them. This is what we’re attempting to do through our regular Finding The Way programs, and he wanted it replicated in the video series.
“Trust the men!” Gavin would tell us, if we hesitated at presenting the more doctrinaire and dogmatic portions of our program. “You don’t have to come all prepared and organized with the right answers. All you have to do is ask questions and listen to what the men have to say. They will always surprise you with the truth.”
I don’t think I really got what Gavin was talking about until the fifth week of the series.
Looking back, I see now that I was set up for the impact of one particular evening by an earlier episode that focused on Saul’s conversion on the Road to Damascus and the response of the Christian community. I recall being really excited about the implications of this segment, wanting to portray Saul as a zealous, orthodox Jew who was converted through a true “epiphany” – a flash of spiritual inspiration that changed him forever. Although the men patiently went along with this line of thinking for a while, Jesse, one of our regular attendees who often quoted chapter and verse of the Bible, soon took it in another direction with some very personal insights:
“I really got it after Paul was baptized, and he went to the synagogue to tell his story. They wouldn’t believe he’d changed! Paul really opened up to them, saying that God’s ways had been dark to him until he was shown the Light of Love. But the Christians rejected him and refused to trust him. They called him names and wanted to stone him. That’s something like what happens to us when we get out of jail or prison. We tell people that we’re different, that we’ve changed, but not many are willing to believe us, or give us a chance”.
Those statements suddenly provoked a lot of conversation among the men. They started sharing stories of how fellow inmates and guards refused to take their own conversions seriously, believing that they were incapable of changing their lives and becoming better men. These skeptics mocked them when they gathered together for Prayer Call, or when they left their cellblocks to join our sessions. They were ridiculed for reading the Bible and refraining from cursing and swearing, and they were often called fags and jotos, and considered weak. To my surprise, they also started mentioning the metaphors that were used in the video, and quoting actual pieces of dialogue. Reggie, another regular, noted that just as God blinded Paul before he was able to see the light of truth, so too many of the inmates did not experience God until they were arrested and jailed.
“Just like Paul said”, Reggie quoted, ‘he has brought the night on me’. “We don’t see God until we hit rock bottom in jail”.
But again it was Jesse, picking up on another metaphor, who brought the session to a close on a more positive and inspirational note.
“Just remember to never lose hope, brothers,” he said encouragingly, sitting in a front row chair and looking back to address all the men behind him. “God’s love and mercy will seek us out and find us, even here in jail. Paul said that all the time he was denying Jesus, and hunting down his followers, God was actually chasinging him. ‘Like yeast fermenting in the dark’, Paul said, ‘His grace was working within me – unwanted, unbidden. I was a horse disdainful of its rider, kicking against the whip. Now I submit to the horseman.’ That’s you and me he’s talking about, brothers,” Jesse said emphatically. “We’re the wild horses kicking against the whip! Have faith that God will never give up on us; we can only give up on Him. Let’s submit to God like Paul did!”
A few weeks later, the discussion that provoked this essay occurred.
We saw two episodes that night. The first began by showing how the gospel was spreading throughout the Mediterranean, with Peter in Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas bringing the teachings of Jesus Christ to the Jews and Gentiles in Antioch. Peter’s teachings in Jerusalem eventually enflamed the Jewish population and he was arrested for preaching heresy. That episode ended with Peter in jail, showing him at prayer, and recalling Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, before his betrayal. The final segment started with Paul preaching and teaching in Corinth and Ephesus, to Gentile and Jews alike, and Peter back in Jerusalem, trying to settle the dogmatic debates over circumcision and dietary Judaic laws. Many of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and Romans served as material for the dialogue in this story. In one scene, he noted, “it is no easy work to bring the good news, yet the hardship is softened by God’s grace, for God’s love permits the working of the yeast of his word through signs and wonders”. In another, new converts were quoting his words to each other about understanding how God works through people. Ultimately, Paul returned to Jerusalem for Passover, only to further outrage the Jews by bringing a Gentile into the temple, and ending up being arrested, imprisoned, and sent to Caesarea for trial. It was there, while in prison, that he repeated his powerful message about Faith, Hope, and especially Love (1Corinthians13) to the friends who came to visit and encourage him.
They were two powerful episodes, and I had excitedly filled my notebook with questions and quotations. But there remained only 15 minutes for discussion, and rather than orchestrating and directing the line of thinking, as I had tried to do the weeks before, I felt it was more important to simply gauge the men’s reactions to the messages in this story.
“So,” I began, “what scenes or messages affected you most? Did you see any relationship between you and the lives of Peter and Paul, or the people in the story?”
“I never thought I had so much in common with Peter and Paul”, Jesse responded quickly, starting the conversation. “People think of them as big time saints and apostles. I forgot they spent a lot of their time in jails and prisons. I mean they weren’t arrested for the same kinds of things as I was, but we’ve been in the same types of places, dealing with the same types of inmates, guards, and judges. I really liked that scene with Peter praying in jail. I’ve felt that way lots of times; ready to give up and lose faith. But he wasn’t praying for his release or for a shorter sentence. He just placed himself in God’s hands, saying ‘not my will, Lord, but your will be done’. His prayer was short, and to the point: ‘Lord, I believe. Lord, I hope. Lord, above all, I love, Amen.’ That’s the way I try to pray. It shouldn’t be about me, but about trusting in God.”
“The guys in the Temple sure spent a lot of time arguing”, Reggie added quickly, jumping right into the discussion, “especially about circumcision. They reminded me of some ministers at home, and even some guys in prison, who are always quoting scripture, and arguing about what the Bible really means about this and that. They kind of lose the real message. Those guys are arguing while Paul and Barnabas are slowly spreading the Word, person-by-person, and family-by-family. You know, this series showed me how Christianity really spread after the Resurrection. The Good News of Jesus simply became the “yeast” that slowly grows and expands. Those new Christians just proclaimed the presence of God within us by what they said, and how they lived. We are the ‘clay jars’ that Paul mentions in 2nd Corinthians. We become the real ‘instruments for the Good News’. We are Church, and God works in us and through us”.
Reggie’s words provoked a sudden visualization of the Baptismal ceremony in my mind, and Christ’s final exhortation to “go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of time”. With that image in mind, I suddenly felt compelled to ask a spontaneous question for which I had no prepared answer. What if no one answers? I feared for a moment.
“So,” I asked, apprehensively, “if what Reggie says is true, are WE really being called to be evangelists of the Gospel? How can we be evangelists, especially here in jail?”
Thankfully, a large hand on a muscled arm immediately shot up from the middle of the group. Although he had been a regular participant in many past discussions at other times, Siaki had been strangely quiet during all the previous discussions in the A.D. series. Tonight, however, he gave the powerful testimony that shook my understanding of ministry and evangelism.
“Yeah,” he said emphatically. “We ARE being called to be evangelists; each and every one of us – especially here! We’re being called to be Disciples of Christ by what we say and what we do to each other. That’s what an evangelist does! That’s the main thing I got out of this series. I was a knucklehead just like Paul. I chose a life of alcohol, anger, and violence. And because of those choices, I was arrested and thrown in jail time after time. But God wouldn’t give up on me, even when I wouldn’t change. He kept working on me, “like yeast fermenting in the dark”. God’s grace was working on me until I finally broke. This last time in jail has been my ‘road to Damascus’. I was finally knocked flat and broken down. I hit bottom and had to finally take an honest look at my life, and see what a disaster I’d made of it. I’m facing multiple life sentences now. I’m looking at losing my kids and family, and yet I’m at peace. I finally woke up to the God inside me, and saw that He’d been there all along, offering me forgiveness and Freedom. Not freedom like a release from jail, but real Freedom – Freedom to become the person I really am, the person that God created. So I take each day at a time, learning who I am, how the Devil tempts me, and how to be better. I learn from the brothers around me. We’re capable of great love and compassion, if we just let ourselves show it and accept it. It’s not about traveling to other places and converting people. We’re evangelists in the way we help each other, how we read the bible, and how we gather for prayer. Just like Paul said, “it is no easy work to bring the good news”, and it’s not easy gathering to pray. Other men see us as weak, and they make fun of us and call us names when we get together for Prayer Call. They think cussing, name-calling, and bullying makes them strong, when all they’re really doing is trying to hide their own fears. I think real evangelists just act out Christ’s gospel of love; they walk the talk.”
Siaki’s words brought the session to a close and thoroughly challenged me. I had not expected that type of answer, and I was haunted for a long time by his passionate testimony and its implications to all the men around him – including me. Here I was, a so-called “chaplain”, a volunteer in the Catholic Ministry to the Incarcerated, but I didn’t feel at all like an evangelist. In fact the word evangelist intimidated the hell out of me. For me evangelists were epitomized in my image of Maryknoll missionaries. These were the Catholic priest and nuns who went off to foreign lands to teach and convert new souls for Christ. They were modern saints willing to lay down their lives for the Gospel, just like St. Peter and St. Paul. I was neither a saint nor a catechist, and I certainly didn’t measure up to Siaki’s description of an evangelist. I don’t think I lead a very religious life – and as to praying in public! I struggle to pray even in private, and my daily choices and actions tend to be motivated more out of self-interest and a desire for leisure, than for love. But rather than writing about that evening in my journal the following morning, which I sometimes do to work out my ambivalent feelings about something, I cowardly chose to put it aside and ignore it. I believed that with time my unease and disquiet over Siaki’s testimony would dissolve and eventually go away. But then my daughter called and resurrected the issue once again at the start of Lent.
Prisa’s call began rather routinely with Kathy answering the phone, and chatting with her about her daughter, Sarah, school, and plans for Easter vacation. Then Kathy passed the phone to me, saying Prisa wanted to tell me something. Expecting to also talk about Sarah, I was surprised when she told me of an unexpected gift and email she had received from my brother, her Uncle Eddie. The gift was a book called Rediscover Catholicism, written by Mathew Kelley, a convert to the religion. She knew something of the author, having heard him speak at a past Religious Education Congress, but she was mostly touched by Eddie’s sentiment in sending it not only to her, but also to ALL his nieces and nephews.
“Wow,” I said, wondering about his motivations. “That’s a pretty courageous thing to do.”
“Yeah,” Prisa agreed, “it was also a really sweet thing to do. I thought you’d like to know about it.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “Yeah, I appreciate the news. Could you do my one favor though? Would you mind forwarding his letter to you? I’d really love to read what he said.”
“Sure”, she replied, “I’ll send it right away”.
This is what it said:
Lent, 2013
To my nieces and nephews,
Greetings from your favorite uncle who lives in Monrovia!
I hope this letter finds you well. Usually your grandmother is in charge of passing out religious books but I’m encroaching on her territory as part of my own observance of Lent.
I honestly don’t know where each of you is in regards to your spiritual journeys. I do know however, that you started out in the Catholic Church (C’mon, I was an eyewitness to lots of baptisms).
These are probably the worst times for the church in my lifetime. Let’s face it, when you have to take ridicule from a self-righteous Bill Maher, you know that things are bad. I refuse to believe (like many secular pundits do) that the church is an evil entity whose time is over. I think the church has made despicable mistakes in the last several years but I don’t think that this is a reason to abandon it. In fact, these times have made me hold onto it more closely.
There are a lot of smart, beautiful things in Catholicism but the shame of it is that many of the faithful don’t really take the time to appreciate them. That’s why I’m sending you this book. This is a thoughtful, well-written testament from a convert to Catholicism. Every few pages have given me food for days of thought and reflection.
I’m not going to ask for any book reports but I would encourage you to give this book a try. If you want to get a preview of what it is about, you can see a filmed presentation by the author at: www.catholictvaustin.com.
I think I’ll stop there. If you want to chat (or argue) with me, you can reach me by email or phone. I sincerely hope that you are having a great year and that you seek to always be the best version of yourself.
With love,
Eddie.
As I finished the letter, I started wondering if the tone and content wasn’t a bit on the evangelical side? Although it wasn’t written in the flamboyant, revivalist fashion of an Elmer Gantry, it did show a sharp interest and concern for the spiritual wellbeing of our nieces and nephews. Normally I would say that my brother Ed has never been overly religious. Like all of his three brothers, he attended Catholic schools through high school, was confirmed in the Catholic faith, and served as an altar boy. His most active religious period was in college, when he attended Loyola Marymount University and joined a Jesuit outreach program called Search. In it he participated as a member and facilitator in many Kairos-type retreats aimed at sparking and maintaining a spiritual relationship with God. For many years he remained affiliated with our home parish church in Venice as lector, reading the scripture selections at Sunday masses. Eventually he married, moving to Monrovia with his bride, where he settled into what I’d call, a secularly moral and privately spiritual life. So this email and gift encouraging a rediscovery of Catholicism came as somewhat a surprise to me. I would hazard to guess that the religious practices, habits, and beliefs among the members of my Mexican-American, Catholic family could best be measured on a long religious spectrum. At one extreme there are people with very traditional and orthodox Catholic beliefs and practices, while at the other end there some religiously non-practicing, Christian secularists. I don’t think anyone is an atheist or agnostic, but we are all travelers moving along that religious spectrum, changing positions as we get older, wiser, raising families, or dealing with life’s misadventures and tragedies. There was also an unwritten family rule that although we might argue about religion with each other, we never (except for our mom) tried to impose our religious practices or beliefs on another family member. Was Eddie breaking that code with his gift and letter? Was he intruding into their private lives and foisting his own religious beliefs on our nieces and nephews?
Before reaching a conclusion, I re-read the letter. Everything Eddie said was true. The Catholic Church, as an institution, “has made despicable mistakes” in the past, and will probably continue making them in the future (look what the hierarchy is doing to the nuns in the LCWR). After all, it is an institution run by men, many of them old and dogmatically conservative. But, as he added, “there are a lot of smart, beautiful things in Catholicism” too. One only had to read the writings of the saints and mystics to know that this was true, even when those same saints and mystics were scorned and ostracized by the institutional Church. It finally struck me that Eddie wasn’t really trying to convert or change anyone; he was simply going “public” with his feelings about the Catholic Church, and inviting his relatives to learn more about it. It was as if he was saying to them: “Look, we have this wonderful storehouse of knowledge about the Kingdom of God in the Church. It tells us that through the Good News in the Gospel we can connect with God. Why keep it a secret? The Catholic Church is a vehicle for this connection. It’s a method for men and women to gather together in His name to find The Way”. I concluded that Eddie just didn’t want to keep this knowledge “under a bushel” anymore, so he came out with this letter.
I wish I could tell you that I immediately saw the relevance of what Eddie did with what Siaki said about evangelism on that night in jail – but I didn’t. Oh, I was very proud of Eddie for writing that letter, and a little envious. I even briefly toyed with the idea of working out my reluctance in writing through an essay for my blog, but I was afraid to pursue it. It was only many months later, while looking over my notes from Father Martin’s talk about recognizing the presence of God in the events of a day that it hit me. I finally had to admit that God had been trying to tell me something all along, while I was working at not listening. He spoke to me in the video series, A.D., in Gavin’s advice to listen, in the words that Jesse, Reggie, and Siaki shared during discussions, in Prisa’s phone call, and in the actions and writings of my brother Eddie. So, what did I think He was trying to tell me?
As I noted above, I’ve always fought the idea of being a member of a ministry, or being mistaken for a preacher or an evangelist. I am uneasy when people identify me as a chaplain in Prison Ministry. I’ve never felt like a chaplain and I’m certainly not a minister or a preacher! If a friend or relative praised me for performing one of Christianity’s 7 Corporal Works of Mercy or one of the Jewish mitzvahs (acts of kindness), I simply shrugged. As far as I was concerned all I was doing was showing up and participating in discussions with other men. But to be honest, I haven’t just considered myself a participant. As a retired secondary school teacher and administrator, I naturally fell into the familiar role of facilitator and discussion leader. I tended to separate myself from the topics being discussed and tried to stimulate responses in others – always believing that I had an answer to the questions I ask. I think God was trying to tell me to step down and join the men’s group, so I could better hear what they had to share and teach me. Looking back now, I see that their contributions to our discussions were astonishing in their sophistication, truth, and compassion. While I was hung up on making comparisons and identifying symbols and metaphors, they were relating the Acts of the Apostles to their own lives and struggles, and searching for personal meaning. Siaki’s passionate testimony to my unprepared question hit me like an indictment. As far as he was concerned, evangelists simply demonstrated Christ’s gospel in how they lived, what they said, and the quality of their prayer. For him it wasn’t about preaching, converting, or indoctrinating, it was simply struggling to be with God at all times. I was so stunned by its simplicity that it took Eddie’s example in a letter to his nieces and nephews to finally demonstrate how it’s done. I need to live my Faith and not be ashamed or embarrassed to express or show it. Christ did commission me to follow him, and that is a ministry.
I think Henri J. M. Nouwen, a Dutch-born, Catholic priest and spiritual director, said it best: "Ministry means the ongoing attempt to put one's search for God, with all the moments of pain and joy, despair and hope, at the disposal of those who want to join this search, but do not know how"
As St. Paul and the men in our group pointed out during our discussions on A.D., and Eddie through his letter - being a follower of Christ and the Gospel is hard. It is hard to finally accept our need for God's love and His presence within us. It is hard to truly love your neighbor as ourselves, and it is hard to pray. We can't do it alone, and so we need the support of God through prayer, and the support of other men and women through church. The men in jail call our weekly sessions together, church, and so it has become for me. Once a week I go to my Men's Group in jail. That is my ministry. There, for one night a week, we become Christ's church, and we gather to pray and help each other maintain our relationship with God and become better men. That's what ministry has become for me, and that's how I work at being an evangelist of the Gospel.
