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.

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.”

— Marian Helper, Spring 2014

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.

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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

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And available until Pentecost:

A Personal Holy Week Retreat from Beyond These Stone Walls

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.”

To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate

The Gospel of St. Luke for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time is a summons to enter the Kingdom of God through a narrow gate, but it requires shedding some baggage.

August 17, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Readers of a certain age who grew up in the United States might remember “S&H Green Stamps.” The Sperry and Hutchinson Company first introduced them in grocery stores in 1896 as promotional bonus awards to promote retail purchases. By World War II, gas stations and other retail outlets caught on. By 1960, ninety percent of U.S. retailers were awarding Green Stamps. In 1962, S&H issued more stamps that the U.S. Post Office.

My mother was a dedicated collector. About once a month, when I was seven or eight, I was cajoled into sitting at our kitchen table to paste the month’s supply of Green Stamps into collection booklets. When enough books were accumulated, they were taken to a place that I thought then to be magical. It was called the “S&H Redemption Center” where Green Stamps of dubious value could be redeemed for something new. S&H published the world’s largest catalog of redeemable items. It had a whole page of skateboards which had become all the rage in 1962. Alas, my mother passed it by in favor of a boring toaster.

By 1982, the year I became a priest — having never broken a bone because I never had a skateboard — Green Stamps disappeared from the retail landscape of America and our collective consciousness. The Redemption Centers are gone now, but hope for redemption never left and must never leave. Losing that hope would be catastrophic for humanity. We express that transforming hope every day, even if we do not realize it, and it is far more than a marketing ploy.

What do you mean when you pray, “Thy Kingdom Come,” “Adveniat Regnum Tuum”? It’s the third subordinate clause of the Lord’s Prayer, the “Pater Noster,” also known by its first two words of address in English, the “Our Father.” You pray, “Thy Kingdom Come” once at every Mass. If you pray the Rosary, you say it at least six times. A core expectation of the Gospel is that “The Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:5). In Volume One of his great book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI described the implications for that statement:

“The core constant of the Gospel is this: The Kingdom of God is at hand. A milestone is set up in the flow of time; something new has taken place, and an answer to this gift is demanded of man: conversion and faith.” (p. 47)

The phrase “Kingdom of God” occurs 122 times in the New Testament. In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) it is found 99 times and 90 of them are from the direct words of Jesus. In the post-Vatican II world, some came to believe that this expectation of the Kingdom of God is fulfilled and made manifest primarily in the Church. That may be true, but it is not the only truth as Pope Benedict explains in this surprising analysis:

“Instead of the great expectation of God’s own Kingdom, of a new world transformed by God himself we got something quite different, the Church! And what a pathetic substitute it is … Is changing the subject from the Kingdom of God to the genesis of the Church really just the collapse of a promise and the emergence of something else in its place?” ( p. 48)

The Cross and the Kingdom of God

The answer to that question depends on how we understand “Kingdom of God” as Jesus meant it. As Pope Benedict asked: “Is Jesus just a messenger charged with representing a cause that is ultimately independent of him, or is the messenger himself the message?” In other words, is Jesus Himself the Kingdom of God?

In the Gospel, “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven” refer to the same destination. Heaven — which I always capitalize — is distinct from “the heavens” which refer to the material universe. “Kingdom of Heaven” is not uttered as a substitute for God, but is rather in respect for the Jewish tradition that the name of God was not to be uttered or written. This is why you may often see Hebrew scholars write G-d in place of God.

Among the Fathers of the Church, Origen, in his early Second Century treatise, On Prayer, wrote,

“Those who pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God pray without any doubt for the Kingdom of God that is contained in themselves. For in every holy person it is God who reigns and has dominion. So let God stroll in us as a spiritual paradise and rule in us with his Christ.”

The idea of that beautiful image is that the Kingdom of God is not found on any map. It is not the kingdom of a fallen world. It is Christ himself and the extent to which he lives in us. So even if there is doubt that the Kingdom of God somehow touches my life, at least there is always hope. Just like most of you, I, too, struggle with that hope.

I think that most of our readers have come to understand that I have had my share of hardship. To be falsely accused and cast into prison for the last 28 years and counting seems the equivalent of living on the wrong side of a rather famous parable. It is one of the parables that most represents life in the Kingdom of God as it exists in the here and now. It involves choices. Commonly known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan, it is more accurately called the Parable of a Man Beaten by Robbers and Left for Dead.

The parable, found in Luke 10:25-37, begins with a question posed by a lawyer/Pharisee, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer, an expert in Hebrew Scripture, already knows the answer but he poses his question “to put Jesus to the test.” So Jesus answers the famous question with one of his own. “What is written in the law?” The lawyer responds correctly by combining two verses from the Hebrew Scriptures which were very familiar to Jesus:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind” (Deuteronomy 6:5) “and your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

Elsewhere, in Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus called these two Scripture verses “the greatest Commandment,” the one upon which all others depend. The Ten Commandments and the 613 precepts of the Mosaic Law — all the dietary and ritual laws of purity in the life of Israel — are distilled into striving for these two. Love of God and Mercy to others are the towering rules of the Kingdom of God.

In the parable itself, the man beaten by robbers and left at the side of the road is simply passed over by a priest and a Levite. The lawyer hearing this understands well that their religious duty, written in the laws of ritual purity described above, requires them not to touch the body of a dead or dying man. The Samaritan, on the other hand, is already an outcast from the religious practice of Israel, and is thus the only one free to show mercy.

The lawyer/Pharisee hearing this Parable would find it painfully familiar. It recalls a very similar story from the Second Book of Chronicles (28:8-15). About 1,000 years before Jesus told this parable, a group of people from the Kingdom of Judah were assailed and captured by the Northern Israelite army. Four men from Samaria came upon the beaten captives. The four Samaritans clothed, fed, and, anointed them, and placing them upon their own beasts of burden, took them peacefully to Jericho. The fact that the parable had a precedent deep in the history of Israel would have crushed the lawyer’s resistance to the story of grace imparted by way of mercy.

The Narrow Gate

The question posed by the lawyer/Pharisee that opens the Parable of the Man Beaten by Robbers is very similar to one posed in the Gospel at Mass on the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus had just described the Kingdom of God as being “like leaven.” Leaven used in dough is a rising agent. So what is it about the Kingdom of God that gives rise to it like leaven? He earlier refers to the kingdom as “like a mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds that grow into great trees where birds may make their nests.”

Then a question was posed. “Lord, will those who are saved be few? (Luke 13:23) The response of Jesus that follows has been disheartening for many, but I believe it is misunderstood:

“Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter but will not be able.” He then went on to talk about weeping and gnashing of teeth and “seeing Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God and you yourself cast out” (Luke 22:28). Not exactly a hopeful narrative.

The place I turn to for context is one that I have written about before. It is the story of the only human being, at first glance a seemingly unlikely one, who was directly given salvation and eternal life in the Gospel. I wrote of the story of this man in “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.”

In Jesus of Nazareth Volume II: Holy Week Pope Benedict XVI wrote of that same account: “Of the two men crucified with Jesus, only one joins in mocking him. The other grasps the mystery of Jesus.” To do so while in the middle of one’s own crucifixion is the most hopeful and encouraging image that I have found in all of Sacred Scripture. The crucified Dismas asks but one thing, and it is not deliverance from his cross. He asks only, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

Clearly, while on the cross, the penitent Dismas realized that this powerless man beside him is a true king. He wanted to be at this man’s side in both crucifixion and in Glory. The simple response of Jesus recognized both the weight of this man’s cross and the depth of his conversion and transformation: “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43).

The Greek word Luke’s Gospel used in describing what this man will encounter that day is “Paradeisos.” It is used only three times in the New Testament and was first used in all of Sacred Scripture in Genesis 2:8 where it refers to the Garden of Eden before the Fall of Man. There is no talk between Jesus and Dismas of weeping and gnashing of teeth, nor is there any mention of entering the Kingdom through the narrow door. Jesus promises to this repentant man nothing less than life in the eternal dwelling place of God.

There are hints for this through Scripture: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.” (John 14:6-7). This conveys to me a truth that Dismas Crucified to the Right, came to see only from his own cross.

Jesus does not have a map to the narrow gate, nor is he a key to it. He is not even a ticket through it. Dismas discovers on his cross that Jesus is Himself the Narrow Gate to the Kingdom of Heaven, the only passageway from this life to eternal life. It could not be clearer.

So our only task is to follow Him, to imitate Him, and not even perfectly because He knows we can do nothing perfectly. What he seeks in us is mercy in our hearts, the knowledge that the measure with which we measure will be measured back to us. This is the leaven, the stuff that expands the Kingdom of God within us.

Strive to enter through the Narrow Gate.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post which will be placed in our Library Categories, Catholic Spiritual Life and Sacred Scripture. You may also want to visit — or revisit — these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

The Measure by Which You Measure: Prisoners of a Captive Past

To Christ the King Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

Please visit our “Special Events” Page for ways to help us bring mercy to those left on the side of the road.

Courtesy of L’Obsservatore Romano