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 Christ the King Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe are both set during Advent. They are harbingers of the greatest story ever told.

December 8, 2021

For most of my life as a priest, I treated the visions at Lourdes, Fatima and other elements of our collective beliefs about Mary and the saints with entrenched skepticism. I considered myself to be a sort of scientist-priest. All knowledge had to be sifted by the scientific method using concepts such as objective scientific study with experiments that can be replicated in a laboratory.

Armed with studies of cosmology and astrophysics, and degrees in behavioral science, my inner world was both predictable and provable. I scoffed inwardly at the pious notion that the Mother of God has appeared in visions to some of the poorest people in some of the most unlikely places on this planet. I also, to my shame today, dismissed openly the notion that the wounds borne by Padre Pio were anything but psychosomatic evidence of an intense psychological focus on Christology.

Then came my Great Comeuppance. It was 1992 and I was living in New Mexico where I was Director of Admissions at a facility for spiritually and psychologically troubled priests. During those years I made regular pilgrimages to the Very Large Array, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the high desert of Socorro.

In 1992, I was visited by two priest friends, one from Maine and one from New York. I wanted to bring them to the desert observatory but they wanted to visit a Catholic shrine in the opposite direction north of Santa Fe where some sort of Marian miracle had once supposedly taken place there. I was not the one driving which really irked me all by itself — so their votes prevailed.

Sitting in the back seat of the car as we approached the shrine, I scoffed in silence and arrogantly dismissed their interest as spiritually immature fluff. What happened next I have never really been able to articulate with any clarity. I was stricken with a momentary inward vision of how small I am next to the immense power of grace that God has bestowed upon Mary.

It lasted only a moment. I could not see her with my eyes, but she became a momentary presence in the deep recesses of my mind. I could not have withstood more than a moment. And like an intense light, it left me with an echo of itself that has never left me. It cast me then into a state of inexplicable interior collapse. It was not fear, but rather overwhelming awe. It lingers nearly three decades later.

There was nothing about that experience that gave me any sense that I am anyone special, for I am not. Instead, it forced me to reinventory the tools necessary to see and encounter life as it is, and not as I would have it. I was wrong to think that the required tools of life are all intellectual, and I was wrong to think that I had them. Up until that day, I was missing the most essential of receivers and didn’t even know it.

Radio waves fill the atmosphere, but without a receiver, they remain silent. A spiritual life is our receiver. We ignore it, or just go through the motions, to our spiritual peril.

There have been other instances when I felt that I had been spoken to. I described two of those instances in two special posts that left me feeling that it just makes more sense to believe than not. Newer readers may not have seen those posts. They were: “A Shower of Roses” and “A Corner of the Veil.”

Inmates Pornchai Moontri (left) and Fr. Gordon MacRae (right) make their consecration to Jesus through Mary on Nov. 24, 2013, the Solemnity of Christ the King, in New Hampshire State Prison for Men. They pray to become instruments in Mary’s “immaculate and merciful hands for bringing the greatest possible glory to God.”

An Encounter with Christ the King

In a post some months ago, “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner,” I wrote of the years I spent in empty exile in prison before anything like a spiritual life began to manifest itself. For twelve years, from 1994 to 2006, I did little more than survive here with no sense of a purpose for the heavy cross I carried. As that post linked above reveals, my friend, Pornchai Moontri, spent those same twelve years in prison in the torment of solitary confinement in the neighboring state of Maine. In 2006, our lives converged.

From there, looking back with hindsight, it seems as though our parallel lives were meant to cross. Today, I am certain of that. As our lives converged, we were set — apparently by “accident” on a path that led Pornchai to a Divine Mercy conversion and led both of us to a relationship with a persistent Patron Saint. St. Maximilian Kolbe entered our lives in prison in mysterious ways, and then led us on a path to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

I would have scoffed at and dismissed such a story thirty years ago, but now I cannot because it has captured me in far greater ways than any unjust prison sentence. Over the course of our long walk along the path of Divine Mercy, other events began to unfold in our lives leading me to believe that everything that happened to me — though evil in and of itself — was somehow hijacked by Divine Mercy to bring about a great and wondrous good.

About sixty miles from this prison, Fr. Michael Gaitley, MIC, had been working on a book called “33 Days to Morning Glory.” It’s a self-directed retreat program that Father Gaitley used to develop a superb DVD presentation for a course in Divine Mercy which culminates in consecration of the self to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The very language of this would likely have turned me away as a younger priest. My theology was far beyond such pious nonsense. That was all before my Comeuppance, however.

I did not know Father Gaitley then. Had never even heard of him. But because I had been writing about our story and Pornchai’s conversion, someone at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts took notice. As Father Gaitley’s 33 Days to Morning G1ory began to sweep the country with profound popularity, someone at the Shrine suggested that this retreat should be offered in a prison. Then they chose this prison, and invited me and Pornchai Moontri.

You likely know elements of this story from past posts about it, but there is a point that I must stress. Pornchai and I had, at the time, been through a series of grave disappointments and discouragement. It seemed at the time that prison was winning the battle for our souls and we felt powerless to interrupt it. We declined the invitation. In the days to follow, St. Maximilian Kolbe intervened, and we reluctantly agreed, but with my usual skepticism. There was, however, a nagging inner sense that we were being led to something of great importance.

It was the fall of 2013. The “33 Days” retreat ended with Mass in the prison chapel on the Solemnity of Christ the King on November 24 that year. It ended with our consecration to Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a consecration I have renewed ever since on the Solemnity of Christ the King. Here is Fr. Michael Gaitley’s Consecration Prayer that we used:

“I,_____, a repentant sinner, renew and ratify today in your hands, O Immaculate Mother, the vows of my Baptism. I renounce Satan and resolve to follow Jesus Christ even more closely than before. Mary, I give you my heart. Please set it on fire with love for Jesus. Make it always attentive to His burning thirst for love and for souls. Keep my heart in your most pure Heart that I may love Jesus and the members of His body with your own perfect love. Mary, I entrust myself to you: my body and soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions. Please make of me, of all that I am and have, whatever most pleases you. Let me be a fit instrument in your immaculate and merciful hands for bringing the greatest possible glory to God. If I fall, please lead me back to Jesus. Wash me in the blood and water that flow from His pierced side, and help me never to lose my trust in this fountain of love and mercy. With you, O Immaculate Mother, you who always do the will of God, I unite myself to the perfect consecration of Jesus as he offers Himself in the Spirit to the Father for the life of the world. Amen.”

The Immaculate Conception

Why should anyone enter into such a personal consecration of the self? I have renewed this consecration on the Solemnity of Christ the King every year since 2013. Each time, I was carried back to that strange day at a New Mexico shrine in 1992 when Mary Herself knocked on the door of my soul. I have no other way to put it. Like Mary, I have since pondered these things in my heart (Luke 2:13), and they took over my heart.

The answer to why we should make such a consecration rests in the very identity of the Immaculate Conception. It is not a mere coincidence that at Mass for the Immaculate Conception, the Church chooses as the proclamation of the Gospel St. Luke’s account of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38). I wrote of the same passage in “St. Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us.”

In that exchange between the Angel of the Annunciation and Mary, Gabriel, one of the Angels who stands in the Presence of God, refers to Mary with a term never before used in all of Sacred Scripture. Never before had an angel referred to a human being with a title and not a name: “Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). When translating the New Testament Greek into Latin, St. Jerome interpreted the Greek title used by Gabriel as “gratia plena” which, in English is rendered “full of grace.” No English words can fully capture the meaning of the original Greek.

The term in St. Luke’s original Greek is “kecharitōmenē,” a title unique in Sacred Scripture. It refers to a vessel that is, and always has been, filled with divine life. St. Maximilian Kolbe developed a fascinating identification of the Holy Spirit as the “Uncreated Immaculate Conception” and of Mary as the “Created Immaculate Conception,” living in an interior union, from the first moment of her existence, a “union of essence” with the Holy Spirit.

Some Catholics (I was once one of them) and some fundamentalist Protestant Christians rebel against such an interpretation as assigning a state of divinity to Mary. That is not the case. Another Greek phrase used of Mary by the Church Fathers is “Theotokos,” the “bearer of God,” a term that identifies Mary as the New Ark of the Covenant. It makes complete sense that God, from the moment of Mary’s bodily existence, created within her a union with the Holy Spirit. The same Protestant Christians also stress vehemently the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture. There is simply no other way to interpret what the Archangel Gabriel says to Mary — and says to us about Mary — in Luke Chapter One: “Kecharitōmenē” — one who lives in a union of essence with the Holy Spirit. Among all human beings, Mary lives a unique existence in the Presence of God.

At the beatification Mass for Maximilian Kolbe on October 17, 1971, Saint Pope Paul VI addressed this: “A mysterious communion unites Mary to Christ, a communion that is documented convincingly in the New Testament ... The Church is faithful to honor Mary, her most exceptional daughter and her spiritual Mother.”

Our Patron and friend on this path, St. Maximilian Kolbe, gave Mary another name: The Immaculata. He honored her with his life, and he handed over that life in the horror of Auschwitz to free another prisoner. While writing this post, I spoke by telephone with Pornchai Moontri in Thailand who also has been pondering.

He told me that he knows he would not be free today — in every sense of that word — if not for me. And it troubles him greatly, he said, that I remain unjustly in prison. He is wrong about this. If Pornchai is free, so am I. I know without a doubt today that the powerful grace instilled in my heart was for this singular purpose. I know this for two reasons. On the Solemnity of Christ the King in 2013, when Pornchai and I first entered into Marian consecration, Marian Helper magazine editor Felix Carroll wrote of it in “Mary Is at Work Here”:

“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group of inmates to be the first. 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.”

However, the strongest hint came as I pondered all of this in my heart. It came as somewhat of a bombshell. I did a deep dive into the events I describe here and realized with astonishment that the inexplicable event I experienced at a New Mexico shrine in 1992 is what set this story in motion. It was during Holy Week in 1992. Just days before, some 2,000 miles away in Bangor, Maine, a desperate teenager fleeing a horror inflicted on him committed the act of despair that would send him to prison. Fourteen years later, our paths merged, and set us upon a road to Divine Mercy.

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A Note to readers from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please share this post, and please visit our “Special Events” page to assist with an important Advent project and mission of Divine Mercy. This was the subject of my important Advent post, “A Struggling Parish Builds an Advent Bridge to Thailand.”

Marian Helper Editor, Felix Carroll invited me to write for the Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2016. That article, “The Doors That Have Unlocked,” is the featured post this week at “Voices from Beyond.”

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“O Come, Thou Key of David, come,

And open wide our heavenly home,

Make safe the path that sets us free,

And leads us on the road to liberty.

Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel

To Thee shall come Emmanuel”

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Photo by Dennis Jarvis