For this Prodigal Son, Homecoming Is a Work in Progress

Pornchai Moontri’s return to Thailand after 36 years has been that of a Prodigal Son traversing some dark rivers of the heart, but with help from an unexpected navigator.

September 7, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“Sawasdee Kup, my friends. This is Pornchai writing from Bangkok, Thailand. I am very happy to see this post by Father G about my other spiritual father and patron saint, Maximilian Kolbe. He has been so much a part of my life in too many ways for me to describe. I think Father G summed it up well when he introduced this post today on Linkedin and Facebook. Here is how he described it:

"#Resistance This post reveals a little known mystical connection between St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Pope John Paul II. Resistance to evil is never futile."

My birthday is coming up. (That is not a hint!) Some of my friends got me my first computer as an early birthday present. Remember that I was "down" for the entire computer age. So this is like an alien device to me. Yesterday I saw Beyond These Stone Walls here in Thailand on a full size computer screen for the very first time. It is awesome! And so are all of you.

With love and my prayers,

Pornchai Maximilian Moontri”

After I posted “A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II” a few weeks ago, the comment above was posted by our friend Pornchai Moontri writing from Bangkok, Thailand. A few readers subsequently sent messages asking for an update about Pornchai and his life there. I had already intended to write about this because his birthday is September 10, just a few days after this is posted. Pornchail will be 49 years old and is still struggling to regain the sense of home that was lost when he left Thailand 37 years ago in 1985.

This post will be followed in a week by one that has been a long time coming. I have been working on it for months, and I believe it is the most important post I have ever written. There are some who do not want me to write it, but, for reasons that may seem apparent here next week, I must. It is an Earth-shattering account for which Satan himself has lodged many obstacles in the path of its telling. They have mostly been overcome. I ask for your prayers as I complete that most important post this week.

By coincidence, I learned only after beginning today’s post that the Gospel for the Sunday Mass following its publication is the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The word, “Prodigal” does not mean what some readers think it means. Its origin is in the Middle English “prodigalite” which comes from the Latin, “prodigere,” the original meaning of which is to drive away or squander. From the famous parable that Jesus told, it has also come to mean “reckless” or “wasteful,” neither of which I could ascribe to my own Prodigal Son, Pornchai Moontri.

But there was time in Pornchai’s life — a long time — when he felt compelled to drive away anyone and everyone who cared enough to enter it. This is the plight of so many who have been spiritually and emotionally wounded from a traumatic past. Pornchai tried to drive me away, too, but God had other plans and we both ended up following them. That story was told in this very same week one year ago, so I invite you to revisit it. If next week’s post is my most important, this one remains my own favorite. It is “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner.”

Mary Calls in Reinforcements

I do not know whether I have the writing skills to adequately convey what Pornchai has been up against over the last 18 months. I have known and helped other prisoners who have faced deportation as adults to a home and country they had not seen since early childhood. Many simply do not survive. I had long been determined that Pornchai would not be one of those. Over time, by some mysterious grace, my writing made its way around the Globe to Thailand where people noticed and some support developed to assist Pornchai’s plight. He had no contact for 36 years with any of the extended family left behind when he was taken away at age eleven. He had only vague memories.

While he was still trapped in that grueling five months of post-prison ICE detention, my heart sank when I learned that the housing and support plan we had for him just fell apart in the eleventh hour due to illness. It was just weeks before Pornchai was to board a flight and I had no backup plan. Trying to put such things together from inside a prison cell half a world away is a daunting challenge.

I kept no secrets from Pornchai in this regard so I painfully remember hearing his own heart sink at the other end of the phone when I told him that the plan we had in place for him fell apart.

I remember trying to put the best spin I could on it. I asked him to trust. I said that often in my experience, such disappointments can become opportunities. Did I really believe that? I’m not sure, but I was sure of one thing: Pornchai would not believe it unless I did. So I did! In prayer, I turned this over to Mary, Undoer of Knots, my favorite from of Marian devotion and the most powerful. I asked her in an act of surrender to undo the knots of faithless distrust that held us bound.

Just two days later, in our daily ten-minute phone call while Pornchai was stranded in ICE waiting out a pandemic, I told him we had better news. I told him that Fr. John Hung Le, a Society of the Divine Word missionary priest from Vietnam, had been reading about us on Beyond These Stone Walls and sent me a message that he wants to help and would provide housing for Pornchai until we could find a better plan. Pornchai was dubious. “I don’t want to be a burden for anyone,” he said.

After Pornchai’s initial stay in required pandemic quarantine at a Bangkok hotel in February, 2021, Father John showed up with our Divine Mercy Thailand friend, Yela, and with Chalathip, Father John’s neighbor and a benefactor of his refugee project. Chalathip learned about Pornchai’s life from Yela and Fr. John, and she received an interior summons from Mary herself.

A retired teacher, Chalathip took on the task of helping Pornchai to assimilate in Thailand, a most difficult task after an absence consisting of his entire adult life since age eleven. Pornchai had to be tutored in conversational Thai, and quickly, but Chalathip knew this could not happen while Pornchai was living with four Vietnamese priests, none of whom spoke Thai.

So Chalathip spoke with Father John and decided to offer Pornchai a small apartment on the upper floor of her home just a few doors down the street from Father John’s. They spoke to me about this, but I was not going to second guess those with boots on the ground.

Chalathip owns several properties in Thailand, so in return Pornchai offered to help her manage them. Having become proficient in woodworking, Pornchai found that these skills translated easily into home repair. He dug up stumps, did landscaping, fixed leaky roofs, painted walls, sanded and restored furniture. Chalathip had two daughters. One had tragically died from an illness several years earlier and the other lived in the U.K. It did not take long for a strong maternal bond to form between her and Pornchai. This was literally divinely inspired. Chalathip never had a son, and Pornchai lost his Mother at a very early age.

Honor Thy Mother

Over recent months, Pornchai had enormous decisions to make. Chalathip had accompanied him and Father John on Pornchai’s first visit to the home and family from where he was taken at age eleven. It was in the village of Phuviang in Khon Kaen Province in the far northeast of Thailand — a nine-hour drive from Bangkok. I wrote about this hauntingly mysterious visit in “For Pornchai Moontri, a Miracle Unfolds in Thailand.”

In recent weeks, Pornchai had to return there to face a difficult decision. The half-completed home that his mother was building at the time of death in 2000, and the small amount of farmland around it, would have been taken from him unless he could come up with 80,000 Thai Baht in fees that had accumulated so he could effect a transfer of the house and land to his own name. Pornchai was frozen in place unable to decide what to do.

The amount seemed impossible for Pornchai, but in U.S. dollars, 80,000 is the equivalent of about $2,400. It just so happened that I had saved that amount in a just-in-case savings account. I did not want Pornchai to lose his mother’s home and land because it would have been gone forever. So I sent him what I had and he was able to complete the transfer. But the real Guardian Angel in this story was Chalathip. She went there with him, acting as a translator and trusted advisor pointing out options as Pornchai discerned under pressure what to do.

A kind reader has since returned my small investment to me. I am profoundly thankful, but most of all I am thankful for Chalathip. At every step of Pornchai’s long journey home, she has been a much needed teacher, guide, chauffeur and parent. She is near the age Pornchai’s Mother would be today had she lived, and I believe strongly that Chalathip, like me, was destined for this connection with Pornchai.

She returned with him to Phuviang four times in an effort to help him obtain his Thai ID for full citizenship. At some point I learned that after all my prayers to Mary Undoer of Knots, Chalathip was right there untangling all the complications that Pornchai faced in order to make Thailand his home again.

Father John and Chalathip have joined Pornchai in prayers at his Mother’s tomb at the Buddhist Temple cemetery nearby. Thailand is 99-percent Buddhist but there are many Catholic converts there and Catholicism has left a large footprint in Thailand. Chalathip, so very rare in Thailand, is Catholic since birth. Her deeply felt faith and fidelity to our Lord has bridged the chasm between hope and despair for Pornchai. He and I still speak every day, and I have recently detected that hope and some evidence of actual happiness in his voice knowing that he is not alone in his plight.

I detect it in my own voice as well of late. Night is often long and dark, but with the dawn comes — if not rejoicing, then at least a modicum of peace. It is what Jesus said would happen if we remain faithful. “Peace be with you.”

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please join me here next week for the most important post I have ever written. It’s a matter of life and death!

And thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please “SUBSCRIBE” if you haven’t already. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

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Another note from Father Gordon: Our friends from Divine Mercy Thailand who sponsored Pornchai’s homecoming will be gathering with Father John’s community this week for a birthday celebration for Pornchai.

Also, Pornchai was recruited to teach an ocassional physical fitness class by the owner of MI Fitness in Pak Chong, Thailand. Mr. Mi (pronounced Mee) saw him working out at his gym and corralled him to teach a class. Mr. Mi and his wife created the poster below for their Facebook page and a short video of Pornchai’s first class. Just click on the poster to see the video.