“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Our Holy Week Retreat for Beyond These Stone Walls
Each Holy Week since 2010 Fr Gordon MacRae has composed a special post based on the Scriptural events of the Way of the Cross. They now comprise a Holy Week retreat.
Each Holy Week since 2010 Fr Gordon MacRae has composed a special post based on the Scriptural events of the Way of the Cross. They now comprise a Holy Week retreat.
March 20, 2024 by Father Gordon MacRae
As many of our readers know, this blog began in controversy in 2009. Born out of a challenge from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles to rise above suffering and consider instead its legacy. Many posts in my long Prison Journal since 2010 have been about the injustices that I and other priests have faced. But in the weeks before his death in December 2008, Cardinal Dulles sent a series of letters to me in prison. He challenged me to dig deeper into my own passion narrative. Cardinal Dulles wrote:
“Someone might want to add a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison. In the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, Fr Walter Ciszek, and Saint Paul, your writing, which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”
And so in preparation for Holy Week in 2010, I began to make a concerted effort to set aside my own unjust plight to write a post about the Passion of the Christ. I compose a new Holy Week post every year since to present a different scene in the Way of the Cross. For me, this has become a sacred obligation as a priest to take part in my own unique way in the events that led to Calvary and beyond. And, yes, there IS a beyond.
Many readers, especially those who have also suffered in ways large or small, have found these posts to be inspiring. No one has been more surprised by this than me. So we have collected our Holy Week posts in the order in which they appear in the Gospel narrative to become an invitation for a personal retreat. We invite you to make these posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter observance.
If any of them touches your heart and soul in some way, or gives you a deeper understanding of the Scriptures, then please also share a link to them with others. I hear from many newer readers who first came to this blog in just that way, and then found in these pages spiritual consolation and a path to peace.
We will add a new post on Wednesday of Holy Week this year and will make the title linked here, active at that time. We will retain these links at our “Special Post” feature until Pentecost, the conclusion of the Easter Season:
The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage (2020)
Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.
Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light (2020)
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane (2019)
The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.
The Apostle Falls: Simon Peter Denies Christ (2024)
The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.
Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands (2014)
‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’ (2017)
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross (2023)
Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found (2012)
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Salvation.
To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell (2022)
The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, what happened to Jesus between the Cross and the Resurrection, is a mystery to be unveiled.
Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb (2015)
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.
Before the gates there sat, On either side a formidable Shape
One of Gustave Dore’s illustrations of the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton (Courtesy of University at Buffalo)
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 here to proceed 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.”
A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ
The Gospel according to St Luke tells the story of Jesus, revealed to be Son of God, led into the desert to be tested by the devil who does not give up easily.
The Gospel according to St Luke tells the story of Jesus, revealed to be Son of God, led into the desert to be tested by the devil who does not give up easily.
February 21, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: If you were present at Catholic Mass for the First Sunday of Lent, then you heard the Gospel Proclamation about the demonic temptation of Christ in the desert. I have discovered much more to that story, and it is manifested here in a Church that still wanders in the desert. Lest we wander too far into the desert wilderness, please read on.
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In my estimation, one of the best movies about Catholic life in America taking a wrong turn has been deemed by some to be a bit rough around the edges. Robert DeNiro portrays Los Angeles Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, and Robert Duvall is cast as his brother, LAPD homicide detective Tom Spellacy in the 1981 film, True Confessions. The film is from a novel of the same name by John Gregory Dunne based on the famous Los Angeles “Black Dahlia” case of 1947.
DeNiro’s character, Monsignor Desmond Spellacy is a priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the late 1940s at the epicenter of the power politics of a church beginning to succumb to the world in which it thrives. Amid corruption while being groomed to become the next Archbishop, the Monsignor nonetheless clings to an honest spiritual life just starting its inevitable fraying at the edges as he is dragged ever deeper into a tangled web of deceit.
Robert Duvall portrays his older brother, Tom Spellacy, an honest and dedicated — if somewhat cynical — L.A. homicide detective whose investigation of the murder of a prostitute brings him ever closer to the perimeter of an archdiocese circling the wagons. Charles Durning portrays the thoroughly corrupt owner of a large construction firm bidding for church building projects. Having just been awarded Catholic Layman of the Year by Monsignor Spellacy, he is also a suspect in the murder investigation that a lot of people want quietly swept under a rug.
Those wanting to influence and sideline Tom’s investigation come up with evidence — a photograph — that his Monsignor-brother also knew the murdered girl, but the photograph is entirely benign. Still, it’s enough to make a lurid case for guilt by association leaving Tom in a quandary about pursuing an investigation that will destroy his innocent brother’s career. The film ends with the case solved, but Monsignor Spellacy banished to a small parish in the California desert, his hopes for political advancement in the Church destroyed.
That the film — and the priesthood of Monsignor Spellacy — ends in the desert is highly symbolic. The image has ancient roots into our Sacred Scriptures, and especially into the Book of Leviticus. This book is comprised of liturgical laws for the Levitical priesthood reaching back to 1300 BC as Moses led his people through a forty-year period of exile in the Sinai desert. Some of the ritual accounts it contains are far more ancient.
In a recent Christmas post, “Silent Night and the Shepherds Who Quaked at the Sight,” I wrote that the troubles of our time are the manifestation of spiritual warfare that has been waged in the world since God’s first bond of covenant with us. Before that bond, we were doomed. Since that bond, reestablished by God again and again, there is hope for us. We remain oblivious to spiritual warfare to our own spiritual peril. We live in a very important time in God’s covenant relationship with us. The Birth of the Messiah and His walking among us are equidistant in time between our existence now in the 21st Century AD and Abraham’s first encounter with God in the 21st Century BC.
Our Day of Atonement Begins
The Gospel according to St Luke (4:1-13) is also set in the desert as the Day of Atonement begins for all humankind. Revealed in Baptism as the Son of God …
“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.”
— Luke 4:1
The scene has roots in an ancient ritual for the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16:5-10. Aaron, the high priest …
“Shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering .... Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the tent of meeting; and Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin offering, but the goat upon which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the desert wilderness to Azazel …”
— Leviticus 16:5,7-10
This describes the ritual for purification known in Hebrew as Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement from Leviticus Chapter 16. The ritual reaches far beyond Moses into the time of God’s first covenant with Abraham some 2000 years before the Birth of the Messiah.
There are two goats mentioned in the ritual: One for sacrifice, to Yahweh, and the other — the one bearing the sins of Israel — is “for Azazel.” This name appears only in Leviticus 16 and nowhere else in Scripture. The name is believed to be that of a fallen angel and follower of Satan who haunts the desert wilderness. Some scholars believe Azazel to be the being referred to as “the night hag” haunting the desolate wilderness, in Isaiah 34:14.
The Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible called the second goat “caper emissarius,” (“the goat sent out”). An English translation rendered it “escape goat” from which the term “scapegoat” has been derived. A scapegoat is one who is held to bear the wrongs of others, or of all. The symbolism in the Gospel of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the desert to face the devil is striking because Jesus is to become, by God’s own design, the scapegoat for the sins of all humanity.
In the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, Jesus is described as “filled with the Holy Spirit.” This term appears in only three other places in Scripture, all three also written by Saint Luke. In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (6:5) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit” was the first to be chosen to care for widows and orphans in the daily distribution of food. Later in Acts (7:55) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God” as he became the first Martyr of the Church.
The witnesses who approved of the stoning of Stephen “laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58) whose radical conversion to become Paul would build the global Church.
Also in Acts (11:24) Barnabus is filled with the Holy Spirit as he founded the first Church beyond Jerusalem for the Gentiles of Antioch. The sense of the term “filled with the Holy Spirit” in Saint Luke’s passages alludes to the hand of God in our living history.
In our first Sunday Gospel for Lent, Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, “having returned from the Jordan,” is led by the Spirit for forty days in the desert wilderness. The Gospel links this account to His Baptism at the Jordan at which He is revealed as “Son of God.” This revelation becomes a diabolical taunt, and knowing that Jesus has fasted becomes the devil’s first temptation: “If you are the Son of God, turn this stone into bread.” Jesus thwarts the temptation, and the taunt with a quote from the Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy 8:3), “Man does not live by bread alone (but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God.”)
The symbolism is wonderful here. Like the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son — also from Luke (15:11-32) — God had two sons. In the Book of Exodus (4:21-22) Israel is called God’s “first-born son”:
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let my son go, I will slay your first-born son’.”
It was the fulfillment of this command of God that finally broke the yoke of slavery and caused Pharaoh to release Israel from bondage. But, as in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Israel was not faithful and spent forty years wandering in the desert as a result of this son’s infidelity. In the Gospel of Luke, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity assumed the humanity of the first son, and was led by the Spirit into the desert to save us in the Second Exodus, our release from the bondage of sin and death.
Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism
The second temptation is the lure of political power. In a single instant, the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said, “I shall give you all this power and glory for it has been handed over to me… all this will be yours if you worship me.” This has been the downfall of many, including many in our Church. Jesus again quotes from Scripture, “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone” (Deuteronomy 6:13). This Gospel revisits the lure of political power immediately after the Institution of the Eucharist:
“A dispute arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves… I am among you as one who serves.”
— Luke 22:24-26
The Greek in which this Gospel was written used for the word “leader” the term “hēgoumenos.” Its implication refers especially to a religious leader. The Letter to the Hebrews (13:7) uses the same Greek term for “leaders,” and it is not their power which is to be emulated, but their faith to the extent to which they reflect Christ:
“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
— Hebrews 13:7-8
Though it doesn’t generate the media’s obsession with sexual scandals, hubris and self-centeredness have been a far greater problem in our Church, and are the underlying catalyst for almost all other scandals, sexual, financial, and reputational. This culture has led Church leaders into the temptation of Earthly Powers, and too many have been eager participants. Some refer to this as “clericalism,” and in my opinion the best commentary on it was a brief article by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things entitled, “Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism.”
The Payment of Judas Iscariot
Catholicism in America thrived when it had to earn its dignity. Once it became politically accepted, it went on in this culture to become comfortable, and its leaders (“hēgoumenos”) perhaps a bit too comfortable. Religious authority and the sheer masses of believers spelled political power. The pedestals upon which we stood grew in height with every clerical advance, and our bishops stood upon the highest pedestals of all with palatial trappings more akin to the courts of Herod and Caesar than the Cross of Christ the King, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
It is no mystery why, as the height of our pedestals grew, so did our scandals. This is perhaps why Jesus offered to us the way to pray “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” It is because He alone could be led by the Spirit into the desert of temptation and emerge without dragging along behind Him the evil He encountered there.
As the last temptation of Christ unfolded in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, it is now the devil, in a final effort, who dares to quote and distort the Word of God. He led Jesus to Jerusalem, and to the parapet, the highest point of the highest place, the Temple of Sacrifice. And now comes his final taunt:
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you, to guard you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone’.”
— Luke 4:9-11
This devil of the desert takes up the argument of Jesus, the Word of God, quoting Psalm 91 (11-12). The taunt to test God and “go your own way” is far deeper than the mere words convey. In Jerusalem, the devil will take hold of Judas Iscariot (Luke 22:3) leading to the trial before Pilate and the Way of the Cross. In Jerusalem, the powers of darkness, first encountered here in the desert, are mightily at work: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” (Luke 22:53)
The Church in the Western world has entered a time of persecution but thus far the institutional response — having traded the Gospel for “zero tolerance” in a quest for scapegoats to cast out into the desert to Azazel — does not bode well for the faith of a Church built upon the blood of Her martyrs.
Perhaps, as the Spirit leads us into this desert, it is our vocation, and not that of our leaders, that is essential. Perhaps it is not clerical reform that is needed so much as a revolution — a revolution of fidelity that can only be lived and not just talked about. We will not find the Holy Spirit in a revolution that manifests itself in blessing sin or in any politically correct acquiescence to same-sex unions and other moral distortions of our time. Those who abandon their faith in a time in the desert were leaving anyway, just waiting for the right excuse. To use the behavior of leaders to diminish and then abandon the Sacrament of Salvation is to cave to the true goal of Azazel. He could not lure Christ from us, but he can lure us from Christ and he is giving it a go.
The devil finally gives up in the desert scene of the Last Temptation of Christ in Luke Chapter 4. But the devil is not quite done. Luke’s Gospel tells that he will return “at a more opportune time.” Satan finds that time not in an effort to test Jesus, but rather to test his followers. He targets Judas Iscariot in the last place we would ever expect to find the devil: “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post to help place it before someone at a crossroads.
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 here to proceed 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.”
A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls
Each year since 2010, Fr Gordon MacRae composed from prison a special Holy Week post. These posts follow the Way of the Cross creating a personal Holy Week retreat.
Each year since 2010, Fr Gordon MacRae composed from prison a special Holy Week post. These posts follow the Way of the Cross creating a personal Holy Week retreat.
March 29, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
As many of our readers know, this blog began in controversy in 2009. It was born out of a challenge from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles to rise above suffering and consider its legacy. Many posts in this Prison Journal have been about the injustices that I and other priests have faced. But in the weeks before his death in December 2008, Cardinal Dulles sent a series of letters to me in prison. He challenged me to dig deeper into my own passion narrative. Cardinal Dulles wrote:
“Someone might want to add a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison. In the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, Fr Walter Ciszek, and Saint Paul, your writing, which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”
And so in preparation for Holy Week in 2010, I began to make a concerted effort to set aside my own unjust plight for a time to write a post about the ascent to Calvary. Then I repeated that effort year after year, with each post presenting a different scene in the Passion of the Christ.
Taken as a whole, these Holy Week posts now form a complete Way of the Cross. Some readers have found them to be inspiring. So this year we have collected our Holy Week posts, not in the order in which they were written, but in the order in which they appear in the Gospel narrative. They become, for some readers, a personal Holy Week retreat.
We invite you to make these posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter observance. We will retain them at our “Holy Week” page until Pentecost, the conclusion of the Easter Season:
The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage
Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.
Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane
The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.
Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands
‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross
Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Christians.
To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell
The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, that Jesus descended into hell, is a mystery to be unveiled.
Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerge from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.
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 here to proceed 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.”
Michael, Gabriel, Raphael: Allies in Spiritual Battle
On September 29, the Church honors the three named angels of Sacred Scripture, the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and on October 2, our Guardian Angels.
On September 29, the Church honors the three named angels of Sacred Scripture, the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and on October 2, our Guardian Angels.
September 29, 2021
“Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”
— Psalm 91:9-11
The September issue of “Give Us This Day,” a monthly prayer and liturgy guide for Catholics published by Liturgical Press, has a small tribute to the great Japanese novelist, Shusaku Endo. He died on the Feast of Michaelmas, September 29, 1996, at the age of 73.
Shusaku Endo was a Catholic convert best known for his acclaimed novel, Silence, which I read in my early years in prison. It had an enormous impact on me. It is a small book, about 200 pages, first published in Japanese in 1969. The focus of much of Endo’s writing reflects his struggles, as a translator described it, “with the anguish of faith and the mercy of God.”
I read it at a time when I, too, was struggling with both. It is sometimes less of a struggle, and therefore a temptation, to simply not believe. There is a scene in this powerful book that left me spellbound. The story is about a Portuguese Jesuit priest, Father Sebastian Rodrigues, who entered Japan in the 16th Century at the height of Christian persecution at the hands of the Shogun. That is the Japanese name for the military dictatorship ruling Japan from 1192 to 1867. The name is a contraction of the Japanese, “seii tai shogun” (“barbarian-hunting warriors”)
Father Rodrigues was among the “barbarians” hunted by the Shogun military, the samurai, under a constant threat of public torture and death. The scene that made me shudder most was a description of how Father Rodrigues entered Japan. Foreign ships were barred from its ports so the ship that bore him secretly approached a remote part of the 16th Century Japanese coast in the dark of night. The priest swam to shore in the pitch blackness with nothing but the clothes on his back and no idea of where, or to whom, he would go. The fear of the dark unknown and the courage it took to overcome it was vivid and staggering.
Darkness is itself a character in this highly symbolic book. Father Rodrigues spent a good deal of time in a brutal Shogun prison in a constant state of darkness and near starvation. At one point, in an intense scene of fear and despair, he asked — and it is from this that the book takes its title — “Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent?”
I have asked that same question many times in the dark of prison. For the character of Father Rodrigues, however, the silence of God was finally broken. He was tortured by the Shogun in order to force him into publicly trampling on the “fumie,” the Japanese term for a sacred icon. It was a crucifix. Despite the torture, Father Rodrigues refused and endured. Then he was forced to watch while 30 Christian converts were lined up one by one to take his place for torture unless he trampled on the crucifix. An inner voice came to him:
“Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know the pain of your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross!”
— Silence, p.171
Father Rodrigues trampled upon the crucifix.
Spiritual Battle
Upon first reading, that excerpt may seem a betrayal. However, digging a little deeper into the words that came to the priest unveils a profound soteriology, the theology of salvation. The priest bore his own suffering, but by his actions he redirected the suffering destined for his converts onto Christ. “It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”
I was surprised to learn that Shusaku Endo left this life leaving behind the life of his fictional tormented priest, Sebastian Rodrigues — on the Feast of Michaelmas. That was the old English name for the feast day of what was once called Saint Michael and All Angels on September 29. In the Catholic calendar it is now the Feast Day of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the only angels in the Bible whose personal names are revealed.
The September 29 date was established in the Sixth Century when on that same date the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels was dedicated on the Salarian Way in Rome. The feast day was called “Michaelmas,” meaning “the Mass of St. Michael.” In British custom, it was one of the “quarter days,” traditionally marked by the election of magistrates and the beginning of the legal and university terms. This may have been because — or the cause of — the designation of Saint Michael as the Patron of Justice.
It was on another date — the feast day of the Guardian Angels on October 2 — that I discovered in prison that the silence of God is but an illusion. God has spoken volumes throughout all of human history, and His megaphones are Scripture, Tradition, and the ongoing revelation of grace in our lives. Justice is also not just an elusive and singular event, but a cosmic guarantee, and Saint Michael is its manifestation.
This is a difficult concept that I will try to convey to whatever extent I understand it myself. Scripture suggests to us that the conflicts we face and the struggles we endure in our lives on Earth have an unseen spiritual dimension. The Catholic Biblical scholar, Scott Hahn expressed this in his terrific little book, Angels and Saints: A Biblical Guide to Friendship with God's Holy Ones (Image Books, 2014):
“St. Michael is mighty among the angels. The Book of Revelation (12:7ff) depicts him as the commander of the heavenly host of angels as they battle Satan and the rebellious spirits .... We know how the battle ends, and we know Michael is victorious (12:10). Still, the war will rage on until the final consummation of history.”
— Angels and Saints, p. 84
From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have invoked Michael as a guardian, patron, and leader in spiritual warfare. Our troubles and struggles in this world are not always simple anxieties over material discomforts, painful relationships, or the tragedies that occur in our lives. They are also manifestations of spiritual battle, and should be seen and resisted as such. People of deep faith recognize the spiritual battles within themselves and their environments, and rely on faith and spiritual allies to defend against them.
I have suggested before that priests especially are targets of spiritual warfare, inundated by constant temptation in a culture locked in spiritual combat between Heaven and hell. I have cited a Holy Week post of mine that exemplifies the most active goal of Satan: to prevent our reception of the Eucharist and undermine its truth. Every time I write about this, it is followed by days or weeks of spiritual struggle and painful events all around me. This is clearly a story “someone” does not want exposed. The post in which I first exposed this is “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”
The Art of War Requires Allies
For 23 years, I had been living in the Hancock Building in this prison complex. For the first six, though I had done nothing to warrant it, I was forced to live in a place with eight men per cell. Words cannot express the assault on the psyche and spirit that life in such a constant environment produced. Just about everyone living there was given an opportunity to move to better housing within a year. I was there for six years.
In that same six years, my friend, Pornchai Moontri, was in the neighboring state of Maine living in the spiritual madness of endless solitary confinement. We lived with polar opposite prison anxieties, and each was in its own way devastating.
In 2000, I was finally moved to a saner place with two prisoners per cell. In 2006, Pornchai Moontri arrived. For the next 15 years we lived in the same cell. Then, in 2016, both of us, along with 94 others, were forced in a mass migration back into the place with eight prisoners to a cell. It was because of a development in the prison that had nothing to do with us. We were promised a return to a better housing situation in a matter of weeks. One year later, we were still there.
In mid-July, 2017, I was summoned from my job as the legal clerk in the prison law library and handed a few trash bags. After 23 years in the dreaded Hancock Building, I was given one hour to unravel from it and move to another unit on the opposite end of this prison complex. I was told that Pornchai would be joining me there on the next day. After my arrival, another officer told me that Pornchai was supposed to come with me, but some unseen hand changed that order and he was to be sent somewhere else.
The next day, from a top floor stairwell outside the law library where I work, I saw Pornchai in the distance looking forlorn as he wheeled a cart in the opposite direction from where I now lived. I thought I would never see him again. It was a crushing blow for us both. I knew he would be facing deportation in a few years and now would face it alone. I cannot make sense of what happened next.
The outcome of this spiritual battle was stunning, but became so only when I sought help from our allies in spiritual warfare. I knew in my heart that I was called to bring some justice and hope to the burdens Pornchai carried. I described them in “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom.” Three weeks after our parting, I returned from work one day to find the person living in the bunk above me gone, and in his place was Pornchai Moontri. This never happens here. We were shocked, perplexed and overjoyed.
There were later signs that our allies summoned other allies behind the scenes who had come to know of us. On the day we were reunited, they were in just the right place at just the right time saying just the right things to just the right people. It was the most unlikely symphony of actual grace. Incredible!
This computer generated image depicts the constellation Triangulum and galaxy RD1, 12.2 light-years billion from Earth, formed in the early period of the Universe after the Big Bang.
3:00 AM in a Dark Prison Cell
I’m sorry if this gets a little weird. Just before all these clouds gathered on the horizon and our chaotic upheavals took place, I had a mysterious dream. It was early in the morning of October 2, 2016, the day the Church honors our Guardian Angels. Had I ever really believed in them? I do now.
I found myself at 3:00 AM standing and staring into a small stretch of sky that I could see beyond my barred cell window. There was an older man standing with me. I could see Pornchai fast asleep in his upper bunk. The older man was very familiar and someone I felt I implicitly trusted, but I cannot remember what he looked like. That part of the dream was erased when I awakened. He pointed to the sky and asked, “What do you see?”
I said, “I only see the prison lights.” “Look beyond the prison lights,” said the mysterious man. Then in the dream my vision suddenly changed. I was able to see far, far away into the vast darkness, and there in the center of my field of view I saw a constellation, a triangle of three stars. Within the triangle, the stars were joined by streams of glowing light. “It looks like neon,” I said stupidly in the dream. Then the companion said, “Michael dwells within the light.”
It seemed that I stood for a long time, mesmerized by this vision. Then I awakened in my bunk. It was very dark. I got up and walked to the window wondering whether it was a dream or real. I saw only prison lights, but I have since learned to look beyond them. I could not forget the simple statement that “Michael dwells within the light.” Later that morning, I called a friend to search an astronomy database to see if such a triangular constellation even exists. This was what was sent to me:
1998 — The Most Distant Object Yet Discovered: Astronomers have stumbled upon the most distant galaxy ever found, an object 12.2 billion light-years from Earth. It was announced on March 12, 1998. A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. So a light-year is a distance of 5.6 trillion miles. The distance of this object in miles is that times 12.2 billion. [Good luck with the math!]
A team of scientists led by astrophysicist Arjun Dey of John Hopkins University, was analyzing the light from a distant galaxy inside the Constellation Triangulum when they noticed the spectral signature of a faint and far more distant galaxy at its center. By taking longer exposures with the Keck-II telescope they were able to identify the new galaxy which is 90 million light-years farther away than the previous most distant galaxy discovered.
Based on knowledge that the universe is approximately 13 billion years old, “RD1” was formed soon after the Big Bang gave birth to the universe. By studying it, astronomers hope to learn how and when the earliest galaxies formed. Little is currently known about these early galaxies. A report on the discovery was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This, of course, rocked my world. You might recall from our recent post, “Fr. Georges Lemaitre, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang,” by priest and physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, that the Church and science are on the same page about the origin of the Universe in an instant, “out of nothing.”
In the Fifth Century, Saint Augustine proposed that in the Genesis story of creation, God’s declaration of “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) was the moment the angels were created. In the next verse (Genesis 1:4), God separated the light from the darkness. For Augustine, this was the moment the fallen angels were driven from Heaven by Saint Michael in the battle of the Heavenly Hosts.
This all left me with a profound sense that our stories are not just our own, nor are our struggles or pain. We are a collective part of an immense fabric God has woven toward a specific end. And we have allies who connect with us within the threads. I have written about three of them who now appear together in our BTSW Library under the Category, “Spiritual Warfare.” I also link to them here.
Angelic Justice: St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed
St Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us
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Most glorious prince of the heavenly armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness. Corne to the assistance of us whom God has created to His likeness, and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. Holy Church venerates you as her guardian and protector. To you the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. Pray therefore the God of peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer hold us captive and do injury to the Church. Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us. Take hold of the dragon, the ancient serpent which is the devil and Satan. Bind him and cast him into the abyss so that he may no longer seduce the nations.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, we beseech you to intercede for us at the throne of Divine Mercy. As you announced the mystery of the Incarnation to Mary, so through your prayers may we receive strength of faith and courage of spirit and thus find favor with God and redemption through Christ our Lord. May we sing with the angels and saints in Heaven forever the praise of God our Savior through your Annunciation: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
O Raphael the Archangel, lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us. Raphael, Angel of happy meeting, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for. May all our movements be guided by your light and transfigured with your joy. Angel, guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Hirn whose unveiled face you are privileged to gaze. Lonely and tired, crushed in spirit by the separations and sorrows of life, we feel the need of calling to you and pleading for the protection of your wings so we may not be as strangers in the province of joy. Remember the weak, you who are so strong, you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder in a land that is always at peace, bright with the resplendent glory of God.
