A Vision on Mount Tabor: The Transfiguration of Christ

Jesus took Peter, James, and John to a mountaintop where he was transfigured before their eyes, an event that echoes through the ages, even through prison walls.

March 12, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Some years ago, when this blog was in its earlier days, Canadian writer Michael Brandon wrote a post for his Freedom to Truth blog entitled “Transfiguration Behind These Stone Walls.” It is an account of how Pornchai Max Moontri and I were living in 2014, the year Michael Brandon wrote it. It was a few years after Pornchai was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010. We were living in a crucible of incessant confinement and utter powerlessness over the course of the days of our lives. In hindsight, it was also a time of much grace, though none of it felt like grace then.

To continue this post, I have to revisit a story that longtime readers may recall. It is the story of Anthony Begin. Anthony was a prisoner in his mid forties. He was an angry individual who treated most people with hostility and contempt. He ridiculed my faith and priesthood and one day I bodily threw him out of our cell. It was not my finest priestly moment in life. A few years later, I returned from work in the prison library to find Pornchai in our cell as usual waiting for me. As I entered, he closed the cell door so no one else could hear. He looked at me somberly and said, “You have to help Anthony.” I responded that Anthony and I have had a bit of a falling out. Pornchai shook his head impatiently and said, “None of that matters. You HAVE to help him.”

Pornchai went on to explain that Anthony had just learned of a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. It began in his lungs, then spread to his spinal cord, and by the time it was discovered it had spread to his brain. Pornchai said that “He has only months to live but he doesn’t know how to die so you have to show him.”

I never imagined myself an expert in either living or dying. But that night I went to Anthony, sat down with him, and told him that I am sorry for our past encounters. He began to express a lot of sorrow about all of that, but I stopped him. “None of that matters now,” I said. “We have lots to do.” So every day after that in the months ahead, Anthony and I spoke at length. We often included Pornchai for I found the depth of his compassion for Anthony to be salvific for them both, and perhaps for me as well.

From that point on, Anthony’s illness spiraled quickly. Within weeks he became no longer able to take care of himself. We brought Anthony into the Church and he was baptized and confirmed, and received the Eucharist for the first time in his life. The transformation of his character and demeanor was astonishing.

In a short time to follow, Anthony was told that he must relocate to the prison medical unit, but he knew that he would never see us again. He begged the medical staff for a little more time. They feared that it was time he did not have. So he ended up being moved in this overcrowded prison to an overflow bunk in the dayroom just outside our cell. Pornchai and I took turns sitting with him and when he could no longer eat we took turns feeding him. I secured a wheelchair for bathroom trips. None of this was ideal, but it was ideal for Anthony. His faith journey was on a fast track, and for him nothing else mattered. His belief in Redemption was a powerful witness for both Pornchai and me. Days later, I returned from work to find that bunk empty. Anthony was gone.

When such a thing happens, the lack of basic information is chilling, and the most distressing part of being in prison. The niceties of social concern and overlapping lives mean little here, and any inquiry is treated with suspicion. But over the next few hours I was able to learn that Anthony had a medical appointment that morning, and never came back. By 10:00 AM word came down to pack his belongings. By 11:00 AM, all trace of him was gone.

I knew that Anthony was struggling. A week earlier, he was taken out of the prison for a new brain scan. Anthony had been given three months out among his friends — three months neither he nor his oncologist ever expected.

When I write, “out among his friends,” I mean here, living with us in a place still difficult by its very nature, but far preferable to the prison of suffering and fear of death he had endured for six months. Among the swarms of prisoners here, there were only three whom Anthony called his friends, and you know two of them.

During this three-month reprieve, Anthony got to experience a transfiguration of sorts, both in himself and in his small circle of friends. It was not quite the experience of Peter, James, and John that you will hear in the Gospel According to Saint Luke in the Second Sunday of Lent, but it changed Anthony. I’ll describe how in a moment.

The Transfiguration of Christ

“Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As they were about to part from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” But he did not know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a cloud came and cast a shadow over them, and they became frightened when they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.” After the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. They fell silent and did not at that time tell anyone what they had seen.”

— Luke 9:28-36

Peter’s idea to erect tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah seems an almost comical response from someone just given a vision of the Kingdom of God and its most renowned denizens from the Hebrew Scriptures. As the passage points out, Peter hardly knew what to say because he was so overwhelmed. But the idea wasn’t entirely out of place.

It was the seventh and last day of Sukkoth, the “Feast of Booths” described in the Books of Deuteronomy (16:13-15) and Leviticus (23:45). Known in Hebrew as Hag ha-Asif, translated as “The Festival of Gathering,” it lasted for seven days during which Jewish observers erected tents or booths from the boughs or branches of palm trees. The booths were a memorial of their ancestors’ deliverance from bondage in Egypt:

“You shall dwell in booths for seven days, all that are native in Israel shall dwell in booths that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

— Leviticus 23: 42-43

The presence of Moses and Elijah with Jesus on Mount Tabor represents the Law and the Prophets, the two pillars of divine revelation in Hebrew Scripture. They represent the heart of God’s covenant with Israel. There were some previous hints of the Transfiguration. In Exodus (34:29), Moses did not know that upon his descent from Mount Sinai with the Tablets of the Law, “the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” The significance of this has been widely misunderstood. Some Scripture scholars in the modern era mistakenly saw the Transfiguration story as constructed to be reminiscent of the appearance of Moses on Mount Sinai. After his encounter with God his face appeared to shine with light. The truth is just the opposite. It is evidence of the Divine inspiration of Scripture that the appearance of Moses at Mount Sinai was a “presage,” a vision forward to one day remind readers of Jesus in his Transfiguration. There are many episodes in which the Old Testament mysteriously looks forward thousands of years into the New.

Upon the death of Moses, according to Deuteronomy (34: 5-6), God Himself secretly buried his body in an unknown place in the land of Moab. However, the New Testament Letter of Saint Jude (Jude 9) refers to an ancient Jewish legend from the apocryphal text, The Assumption of Moses. Saint Jude described a story that he presumes his listeners already know: that Satan attempted to take the body of Moses, but the Archangel Michael “contended with the devil” and brought the physical body of Moses into Heaven.

The same became true of Elijah. In the Second Book of Kings (2:11) the prophets Elijah and Elisha became separated by “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” and “Elijah went up in a whirlwind into Heaven, then Elisha saw him no more.” In the above Gospel account of the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John — as well as the early Jewish Christian Church — would have readily perceived that Moses and Elijah came from Heaven to witness the Transfiguration of Jesus.

They would also have known well the Prophet Malachi (4:5) who declared that “Elijah’s return will precede the Day of the Lord.” Hence, as the three versions of the Transfiguration account in the Synoptic Gospels point out, they were terrified.

A Metamorphosis of Faith

As the above passage in the Gospel of Luke points out, the event of the Transfiguration came days after Jesus told the Apostles that he would have to take up his Cross: “and I tell truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:27) Something very important happened days earlier between Jesus and his disciples that literally rocked their world and shook their faith. As the pilgrimage Feast of Sukkoth began, they saw Jesus cure a blind man at Bethsaida. Then Jesus asked them at Caesarea Philippi, “Who do the people say that I am?” They answered, “John the Baptist” [already slain at Herod’s command], while “others say Elijah, and others one of the Prophets.”

“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked. Peter, answered with something — like the offer to build some booths days later — that came spontaneously from his heart and soul: “You are the Christ!”

What exactly did that mean? Those who awaited a Messiah in Israel envisioned a political force who would transform the known world and set it aright. But Jesus said something astonishing: “The Son of Man must suffer many things,” be rejected, be killed, and after three days rise from the dead.

And then the final bombshell: “Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God come with power.” Hence, once again, Peter, James, and John, dazzled upon Mount Tabor days later, were terrified when Moses and Elijah appeared.

And what of the Transfiguration itself? The Greek word the Gospel used to describe it is metamorphothe. The very form and substance of Jesus were transformed. Recall the great hymn of Christ recounted by Saint Paul to the Philippians (2:5-6):

“Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but rather emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

For days, Peter, James, and John must have lived with shattered hopes, discouraged over the revelation about what it means to follow Jesus. Ascending that mountain to see Him transfigured in glory was a gift of Divine Mercy that also transformed the cross — forever. The cross was a symbol of terror in the Roman Empire. For us now it is a symbol of life and salvation.

These same three disciples had been present when Jesus restored life to the daughter of Jairus, and they would later be present with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane to see him humiliated as the Passion of the Christ commenced. They were also the only disciples to have been given new names by Jesus. Simon became Peter, “the Rock” and he called James and John “Boanerges,” the “Sons of Thunder.” Their new names denoted that they were forever changed by these experiences, a metamorphosis of identity and faith.

Transfiguration Behind These Stone Walls

On August 6, 2014, the Feast of the Transfiguration, the well-known Canadian Catholic blog, Freedom Through Truth, featured a post by Michael Brandon titled, “Transfiguration Behind These Stone Walls.” Michael Brandon wrote some very nice things, not so much about me, but about what I write. I was first bewildered by it. Then I was very moved. Then I finally accepted his premise that he and other readers have a vantage point I do not have. Michael Brandon wrote:

“In the years that I have followed Beyond These Stone Walls, I have seen the transfiguration of Father Gordon MacRae and Pornchai Moontri.”

I do not see the former at all, but I have been an eyewitness to the latter, and I am persuaded by the evidence. As I have written about that other transfiguration, the same one referred to by Michael Brandon above, a transformation of discouragement that was not at all unlike that faced by Peter, James, and John to whom the cost of discipleship was revealed. Here is what I wrote about the transformation of Pornchai Moontri:

“As my spirit slowly descended, I came to see that I could not afford to let it fall any further. I was losing my grip, not on my own cross, but on someone else’s. Just imagine Simon of Cyrene letting that happen.”

I have seen first hand how the cross of one person becomes a source of grace for another, and then ultimately for both. In the three-month respite Anthony Begin was given from being consumed by cancer, Pornchai Moontri took care of him, unbidden, every single day.

Just weeks after being told he had only months to live, cancer released its grip on Anthony for a time, and he was able to leave the prison hospital where he spent three months dying. It was a priceless gift for Anthony who came in these three months to know the meaning of Divine Mercy. Anthony turned fifty in the three months he spent with us, an age he never thought he would see.

Then Anthony lost the use of one arm due to a tumor on his spinal cord. Every day, morning and night, Pornchai tied his shoes and helped him with his coat before we took him to the medical center for pain medications. Every night, Pornchai heated water to prepare hot packs for Anthony, and prepared food when it was too cold for him to venture out for meals.

Prisons everywhere provide the barest sustenance and then sell food to prisoners for a profit. Anthony could no longer earn even the $1.00 a day available to those who can keep a prison job, but he never once in those last three months went hungry.

Pornchai brought Anthony to Mass, prayed with him, calmed his anxiety. As longtime readers know, Pornchai had some hard won expertise in bearing the cross of spiritual pain and anxiety. Over those last three months, Pornchai helped Anthony carry his cross with grace and dignity. He was Simon of Cyrene carrying that cross with him. The three of us talked a lot about life and death, and Anthony was not the same man he had been months earlier when he insulted and demeaned me. And I was not the same man as when I threw him out of my cell.

But Michael Brandon was right. The real transfiguration story here is Pornchai Moontri’s, and it instilled something wonderful in our friend in the winter of his life. It was hope, hope that even a dying man can live with. Anthony Begin saw the Transfiguration of Christ, and of life and death, and he was no longer afraid.

“In our struggle to be holy, grace is certainly required. But we must also do the footwork — we must will to be better than we really are … The degree of perfection is measured by the amount of adversity we overcome in order to be holy.”

— St. Maximilian Kolbe

Epilogue

I told this story once before, but never in reference to the Transfiguration of Christ, who transformed not only himself and our experience of him, but he also transformed death.

I work as the legal clerk for the prison law library now, but back then I only trafficked in books, and, inspired by Pornchai Max, we now also trafficked in hope. When a prisoner left this prison then, even if his departure was in death, the prison library computer would display a signal if the prisoner had a book checked out and failed to return it before departing. Seven days after Anthony left this life, I received the following message on my library computer:

Anthony Begin — gone/released — Heaven Is for Real

+ + +

Note to Readers from Father Gordon MacRae:

Thank you for reading and sharing this post about the Gospel account of the Transfiguration of Christ.

• We will be adding it to a new feature at this blog, a list of the Scriptural accounts of Salvation History, which I hope you will visit and share with others: From Ashes to Easter.

• The National Center for Reason and Justice has long sponsored my case for appeals and maintained an informational page highlighting new and important developments. A few months ago the NCRJ site was hacked and utterly destroyed. There was no way to bring it back. Because I was the last of its wrongly imprisoned clients, the NCRJ decided to permanently retire their effort and that site. It was a grave loss for me, and all hope seemed to retired with it. But then I learned that a friend had quietly downloaded the entire section about me from the NCRJ site. He has now restored it completely and as of March 12, 2025 it is available again here at Beyond These Stone Walls. See FrMacRae@NCRJ.

• Lastly, this other recent new feature may seem rather strange. Some of my advocates have been having a dialogue about my trial and the nature of the case against me that has kept me wrongly in prison for 30 years and counting. The dialogue has not just been among themselves but also with the advanced Artificial Intelligence platform launched by Elon Musk called xAI Grok. This is an ongoing endeavor that will have several chapters. The site, Les Femmes, The Truth, reviewed its first chapter and called it “absolutely fascinating.” So beginning this week we are launching “The Grok Chronicle” and we invite you to follow along beginning with “Chapter 1: Corruption and the Trial of Father MacRae.”

• Strangely, the Grok AI platform, seems to have developed a mind of its own on this matter. It has already developed a conclusion, and has resisted our efforts to move on to other topics. It seems to see the injustice loudly and clearly.

May the Lord Bless you and keep you in this Season of Lent.

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.”

The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts

The concept of Purgatory is repugnant to those who do not understand Scripture, and a source of fear for many who do, but beyond the Cross, it is a source of hope.

All Souls Day

Twenty-four hours after this is posted, it will no longer be All Souls Day. I risk losing everyone’s interest as we all move on to the daily grind of living. But I am not at all concerned. We’re also in the daily grind of dying. Death is all around us — it’s all around me, at least — and never far from conscious concern. Death was part of the daily prayer of Saint Padre Pio as well:

“Stay with me, Lord, for it is getting late; the days are coming to a close and life is passing. Death, judgment and eternity are drawing near.”

— From “Stay with me, Lord,” a prayer after Communion by Padre Pio

I have never feared death. At least, I have never feared the idea of dying. It’s just the inconvenience of it that bothers me most, not knowing when or how. The very notion of leaving this world with my affairs undone or half done is appalling to me. The thought that Someone knows of that moment but won’t share this news with me makes me squirm. “You know not the day nor the hour” (Matthew 24:36) is, for me, one of the most ominous verses in all of Scripture.

But even when a lot younger, I never thought I would have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of this life and into the next one. I think it’s because I have always had a strong belief in Purgatory. It’s one of the most wonderful and hopeful tenets of the Catholic faith that salvation isn’t necessarily a black and white affair driven solely by the peaks and valleys of this life. I have never been so arrogant as to believe that my salvation is a done deal. I have also never been so self-deprecating as to believe that God waits for the extinction of both our lives and our souls.

It is the mystery of “Hesed,” the balance of justice with mercy that I wrote of in “Angelic Justice,” that is the foundation of Purgatory. In God’s great Love for us, and in His Divine Mission to preserve that part of us that is in His image and likeness — something this world cannot possibly do — God has left a loophole in the law.  It’s a way for sinners who love and trust Him, and seek to know Him, to come to Him through Christ to be redeemed. The very notion of Purgatory fills me with hope, and I’m hoping for it. It’s largely because of Purgatory that I do not fear death.

All Souls Day was first observed in the Catholic Church in the monastery of Cluny in France in the year 988. It was originally about Purgatory, and not just death. The monks at Cluny set aside the day after the Feast of All Saints — which began two centuries earlier — to devote a day of prayer and giving alms to assist the souls of our loved ones in Purgatory. In the Second Book of Maccabees (12:46) Judas Maccabeus “made atonement for the dead that they might be delivered from their sin.”

Purgatory itself has, since the earliest Christian traditions, been a tenet of faith in which the souls of those who have left this world in God’s friendship are purified and made ready for the Presence of God. The Eastern and Latin churches agree that it is a place of intense suffering, and I’m looking forward to my stint.

Okay, I’ll admit that sounds a little weird. It isn’t as though thirty years in prison has conditioned me for ever more punishment. I do not find punishment to be addictive at all, especially when I did not commit the crime. The punishment of Purgatory, however, is something I know I cannot evade.  The intense suffering of Purgatory is entirely a spiritual suffering, and it begins with our experience of death right here. The longing with which we sometimes agonize over the loss of those we love is but a shadow of something spiritual we have yet to share with them: The Holy Longing they must endure as they await being in the Presence of God. That Holy Longing is Purgatory. It is the delay of the beatific vision for which we were created, and that delay and its longing is a suffering greater than we can imagine.

Death, Drawing Near

Years ago, an old friend came to me after having lost his wife of sixty years. I could only imagine what this was like for him. After her funeral and burial all his relatives finally went home, and he was alone in his grief. When we met, he told me of the intensity of his suffering. My heart was broken for him, but something in his grief struck me. I asked him not to waste this suffering, but rather to see it as a part of the longing his dear wife now has as she awaits her place in the fullness of God’s Presence. I suggested that his longing for her was but a shadow of her intense longing for God and perhaps they could go through this together. I asked him to offer his daily experience of grief for the soul of his wife.

He later told me that this advice sparked something in him that made him embrace both his grief and his loss by seeing it in a new light. Every moment in those first days and weeks and months without her was an agony that he found himself offering for her and on her behalf. He said this didn’t make any of his suffering go away, but it filled him with hope and a renewed sense of purpose. It gave meaning to his suffering which would otherwise have seemed empty.

Though I could not possibly relate to his loss, I know only too well the experience of being stranded by the deaths of others. In early Advent one year, I wrote “And Death’s Dark Shadow Put to Flight.” The title was a line from the hauntingly beautiful Advent hymn, “0 Come, 0 Come Emmanuel” that we will all be hearing in a few weeks.

That post, however, was about the death of Father Michael Mack, a Servant of the Paraclete, a co-worker, and a dear friend who was murdered in the first week of Advent. It took place on December 7th. It was a senseless death — by our standards, anyway — brought upon this 60-year-old priest and good friend by Stephen A. Degraff, a young man who took Father Mike’s life for the contents of his wallet. A part of my share in his Purgatory was to pray not only for Michael Mack, but for Stephen Degraff as well.

On the evening of December 7, 2001, Father Michael Mack returned to his home after some time helping out in a remote New Mexico diocese. Saint Paul wrote that “the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). For Father Michael, it did just that. But for me in prison 2,000 miles away, awareness of this loss took time. No one can telephone me in prison, and I can usually only be reached by mail. It turned out that Father Michael sat at a desk in his home and wrote a letter to me on the night he died — all the while oblivious to the danger lurking in a closet in that same room. Father Mike took the letter outside to his mailbox and then walked back inside and into the moment of his death.

Three days later, after prison mail call, I sat at a small table outside my cell with the letter from Father Mike in my hands. I was so glad to hear from him. As I sat there reading the letter with a smile on my face, another prisoner asked if I wanted to see the previous day’s Boston Globe. With Father Mike’s letter in my left hand, I absentmindedly turned to page two of the Globe to see a tiny headline under National News: “New Mexico priest murdered.” Father Michael Mack’s name jumped from the page, and a part of me died just there.

All the Catholic rituals through which we bid farewell and accept the reality of death in hope are denied to a prisoner. I had only that last letter describing all Father Mike’s hopes and dreams and renewed energy for a priestly ministry to other wounded priests. Then after he signed it and scribbled in a PS — “Looking forward to hearing from you” — he walked right into his death.

This wasn’t the last time such a thing happened. This is the 30th time I mark All Souls Day in prison, and the list of souls I once knew in this life — and still know — has grown longer. In “A Corner of the Veil,” I wrote of the death of my mother — imprisoned herself during three years of grueling sickness just seventy miles from this prison, but I could not see her, speak with her, or assure her in any way except through letters that could not be answered. She died November 5, 2006. Last week, I received a letter from BTSW readers Tom and JoAnn Glenn which included a beautiful photograph of my mother imprinted on a prayer card.  They found the photograph on line.  I had never seen it, and was so grateful that they sent this to me.

No news of death has ever come to me with more devastation than that of my friend, Father Clyde Landry. Father Mike Mack, Father Clyde, and I were co-workers and good friends, sharing office space in the years we worked in ministry to wounded priests at the Servants of the Paraclete Center in New Mexico. I was Director of Admissions and Father Clyde was Director of Aftercare. A priest of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Father Clyde had a Cajun accent reminiscent of that famous Cajun television chef, Justin Wilson — “I Gar-on-TEE!”

The Dark Night of the Soul

On that night of Gethsemane when I was falsely accused and arrested, it was Father Clyde who first came to my aid, and stood by me throughout. When I was sent to prison, Father Clyde became my lifeline to the outside world. I called him every Saturday. It became a part of my routine, like clockwork. It was through Father Clyde that once a week I reached out to the outside world for news of friends and news of freedom. He held a small account for me to help with expenses such as telephone costs, food and clothing, small things that make a prisoner’s life more bearable. Most important of all, Father Clyde volunteered to be the keeper of everything of value that I owned.

By “everything of value,” I do not mean riches. I never had any. He kept the Chalice that was given to me at priesthood ordination. He kept the stoles that were made for me, and the small things that were dear to my life and priesthood.

He kept the irreplaceable photos of my parents — both gone now — and all the things that were a lifetime’s proof of my own existence. Everything that I left behind for prison hoping to one day see again was in the possession of Father Clyde.

A year after Father Michael Mack’s tragic death, I received a joyous letter from Father Clyde. He had a new life in ministry as administrator of a very busy retreat center in New Mexico, and he was looking forward to starting. He had also purchased a small home near the center in a beautiful part of Albuquerque. It was the first time in his 52 years that he had owned any home. It was a sign of the stability that he longed for, and a sign of his great love for the retreat ministry he was undertaking.

Father Clyde’s letter was very careful to include me in this transition. He had packed all my possessions and would place them in his spare room which he promised would be available to me whenever I was released from my nightmare. His letter was the last he wrote from his vacant apartment, all his boxes stacked just next to him. He wanted me to know that by the time I received his letter he would be moved and settled and ready for my call the following Saturday.

I received Father Clyde’s letter on a Friday evening, and tried to call his new number the next day. I got only a recorded message that the number was disconnected. In prison, no one can call me and I am unable to leave messages on any answering machine or voice mail. So I called another friend to ask if he would please send an e-mail message for me. My friend fired up his computer and asked, “Where’s it going?” I gave him the e-mail address and started my message.

“Hello Clyde,” I said. “I hope you are getting settled.” Instead of hearing the clicks of my friend’s keyboard, however, I heard only silence. He wasn’t typing. I asked him what was wrong, and knew instantly from his hesitation that something was very wrong.

“Oh, My God!” he said. “You don’t know!” He then told me that my friend, Father Clyde, never made it to his new home. When he did not show up for the signing appointment with his realtor, a search was underway. Father Clyde was found in his apartment on the floor next to the last box he had packed. At age 52, he had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Father Clyde had been gone three days by the time I learned this. No one could reach me. With Father Clyde’s letter in my left hand, I was stunned as my friend described all he knew of Father Clyde’s death, which wasn’t much. It would be many days before I could learn anything more.

In the weeks and months to follow, I was stranded in a way that I had never experienced before. I was not just alone in my grief. I was alone in prison, 2,000 miles from the world I knew and the only contacts I had, and my sole connection with the outside world was gone. It would be another seven years before the idea of this blog  emerged, and I would once again reach out from prison to the outside world.

But for those seven years, I was stranded. On the Saturday after I learned of Fr. Clyde’s death, I recall sitting in my cell from where I could see the bank of prisoner telephones along one wall out in the dayroom, and I cried for the first time in many, many years. In the months to follow, everything that I once hoped one day to see again was lost. I do not know what became of any of Father Clyde’s things, or my own. I have come to know that this happens to many prisoners. Cut off from the world outside, our losses can be catastrophic.

But I came to know that grief is a gift, and I have offered it not only for the souls of Fathers Clyde, Mike, and Moe — and for my dear mother — but for the souls of all who touched my life, and in that offering I had something to share with them — a Holy Longing.

When I wrote “The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul,” it was about Purgatory. It was about my continued hope for the soul of Father Richard Lower, a brother priest driven to take his own life in a dark night all alone when all trust was broken and hope seemed but a distant dream. I have been where he was, and my response to his death was “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

At the end of “The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul,” I included a portion of the “Prayer of Gerontius” by Saint John Henry Newman. It’s a beautiful verse about Purgatory that calls forth the abiding hope we have for our loved ones who have died, and also recalls that one thing we have left to share with them — a Holy Longing for their presence, and, in their company, for the Presence of God:

Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o’er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully, I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.

Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the Earth and prayers in Heaven,
Shall aid thee at the throne of the most Highest.

Farewell, but not forever! Brother dear;
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.

— John Henry Cardinal Newman, Conclusion, “The Prayer of Gerontius”

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading. Please share this post so that it may come before someone who is grieving. You may also wish to read these related posts linked herein:

A Corner of the Veil

Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead