Works of Mercy: Visiting the Imprisoned

Sr. Maria Teresa gave me a training session on the drive down to the prison a couple weeks ago. I had never ministered to prison inmates before and wanted her to share everything she could.

She started by telling me the story of the first time she visited a prison. One of the inmates tried to intimidate her by boasting of his crimes against women, but she saw through his rough exterior and found herself calmly saying words to him she wasn’t even sure she herself believed:

“The only difference between you and me is that your sins imprison you exteriorly, and mine imprison me interiorly.”

Sr. Maria Teresa would go on to become his godmother later in the year, when he was baptized into the Catholic Church. She also came to believe what she had said, and has continued visiting inmates on and off for what is now 16 years.

Her story moved me deeply, but I still found myself approaching the ministry with certain expectations. I envisioned a very institutional setting—a massive, impersonal room with stark or no religious symbols—and unfriendly inmates with blank faces and orange jumpsuits. If they were really the same as me, at least on the inside, I thought I was going to have to look past an awful lot to see that.

The two of us got our security badges, walked through a metal detector and two automatically locked doors (“You’ll never forget the sound of it shutting behind you,” Sr. Maria Teresa told me) before we made it inside the prison campus. We walked on a path across an open, grassy space where men in different-colored uniforms were standing and talking in groups. Five or six greeted us as we walked into the “multi-purpose” building, where all religious services are held. I felt the Lord was telling me to be myself, and, as I smiled, they smiled back.

We walked into the “chapel”, full of shabby chairs set up for Mass, a wall of bookshelves filled with well-used hymnals, missals and worn paperback Bibles, a makeshift altar and a small, cheap keyboard.

It wasn’t what I thought. In its homeliness and poverty, there was something attractive about it, something dear. The same was true of the men themselves. I immediately felt at home.

The first man I met—I’ll call him Brad—tore down every mental image I had of a prisoner. It was hard to define his age; his beard was salt-and-peppery, his face gentle and smooth. He had kind eyes through which I saw what I thought must be a pure soul. Brad told me how good it was to meet someone from “the Outside.”

We got to talking, and he started describing the “house” he lives in, widely known as the worst on the prison campus for behavior, conditions, and who knows what else. When he first arrived, he noticed the response many men have when you ask them how they’re doing—“Just another day in paradise”—and he started using it himself, with bitter sarcasm.

But then one day, the Lord asked him if he knew what “paradise” was. He replied, “Eden.” “And what happened in Eden?” the Lord probed. Adam and Eve walked with You, Brad thought. “And I’m walking with you,” he heard. From then on, although he kept using the same phrase when someone asked how he was, he meant it sincerely.

Brad clearly found so much joy and peace in his conversations with the Lord. He knew Him; that was easy to see. None of the other inmates had quite as much peace as he did, but each, in his own way, was on the journey.

It was a great grace to talk and joke with them as ordinary men—without the uniforms, I wouldn’t have known the difference. Perhaps, knowing my own need for God helped remove any barriers between us.

Without His protection over my life, how easily could circumstances have led me to be in the same place?

We ended the visit with Mass. The inmates led the music, read the readings, and served at the altar. The prayers we pray every day took on a new meaning for me: “I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned …” Together we filed up to the front to receive communion—Jesus’ body, broken and sacrificed for all. In God’s eyes, we are all equal: His beloved children.

I found brothers at the correctional center that day. We are the same on the inside—sinners who know the Lord’s mercy.

-Sr. Mary Gemma, T.O.R.

one of the hermitages on our property

Franciscan Sisters Hermitage Reflections

For two weeks after Christmas, Sr. Agnes Thérèse and Sr. Teresa spent time in prayer and solitude in what we call a hermitage experience. This time apart enabled them to work and pray in intercession for the world and their specific intentions. Enjoy their reflections!

The two weeks I spent as a hermit this Christmas praying for peace were an amazing gift. I felt in many ways that it was what Pope Paul VI writes about in the Office of Readings for the feast of the Holy Family (celebrated the Sunday after Christmas): “How I would like to return to my childhood and attend the simple yet profound school that is Nazareth! How wonderful to be close to Mary, learning again the lesson of the true meaning of life, learning again God’s truths.”

As I accomplished simple jobs, prayed, and lived in silent community with Sr. Teresa, I felt very close to Mary, and did learn again about the true meaning of life. It is this simple: God loves me, created me, and takes care of me. Everything else is a footnote.

-Sr. Agnes Thérèse, T.O.R.

Just after Christmas I entered into a hermitage experience to be even more given to prayer, silence, and sacrifice, doing work that was contemplative in nature and offering it all up for a particular intention. I thought my hermitage experience would be a time of offering up difficult experiences as a form of intercession. Instead, since the Lord cannot be outdone in generosity, it was a time of being immersed in His merciful love for me.

That experience was very fitting, because I offered up the time for those who do not know or believe in God’s mercy. I offered it for those who have separated themselves from God, and in not knowing His unconditional, tender, all-powerful love for them feel empty, alone, sad, abandoned. I also offered it for those for whom God’s heart breaks, that by the merits of Christ’s Passion, the Gospel truth would pierce and transform their hearts and bring them to know and glorify the generosity of God’s mercy.

-Sr. Teresa Reyes, T.O.R.

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God.” -1 John 4:7

These were the first words our Franciscan University of Steubenville Jamaica mission team heard as we came together for Mass the day before our departure. It wasn’t until I returned home and reflected on my experience that I realized just how significant they were.

In those days, the culture shock was considerable—85° heat, lush, green forests of banana and coconut, the sometimes barely-discernible Patois dialect, and the poverty of small Jamaican villages—but because our hearts were open, we could receive the love of these beautiful people, whom we, supposedly, were coming to love.

It surprised me how easy they were to love in spite of our differences. Even the group of about 25 students, the two friars and myself grew into a family by the end of the 10 days, though many of us had never met before. 10 of us were sent to Seaford Town, a small village about an hour’s drive inland from Montego Bay. Fr. Luke, a Polish missionary priest, serves at Sacred Heart Mission there. We spent our days walking in groups of 3 from house to house, praying with men and women, playing with children, and giving and receiving the love of Christ. So many of them are forever fixed in my memory.

There was Teresa, a 92-year old woman whom we found standing over her stove, stirring a pot of cornmeal porridge and singing about the glory of the Kingdom. We held hands and prayed together, and she said, full of joy, “Lord, I didn’t expect 3 visitors today!”

There were Mr. and Mrs. Samuels, a newly baptized and married couple who proudly showed us their wedding photos and cut open whole coconuts for us to drink.

There was Jacob, a blind man whose words made no sense until we began to sing “Amazing Grace.” He clung to my hand and sang every word with gusto, ending with a verse of “Praise God!”

In the evenings we would meet at an appointed place (much later than the appointed time, in true Jamaican fashion), a gas station, small shop or a town square, set up Fr. Luke’s sound system, and begin preaching about the mercy of God. Each of these night meetings was, for me, an experience of communion with those in the village. We never knew if anyone would show up and listen to us preach out of the back of Father’s silver Nissan pick-up, but there was always at least a small crowd. There were always at least a few women enthusiastic to sing us their Jamaican church songs, and a number of people who asked to receive prayer at the end of the night.

The most profound moments on any mission are often the simplest. I’ll never forget how, after lunch one day, I entered a hot kitchen full of women to help them tidy up. They spoke a thick Patois, but they understood I wanted to help, so they set it up. Two sinks: one of soapy water, one clear. I scrubbed, one woman rinsed, others dried and put away. We worked with few words, but were soon joking and smiling like family.

Sr. Mary Gemma with Sr. Athanasie

There were also many similar moments with the two missionary sisters with whom I stayed in Seaford Town. Sr. Jhorna was from Bangladesh and Sr. Athanasie from Rwanda, and their religious vows found them assisting a Polish priest in a rural village in Jamaica! That, in itself, is a miracle, but perhaps equally miraculous was their embrace of this American sister who interrupted their lives for a week. I never felt like a burden, but rather, a sister to them.

After a few days, we had a rhythm. Sr. Jhorna and I would stay in chapel after Morning Prayer a few minutes, while Sr. Athanasie went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast things. Soon we could hear the kettle whistling and the ting of the toaster oven. I would come and set out the coffee, milk, cane sugar, and peanut butter, nourishment before a morning walking in the hot Caribbean sun.

One night, the electricity went out and Sr. Athanasie and I had dinner by candlelight. She brought tears to my eyes as she shared the story of her vocation and how she lost much of her extended family in the Rwandan genocide.

All these moments of communion culminated in our last prayer meeting at a little shop in a place called Dam Gate. Each of the student missionaries in our group lit a candle, symbolizing the light and love of Christ we came to share, before handing them out to those in the crowd. Then the Jamaicans passed them on to each other until everyone had held the light.

It sounds trite, but it is profoundly true: in the words of Pope Francis, “We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family.” Or “One love … one heart,” to quote a well-known Jamaican, Bob Marley. There are no strangers—only brothers and sisters I haven’t met yet.

But I don’t need to go to Jamaica to love. Everywhere I go, I am home, and I am called to love there with the same intensity and desire I would have on a mission trip. Pray with me today for the grace to love in the simple moments, to love in closeness to others, to love with the love of God.

-Sr. Mary Gemma, T.O.R.

“To make known His merciful love”