Prison Mass Again

Sunday morning I sat down to finish an e-mail I had begun the night before.  I wanted to send it prior to going to Mass, but as I sat there eating breakfast and pondering how to best finish it, I realized with a start that I was signed up to go out to the prison for Mass that day.  I rushed to get dressed and to divest myself of everything except my ID, 50 cents for the locker to store my keys in, and the keys to the apartment and car.

I drove down towards the prison and I experienced a moment of uncertainty.  University related purposes have taken me to the county jail three times in the past month, and I reached a fork in the road.  One direction was the prison, the other was the jail.  For a moment, I wasn't sure which way was which.  As I sat at the light before that fork, I eventually determined I needed to go straight, but at the same time I laughed, because I knew one could probably make it into a corny devotion story.  "Going straight to get to the prison is much like the straight and narrow path we are called to follow as Christians."

When I got there, I signed in and spoke with the others.  It was a beautiful day and nothing was out of the ordinary.  The standard sort of people I've come to expect were in the lobby with us, primarily girlfriends with their kids who were blase about being inside of a prison to visit their boyfriend.  I can understand, I guess, wanting the kids to see a man who is hopefully their father, but the research done by a person I know has shown that most of the "good" fathers, on parenting scales at least, don't let their kids visit them, because they don't want to expose the children to the prison environment.

Before Mass, the inmate who was baptized and confirmed last time showed us his photos and baptismal certificate proudly.  He was still filled with such joy that it brought a smile to my face.  Otherwise, Mass was Mass.  The guys all showed a deeper sense of reverence than I experience in parishes where people are free.  I personally believe, that losing one's freedom and only being able to partake once a month may lead to that reverence.

However, the most heart rending thing I witnessed was when my own freedom was restored.  I've previously spoken about how you willingly surrender it almost as surely as the inmates by walking through the sally port and into the institution; once I came back through the double security doors and two lines of razor wire fences, I was free to leave.  However, it was at that point as my group signed out, that I saw something I've not seen before in two years of going to the Prison Mass.

There was an African American gentleman my parents' age.  He was looking very lost, confused, and hurt.  We asked if we could help; it turns out that his son had just been sentenced and placed in the facility.  So we showed him how to sign in, what you had to put in the lockers and what could go in with you, how to check in with the guards to let them know you were here for the appointment (you can't just walk in, there's paperwork and background checks that take a couple of weeks on average), and all the other minutae of a visit that he needed to be taught. 

He was entirely out of his element.  There are certain people you meet in prison lobbies and normally you can identify them with relative ease.  Most have a knowledge of the system from their own contacts with law enforcement in a negative manner, even if it is as vicarious as watching the person they are visiting be arrested.  The second type are primarily what I call the "do-gooders", volunteers like myself who are there with some sort of program or another to offer religious or rehabilitative services.  The third type are researchers from universities (a category I have fit into also before), government agencies, or private correctional corporations who are trying to buy up prisons in the United States. 

This gentleman was none of those things.  He was, quite possibly, the rarest type of person you'll meet in a prison lobby.  He was the honest man who did his best to raise his son to be a law abiding member of society and he had failed.  Despite that failure, he was there to see his son anyhow, because even though his son screwed up and turned his back on those values, the son was still loved.

God loves us that same way.  We sin, we screw up, and we try to consign ourselves to the prison that is Hell.  Yet time and again, He rescues us.  This man couldn't rescue his own son from the consequences of the young man's actions.  I saw in him, however, the pain of loss and the unfailing love of a devoted parent.  For the first time since beginning to volunteer with prison ministry, my heart broke.  Before me was the fourth type of person you might meet in a prison lobby, the rarest type, the selflessly loving parent who fights through the pain and shame to visit his son and go, "you screwed up, but I love you anyway, and I'll be here for you".

I don't know how long that young man has.  Asking about time in prison is a lot like asking about a woman's weight; the other prisoners might ask, just as one woman might ask another, but you never do.  I pray though, that his son doesn't have very long.  It would be even more heartbreaking if the chaplain had to come see him in a decade or two holding the very plain letter with the words "notice of death" at the top to tell him that his father had died of illness or old age while he languished for what was probably a minor-seeming crime at the time he committed it.

Three days later I still can't get that gentleman out of my head.  I can only pray that he, as well as his son, find peace.  In the two years I have been going, I have seen such holy reverence toward the Mass and the Eucharist; I have watched men be baptized and confirmed...yet, on that day, I saw Christ in the face of a man scared, sad, and out of his element. Love has no boundary, not even that which calls us into a question of freedom.