E
Epistemes
Guest
Yesterday I felt like hell.
All day as I sat in my workspace at the office, I couldn’t help but brood on the few things I didn’t have, and some of those things were explicitly unattainable except through sin. As a result of this exceptional self-pity and self-loathing, my loneliness and isolation grew doublefold until it was literally seeping out of the cracks, contaminating those around me.
All along, however, I knew that I was supposed to attend my first, introductory session of the local prison ministry to see if this was something that I wanted to get involved with. In the back of my mind, I suspected that my great “loneliness” was particularly selfish and I sensed that I truly had no valid reason to complain for not having this or that luxury, for not having this or that friend, this or that love interest when I wasn’t being forced to live in a prison as a result of my crimes.
Regardless, I was chained to a wall of my own making.
Imagine what I felt when I walked into the room at the prison ministry, greeted by dozens and dozens of Protestants, not even another single Catholic, and a room overflowing with inmates!
“What church are you from?” I was asked repeatedly.
“Our Lady of Mercy,” I muttered.
“Welcome!” they said, not even batting an eye that I was Catholic.
I was surrounded by people, but I still felt isolated.
I took a seat in the back of the room near an elderly African-American woman. She politely introduced herself and explained the process for the evening’s activities. I happened to sit in the chair right next to a former pastor of a Methodist Church which, once he arrived, he explained that I was in “the hot seat,” the exact place where a gentleman who suffered from a nearly totally crippling disease, who navigated his motorized wheelchair with his only two working fingers, went on to become a great preacher. Despite all this welcoming and warming, I still felt so horribly out of place, inadequate, uncertain and unsure of my ability to be of any worth to the inmates.
Another gentleman, who introduced himself as a Baptist, saw me sitting awkwardly from across the room so he came over in order to deliver a message straight from the Holy Spirit Himself. I told him that I was present so that I could “see what all of this is about,” and without a second’s hesitation he said, “It’s about love…and forgiveness.” He went on to tell me about how he used to be an inmate during the 80’s, how he came to these weekly sessions, and how the love of the people changed him and reduced his 10 year sentence down to 3 for good behavior.
He left me with a prayer in his heart, I know.
We had a nice long Bible study with the inmates, discussing how Lazarus’s physical resurrection signals our own spiritual resurrection. As I sat at the table, I looked into the faces of each man sitting there, and I saw true desolation; there, staring back at me, was *true *loneliness. It struck me that you don’t truly understand freedom until you lose it.
Realizing this, though, did not make me feel any more comfortable. I still felt horribly inadequate and definitely out of place. I was still the only Catholic in a room full of sola scriptura, sola fide-believing Protestants, a group with whom I would likely disagree on every major or minor dogmatic point, and I attested in my soul that I could not endure such ignorance, much less any attempt to be converted by them! But, oh Elitism, how quick you are made a fool! How wrong you are! Just then a very large, strong inmate approached me, grinning from ear to ear, relief in his eyes: it was a guy who I went to school with! And even though we had never been great friends, he remembered my name, and you could see that he was so glad to see somebody whom he recognized.
My being there had given somebody hope.
I knew then that I had to come back. I knew then that whether Catholic or Protestant, we weren’t there for each other or to play games with apologetics, we were there because people needed us, people who needed faith, hope and love, and to hear a good word from the Good Word.
All day as I sat in my workspace at the office, I couldn’t help but brood on the few things I didn’t have, and some of those things were explicitly unattainable except through sin. As a result of this exceptional self-pity and self-loathing, my loneliness and isolation grew doublefold until it was literally seeping out of the cracks, contaminating those around me.
All along, however, I knew that I was supposed to attend my first, introductory session of the local prison ministry to see if this was something that I wanted to get involved with. In the back of my mind, I suspected that my great “loneliness” was particularly selfish and I sensed that I truly had no valid reason to complain for not having this or that luxury, for not having this or that friend, this or that love interest when I wasn’t being forced to live in a prison as a result of my crimes.
Regardless, I was chained to a wall of my own making.
Imagine what I felt when I walked into the room at the prison ministry, greeted by dozens and dozens of Protestants, not even another single Catholic, and a room overflowing with inmates!
“What church are you from?” I was asked repeatedly.
“Our Lady of Mercy,” I muttered.
“Welcome!” they said, not even batting an eye that I was Catholic.
I was surrounded by people, but I still felt isolated.
I took a seat in the back of the room near an elderly African-American woman. She politely introduced herself and explained the process for the evening’s activities. I happened to sit in the chair right next to a former pastor of a Methodist Church which, once he arrived, he explained that I was in “the hot seat,” the exact place where a gentleman who suffered from a nearly totally crippling disease, who navigated his motorized wheelchair with his only two working fingers, went on to become a great preacher. Despite all this welcoming and warming, I still felt so horribly out of place, inadequate, uncertain and unsure of my ability to be of any worth to the inmates.
Another gentleman, who introduced himself as a Baptist, saw me sitting awkwardly from across the room so he came over in order to deliver a message straight from the Holy Spirit Himself. I told him that I was present so that I could “see what all of this is about,” and without a second’s hesitation he said, “It’s about love…and forgiveness.” He went on to tell me about how he used to be an inmate during the 80’s, how he came to these weekly sessions, and how the love of the people changed him and reduced his 10 year sentence down to 3 for good behavior.
He left me with a prayer in his heart, I know.
We had a nice long Bible study with the inmates, discussing how Lazarus’s physical resurrection signals our own spiritual resurrection. As I sat at the table, I looked into the faces of each man sitting there, and I saw true desolation; there, staring back at me, was *true *loneliness. It struck me that you don’t truly understand freedom until you lose it.
Realizing this, though, did not make me feel any more comfortable. I still felt horribly inadequate and definitely out of place. I was still the only Catholic in a room full of sola scriptura, sola fide-believing Protestants, a group with whom I would likely disagree on every major or minor dogmatic point, and I attested in my soul that I could not endure such ignorance, much less any attempt to be converted by them! But, oh Elitism, how quick you are made a fool! How wrong you are! Just then a very large, strong inmate approached me, grinning from ear to ear, relief in his eyes: it was a guy who I went to school with! And even though we had never been great friends, he remembered my name, and you could see that he was so glad to see somebody whom he recognized.
My being there had given somebody hope.
I knew then that I had to come back. I knew then that whether Catholic or Protestant, we weren’t there for each other or to play games with apologetics, we were there because people needed us, people who needed faith, hope and love, and to hear a good word from the Good Word.