I never know before I go, trying to remember that "the Holy Spirit will give you the words to say at the moment when you need them" (Lk 12:12). I also never know how many guys the Lord will send me. Sometimes I meet with as few as two inmates, and (on evenings like this week), as many as thirty. When the guard unlocked the doors to the chapel, the men just kept filing in until almost every seat in the metal pews was taken. I shook every one of their hands and asked them to have a seat, made the sign of the cross, and opened with a prayer of thanks and blessing over them, the guards, and for God to be made present among us in the reading of the Word.
I thankfully have enough freedom and leeway to approach my hour with them however the Lord see fit. Some volunteers do a kind of 'life-lessons' series, others may go over the Sunday Mass readings. Personally, I like to just expose the men to the Word of God by reading aloud, pausing periodically for any questions or discussions as they come up. For the past few months I had been reading from Romans, but after finishing it up last month, this past Wednesday I decided to read from the first letter of St. Peter. I am not a theologian or biblical scholar, so I keep any discussions relatively fundamental--sin, death, redemption, concupiscence, the Fall, the need to forgive our enemies, love, virtue, and our need for a Savior. One theme I keep going back to when expounding on the Gospel message to this particular group of guys is the freedom of the believer in Christ.
I've been off of social media for three weeks now. The uncomfortable and disorienting detox period has passed, and I feel a little like waking up after LASIK surgery--things are a little more clear, without the need for contacts. Deb checked me out a book from the library written by a former Silicon Valley pioneer of virtual reality titled "Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now." This particular author is on the left side of the socio-political spectrum, but as an insider who helped develop the kind of social networking sites we take for granted today, it was interesting to see how vehemently he felt they were doing harm to society and making slaves out of the unwitting consumers in a Matrix-like illusion of pseudo-connectedness. We are being used, and we don't even realize it. But there remains a power within that very consumer to opt-out--we still have free will to not participate.
The men and women "on the inside" can also feel like cogs in a machine as well, slaves to their circumstance and "the system." They are assigned numbers and ordered where to go and when to eat and watched by surveillance at all times. They know what it feels like to not be free. And yet "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (Jn 8:34). "Do you see the connection?" I told them. "God gives us the grace, by baptism, to resist sin. He gives us everything we need in cooperation with grace and by faith to choose to do His will. And yet as we read in Romans, we 'do that which we do not want to do' when we sin. We read:
"Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor" (1 Peter 2:16-17)
"You can start today, right now. It costs nothing. It does not depend on your external circumstances. No guard and no other man can take away the freedom you have in Christ, the power you have in the Gospel, the joy you have in doing good and resisting evil. When you suffer for doing good, as Peter says, don't be surprised. But it is better to suffer for doing good than doing evil."
It was weird to be just reading the word of God and expounding on the basic truths of Christian belief by the grace of the Holy Spirit (I just opened my mouth and He gave me the words) to a room packed full of more or less hardened men, men of all races and class, who were rapt, as if they had never heard such a thing. Many of the men suffered from addictions and bad habits which kept them in a cycle of recidivism. There is much going against them, especially when they get out. But though they were behind walls, they were free. They were free to resist or choose sin, they were free to retaliate or forgive, they were free to pray or ignore prayer, they were not slaves to their circumstances if they were believers in Christ because joy is a deep well that goes with you wherever you find yourself for the man redeemed and ransomed.
This is great power, I told them, the power recounted in Acts by our Lord when he tells the disciples "you shall receive power," the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). If you have this power, don't give it up or forfeit it by committing sin. If you don't have this power, this rock on which to stand, you can ask for it and the God of mercy will freely give it to you. If you are not baptized, be baptized, and receive the grace necessary to be saved, for "no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit (Jn 3:5).
I was getting hoarse by the end of the hour, and closed with a prayer and the sign of the cross. He had given me the words, as nervous as I always am when I walk behind the gates without a plan or anything premeditated. It is a great privilege to visit these men inside and to simply read the Word of God to them. There is great power in the Gospel, a power that no man can take away from you. The man of Christ, whether in the world or behind bars, is a slave to God. He is free indeed.