If You Want To Get, You Have To Give

 

The past few months I've been feeling especially lonely. Although I'm not one for big groups, I like one:one interactions and connecting with people, both old and new. But it's a busy time of life for everyone, so sometimes these interactions are few and far between. 

As a writer (or rather, "one who writes a lot"), one of my favorite past times is letter writing. Before email, I would write letters to friends from wherever I was traveling in the world, or from home. I have a box full of letters received from people in my life in the attic. But like developing film, it's a past time that has gone by the wayside. I can't remember the last time I got a letter from someone in the mail, or even written one myself. Sometimes I'll get an email correspondence, but even that is getting rarer.  

Then it occurred to me: I was feeling sorry for myself, but it didn't need to stay that way. I could do something about it. So I found a Catholic organization in Texas that connects death row inmates with pen pals. I had corresponded and visited inmates at the state prison years ago, and would go into the county prison before COVID to read the bible to a group of about forty inmates once a month. But they never re opened after COVID, and so I just kind of forgot about it.

The Texas organization never got back to me (I don't know if it's still active), but the Order of Malta also runs a prison pen pal program, and they did respond to my inquiry and set me up with a prison in Montana to write to guys who are incarcerated. I sent off my first letter today to a young man who is doing five years in state prison for assaulting a police officer. I'll share my letter to him below.

Sometimes we think we need to do big things for God; but we often neglect the 'low hanging fruit' that is within our reach. Anybody can write as a corporal work of mercy. You can do it from the comfort of your home, all for the cost of a stamp. When I thought about how nice it might be for me to get a letter in the mail, how much more so for a man who has no family (this man's father is in jail, and his mother was killed) and no freedom? 

I realized that if you want to get grace (or forgiveness, or comfort, or love), sometimes you have to give it too. So that's what I'm doing. Thank you, Lord, for the grace and opportunity!

Dear D___,

How are you? Thanks for corresponding with me, and I hope this letter finds you well. I also wanted to thank you for giving me the opportunity to pray for you, and I hope you will do the same for me. 

Although I have been a Catholic for about twenty five years now, it was not always this way. I came into the Church at the age of eighteen, when God “adopted” me as his son through friendship with Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, when I was alone in the wilderness on a backpacking trip at the age of seventeen. Before that I had led a sinful life with various struggles and did not have peace, joy, or know how I could find the key to happiness. I explored Buddhism, Hare Krishna, and other esoteric religions. But it was God revealing Himself in Christ and in the scriptures (the Bible) that made me realize there was hope for me too, and that it is only in Christ that we are saved, for Jesus, it says in scripture, is “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).

I don’t know if you have any religious faith or not, but maybe we can talk about that in future correspondence if you feel comfortable doing so. I did want to share something with you from St. Paul’s letter to the Phillippians, which shows that despite one’s circumstances, the man of God can find peace and freedom. “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Phil 4:11-13). St. Paul was shipwrecked, thrown in prison, beaten, accosted, starved…but he maintained his peace and joy. Because, as he says, “What can separate us from the love of God? For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 38:39). 

What’s interesting is that St. Paul was at first a persecutor of Christians, ordering them to be murdered. But Jesus appeared to him and chose him to spread the Gospel as an Apostle. Moses, likewise, was a murderer who assaulted and killed an Egyptian and was a fugitive on the run after the did. Yet God used him as well. King David was an adulterer and ordered a man to be killed as well. God can use any of us, despite our pasts. As King David prayed to God in the Psalms, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” (Ps 51:7). 

Although I am married with three children, God must always come first in a man’s life. Because if he is not right with God, nothing else will fall into place correctly. Just as in recovery, one must turn himself over to a Higher Power (God) and admit he is not in control before sobriety can happen. 

I look forward to writing you in the future if you are able to write back. I will be praying for you as well. St. Dismas (the Good Thief) is a powerful intercessor. Here is a prayer you can pray for grace: 

“Glorious Saint Dismas, you alone of all the great Penitent Saints were directly canonized by Christ Himself; you were assured of a place in Heaven with Him "this day" because of the sincere confession of your sins to Him in the tribunal of Calvary and your true sorrow for them as you hung beside Him in that open confessional; you who by the direct sword thrust of your love and repentance did open the Heart of Jesus in mercy and forgiveness even before the centurion's spear tore it asunder; you whose face was closer to that of Jesus in His last agony, to offer Him a word of comfort, closer even than that of His Beloved Mother, Mary; you who knew so well how to pray, teach me the words to say to Him to gain pardon and the grace of perseverance; and you who are so close to Him now in Heaven, as you were during His last moments on earth, pray to Him for me that I shall never again desert Him, but that at the close of my life I may hear from Him the words He addressed to you: "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."

I hope to hear from you soon. 

In Christ,

R