Issues

Nonviolence . . . Human trafficking . . . Women . . . . The elderly . . . Immigrants' rights . . . Housing. . . Children . . . Prisoners' rights . . . Health care . . . World Hunger . . . Globalization, as it affects Latin America . . . Care of the earth . . . Seamless ethic of life

Note: The ideas and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author's and should not be ascribed to the Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes or its members.





Thursday, December 22, 2016

Dale S. Recinella's Book, Christmas Through a Looking Glass


Christmas Through a Looking Glass
By Dale S. Recinella
Catholic Correctional Chaplain
Florida Death Row 
Note: This selection from Dale Recinella’s new book touched me because I have been a member of the pastoral team with the Interfaith Center for Detained Immigrants. Every Saturday some of us visit detained immigrants at the Dodge County Jail in Juneau, WI. Sister Sally Ann Brickner, OSF

It is Christmas Eve morning. Nothing could have prepared me for this. I process through the guard station and collect my chapel keys.

Spirals of razor wire are heaped two-stories high on the three rows of electrified fence. The sliver-gray teeth glisten like tinsel in the crisp morning air. A dozen inmates peer at me from the other side. They are huddling at the gate that separates the chapel from the prison compound.

Merry Christmas,” smiles the officer. My stomach tenses into a knot.

She hits the button that releases huge electric locks on the steel access doors. A loud bang echoes through the sally port. I step inside the prison. The knot in my belly tightens even more.

The inmates at the gate beat their arms, warming themselves against the December chill. Small clouds of breath hang in front of their blue fatigues.

Why does this picture jar me? The specifics are no different than usual. It should be just another other day as a volunteer spiritual counselor at Florida’s Appalachee Correctional Institution.

But this is not just another day. It is Christmas Eve.

In that moment, I am amazed that I have never wondered what Christmas is like behind bars.

Chapel appointments with volunteers are by “call-out,” written requests processed through administration. We open the chapel. A clerk hands me the day’s roster – 19 call-outs. A normal morning is five.

I phone my wife, “I’ll be here until 6:00.”

I am wrong. We won’t close the chapel until 9:30 Christmas Eve night.

But there’s no way I could know that. It’s my first time in prison on the morning before Christmas.

I dig in with coffee and my first inmate appointment at 8:30 a.m. We pray and I ask, “What’s on your heart this morning?”

“Give me a reason to not go for the wall,” he whispers.

We both know the term is prison slang for feigning an escape attempt in front of the guards, in the hope that they will have to kill you.

Men are said to have done such things when they received a “Dear John” letter from their wife or learned of the death of a child. Is Christmas here that painful?

We talk, we cry, we pray. Man after man, blue shirt after blue shirt. Murderers. Rapists. Molesters. No one to call at Christmas. No one to write. No o0ne to see. Their families too far away to visit. Their children severed and adopted by other fathers.

About 5:00 o’clock I tell the clerks we need more “prison Kleenex.” The rolls of toilet paper we unwrapped that morning are all down to the cardboard.

My last call-out, an intelligent and verbal man, has met regularly with me all year.

“I’m not saying I shouldn’t be here,” tears tug at his eyes. “I did terrible things and don’t even know why. I can understand why society wants me behind this fence. I’ll be here the rest of my life. But I’m a human being. I still need friends and relationships with normal people. I’m a baptized, practicing Christian. Christmas is our day. Where are the Christians?”

My lame response about people confusing compassion toward wrong-doers with approval of their bad behavior only angers him.

“Jesus said that when his followers visit an inmate, they visit him!” he grips the tissue roll with both hands. “Jesus didn’t say the inmate had to be innocent. Why isn’t anybody visiting Jesus at Christmas?”

Looking away, I stammer, “I don’t know.”

Soon, it’s time for us to end.

“What do you want to pray for?” I ask.

He leans back in his chair, as if he is talking through the ceiling to the heaven above, “What do I want God to give me for Christmas?”

“Sure,” I reply.

“That every Christmas all the prisons in Florida will be busting at the seams from all the Christians trying to get in to visit Jesus.”

“Brother,” I caution, “that prayer could take a long time to answer.”

He shrugs,” I’ll be here.”

When We Visit Jesus in Prison: A Guide for Catholic Ministry. Chicago, IL: ACTA Publications, c. 2016. pp 17-19

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