In the past 24 hours, I made a 12-hour house call to the Adirondack Correctional Facility. There a young man sits determined to return home to be vindicated for a crime he did not commit. The daily routine, boredom and degrading atmosphere take its toll over his spirit. He simply survives, washes his clothes in a five-gallon bucket, works out in zero degree temperatures and attends Mass. The senior counselors reviewed his case and recommended that he be eligible for a work release program that would return him home. However, he needs the approval of the prison superintendent and the Albany director of parole.
The system is the disease and in the trenches I have tried to teach him how to manage his stress without losing his integrity and slumping into depression. He asked for books about the Holocaust survivors to learn how they managed in their internments. I believe that it was their faith that helped them to persevere.
Thanks to the hospitality of Fr. Vic, the prison chaplain, a young man struggles in a system that preaches “rehabilitation” but the truth is that this system’s motto is power and money.
This young man’s thoughts are swirling with emotions of anger and resentment, frustration and depression. He has spent less than 100 days surviving the system, transferred nine different times, stationed at six different prisons and learned that boredom and stripping your humanity are the focus of this inhumane system.
How many times in your life have you felt stripped of your humanity, raped by fears of misunderstanding or the cruelty of the medical or social service system that fails to give you hope and relief? Overworked counselors, nurses and aides struggle to provide homecare, a place to live, a job, medical care, or simply food stamps. In reality, you feel like a number waiting for your turn. You are not thriving but only surviving. The system is more about power and money.
Make no mistake, this is not the leadership style of Christ who comes as the servant leader. As St. Paul says, He became one like us, able to “sympathize with our weaknesses,” even becoming subject to earthly death.
When you are swirling in turmoil, drowning in bureaucracy or the empty promises of government programs and insurance, think of God getting down into the trenches with you, coming down among his people, to do everything he could for your benefit. Christ is the servant leader.
God prays for us as we reflect: “ Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13).
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who suffer from a system that fails to get down into the trenches with us. For the counselors, teachers, mentors who daily come intro the home of the elderly, physically challenged and incarnated, may the spirit of Christ bring hope and comfort into the hearts of anyone who feels abandoned and useless. In the eyes of God, look into today’s image and see beyond the swirling waters of your troubles and notice in the distance a bridge where God is waiting to walk you into his glory.
