Digital Marian Helper Winter_2016-2017

22 C 7H?7D > ;BF;H Ǚš M ?DJ;H (&',#'- ǙšǙcWh_Wd$eh] On Sept. 23, 1994, I was taken to prison with a 67-year sentence after three times refusing a “plea deal” that would have released me after one year. It’s a tough story that has been extensively covered, including a series in The Wall Street Journal . For the last 23 years, I have lived in a harsh world of concrete and steel, an asphalt jungle surrounded by high walls and razor wire. It’s a world where prison gangs vie for influence, for control of young minds and the suppression of hope. It was into this world that a profoundly powerful grace has unfolded. This tough story is now no longer about justice or injustice alone. It’s now about Divine Mercy, a term once foreign to this imprisoned world. It started with a series of what seemed to be mere “accidents.” Two lives converge Refusing to plead guilty came with a price steeper than just the length of my sentence. For my first seven years in prison, I was confined with seven other men in THE DOORS THAT HAVE UNLOCKED A t the outset of the extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis decreed that prisoners who pass through the doors of their cells may receive the indul- gence usually attached to passing through a designated Holy Door if they turn their hearts to God’s mercy. With that in mind, we reached out to Fr. Gordon J. MacRae, an inmate at New Hampshire State Prison, to share with us his thoughts on living the faith during this Jubilee Year. Father MacRae writes for the award-winning blog TheseStoneWalls.com at the behest of the late Cardinal Avery Dulles. Here’s his sur- prising response: