Two of the disciples of John the Baptizer visit him in prison. They must have placed much stock in John as the prophet who would usher in the new age and bring about the restoration of Israel as a nation. Their hopes were set to flight as John was arrested by Herod Antipas for preaching against the vanities and sinfulness of the royal family. Some of John’s disciples left and followed Jesus but these two, among others, remained steadfast and loyal. John, who has emphasized that he is not the one to restore Israel, sends these disciples to Jesus to ask whether it is he, or if yet they are to await another. The answer that Jesus gives is a clear messianic response – “the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.”
From his prison cell John continues to testify to Jesus, instructing those who are able to hear that they need to seek out Jesus, as Jesus is the one to restore all things.
Father Jacques Mourad, a Syrian priest held hostage for months by the ISIS terrorist group was taken hostage in May 2015 from the Mar Moussa monastery.
“During these 84 days that I was a prisoner in this bathroom in Raqqa, it could be said that it was one of the most difficult experiences that a person can go through; that of losing one’s liberty,” Father Mourad said. “For me it was also a very intense experience, from the spiritual point of view.”
He recalled a moment in which he thought he was to be killed, when a man came and asked if he was Christian. But — to Father Mourad’s surprise — the man then greeted him. “That amazed me because normally the people (militants) don’t shake Christians’ hands or touch them, because they consider them impure. They don’t even greet Muslims that don’t think like them,” Father Mourad said.
In spite of repeated efforts to get him to renounce his Christian faith, Father Mourad never wavered. He commented later that: “It was very difficult above all when they said, ‘Become Muslim or we’ll cut your head off’.”
Beaten, tortured, brutalized and imprisoned, Father Walter Ciszek spent 15 years in a hard labor camps in Siberia. In prison, he heard confessions and offered spiritual comfort to his fellow prisoners. Upon his release, he spent the rest of his time in various Gulags of the Soviet state. Father Ciszek never turned away from his primary mission, that of proclaiming the Gospel. His life as a tough street kid from a Pennsylvania coal town, and the life of self-discipline and hardship which he inflicted upon himself in his seminary training, were a good spiritual and physical preparations for the cruelty of his treatment and life in the Soviet Union.
On Feb. 17, 1941, the Nazi regime shut down the monastery where Maximilian Kolbe lived. He was arrested by the German Gestapo and taken to the Pawiak prison. Three months later, he was transferred to Auschwitz where he was subjected to severe torture and discipline. Toward the end of his second month in Auschwitz, men were chosen to face death by starvation. Kolbe was not chosen but volunteered to take the place of a man with a family. He was the last of the group to remain alive, after two weeks of dehydration and starvation. The guards gave him a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Kolbe died on Aug. 14.
From their respective prisons these priests, among thousands of other faithful Christians, continue to point to Jesus Christ as the one in whom all things are restored.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.