For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? (Romans 8:24)
When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” They divided his garments by casting lots.
Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:33, 34, 39-43)
Perhaps it is because of my innate need for freedom that I have always cared deeply about the fate of those who live imprisoned, perhaps in an overcrowded and foul-smelling cell, where living space is reduced to a few steps and the horizon is lined with bars and railings. They are there to serve a sentence (just and sometimes even unjust!), to undergo a process of rehabilitation.
But we know full well that this takes place, for the most part, in conditions that do not respect human dignity, due to inadequate care for the physical and mental health of prisoners. In many cases, it is impossible to access work and rehabilitation opportunities, so the bars, in addition to confining the body, end up imprisoning the spirit, weakening emotional bonds, suffocating dreams and often the desire to live.
Yet behind the walls of every cell there is a person, and that person has a history and roots that we do not know and that could be our own. I don’t know about you, but I have asked myself many times, like Pope Francis, “Why them and not me?”, attributing the credit for this proclivity above all to God.
It is no coincidence that on December 26, 2024, Pope Francis made a significant gesture by opening the Holy Door in Rebibbia Prison, and on January 9, 2025, the “Jubilee of Hope in Prisons” began.
“I wanted to open the Door wide today, here. I opened the first one in St. Peter’s, the second one is yours. It is a beautiful gesture to open wide, to open doors. But what matters most is its meaning: to open the heart. Closed hearts, hard hearts, do not help us to live. This is why the grace of a Jubilee is to open wide, to open, and above all to open hearts to hope. Hope is like an anchor: something to cling to in difficult times and in the darkest of prospects.”
I reread the Pope’s words with admiration, but I continue to ask myself: “How can a man sentenced to ten, twenty, thirty years in prison; or a life prisoner with a sentence ending on December 31, 9999 open his heart to hope?”
How can he manage to cling to this anchor without falling into the risk of madness, annihilation and despair? And how, instead, can faith become light on those nights that seem endless?
With these questions in my heart, I opened the Gospel and read the passage that recounts Jesus’ capture and crucifixion.
I confess that I have never meditated enough on the fact that He too experienced arrest. The Master is in a garden when he is approached by a handful of guards who seize him, bind him, and drag him away to be tried. He, innocent, accepts being treated as guilty and allows himself to be imprisoned. In Jerusalem, in the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu (the place where the rooster crowed), there is still a place venerated as the prison where Jesus spent the night before his condemnation.
When you are in prison it would be natural to imagine God as a judge who condemns and rejects you (because you have done wrong, you tell yourself that you are wrong and therefore no longer deserve his love!), the Gospel reminds you that He could be your cellmate, one who, like you, suffers the deafening silence of the nights and the anxious wait for the trial, one who cannot communicate with relatives and friends and is insulted even by those who are condemned like him.
One who is waiting for you; to meet you where you would not expect to find him. Jacques Fesh, a 24-year-old Frenchman, certainly would not have expected it when, one morning in February 1954, he was led in handcuffs to a cell in “La Santé,” the Paris prison. The charge was profoundly serious: during a robbery he had killed a police officer.
Confined to 108 square feet of living space, isolated from the other inmates, he received a visit from the chaplain one day, but he rejected him harshly, telling him that he was not a Christian and did not need anything. In solitude, he began to look inside himself, to meditate on his history, on his empty life without ideals, inevitably full of selfishness and whims, and he recognized the abyss that had led him to lose himself in illusory dreams and to kill.
One day, after a few weeks, the young man saw the chaplain passing by and called out to him: “Father, I have done a great evil.”
The chaplain listens to him, without being surprised by anything, and brings him some books, including the Gospel and “The Story of a Soul” by St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who, while still a girl, converted the criminal Henri Pranzini with her fervent prayers a few hours before the guillotine.
Jacques reads, meditates, and soon the figure of Jesus captivates him. Before Him, he can only kneel, but he does not feel humiliated: did he or did he not give Paradise to the thief crucified beside him, who invoked him: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”? Yes, he gave it to him!
Jacques’ heart began to open to faith, he said his YES to God after a year, at night. Let us listen to Jacques’ own moving account: “It was one evening, in my cell… Despite all the catastrophes that had befallen me in recent months, I remained a convinced atheist… Now, that evening, I was lying in bed with my eyes open and suffering for the first time in my life with a rare intensity because of what had been revealed to me about certain family matters (everything was falling apart!). It was then that a cry burst from my chest, a cry for help: My God! My God! And instantly, like a violent wind that passes without knowing where it comes from, the Spirit of the Lord took hold of my throat.” And, in a letter to his friend, Father Thomas, he specifies: “I believed and no longer understood how I could have not believed before. Grace visited me and an immense joy took hold of me and, above all, a great peace. Everything became clear in a few moments. It was an extraordinarily strong, tangible joy…”
“My God! My God!” and the grace of the Father comes to console him.
“For the first time, I cry tears of joy, in the certainty that God has forgiven me and that now Christ lives in me, in my suffering, in my love.”
Thus, a new life is born, short but luminous: “Now I am truly certain that I am beginning to live for the first time. I have peace and I have given meaning to my life, while before I was nothing but a living dead man.”
When, on April 6, 1957, his 27th birthday, the final sentence of the court condemning him to the guillotine arrived, Jacques’ first reaction was a total loss of soul. He was stunned, petrified, but he did not rebel. He began to spend many hours of his imprisonment on his knees in his cell, alone with God, praying and offering himself and all souls, determined to enter Paradise immediately after his death, like the good thief who repented on the cross, next to Jesus Crucified.
The story of Jacques, whose beatification process is now underway, is not an isolated case. Thanks, above all to the closeness of chaplains, volunteers, and the prayers of many family members and friends, prison becomes a place where faith can be rediscovered and rediscovered as a “corner of forgiveness.”
Where a full confession of what you have done attracts a harsh condemnation in the human court, the same confession made in the heavenly court earns you the forgiveness of the Judge, who has the face of a Father. In an unexpected and surprising way, space can open in the soul of a prisoner to recognize the fatherhood of God. Even if he has experienced stormy and unloving relationships in his family, he can now count on a welcoming, merciful Father.
Feeling like a son restores your lost dignity. You are not abandoned to what happens inside and outside of you. You overcome the fears that assail you. You feel a strength that does not abandon you, a gift of sonship first misunderstood and then welcomed back.
It is the encounter with such a Father that revives hope.
The jubilee for prisoners, which will be celebrated on December 14, 2025, reminds us to intercede for our brothers and sisters in prison, for their families, the chaplains who assist them, and the volunteers, so that everyone’s hearts may be melted and reopened to a hope that is invisible but certain, because it is founded in God. A God who dares to hope in man, who sees seeds of holiness where others see only ashes of wickedness.
He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43)
Mary, Mother of Hope, pray for us!
Resolutions for the Month
- Pray Psalm 55 (Listen, God, to my prayer; do not hide from my pleading; hear me and give answer…) and offer it for a prisoner you do not know who is going through a moment of despair.
- Thank the Lord for the gift of freedom and try to enjoy it in the little things of everyday life. Imagine you are a prisoner who has just been released.
- Adopt a prisoner for a year or for a period of your choice and offer a moment of prayer or an act of charity for him or her every day.
This month’s meditation is by Sr. Simona Ciullo, AVI.
