← The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.
The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.
The spiritual journey behind Sr. Helen Prejean’s fight to end the death penalty
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Well, the holidays have come and gone once again.
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But if you've forgotten to get that.
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Special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
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50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms. Where is the dignity in the death of deliberate death of a human being that we have rendered completely defenseless and then deliberately killed them? Where is the dignity in that death? Or does the Catholic Church only uphold the dignity of innocent life? What about guilty people? What about their dignity?
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A
Welcome to the spiritual life. I'm Fr. Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God in their prayer and in their daily lives. And I'm joined by my wonderful producer, Maggie Van Doren. Maggie, good to be back with you.
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C
It's great to be with you, Jim.
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A
Yeah. And we're really excited. This is someone on our show who I've thought as soon as we started this podcast, we have to have her on, and it is the great Sister Helen Prejean. Can you tell us a little bit about this sort of mutual hero of ours?
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B
Yeah.
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She's a legend. Sister Helen Prejean is a member of the congregation of St. Joseph. She's known worldwide for sparking a dialogue on the death penalty and as the Catholic sister who wrote the best selling book Dead Man Walking, which was made into a 1995 Oscar winning film and then not long ago it was made into a play, an opera, and now a graphic book. Sister Helen uses storytelling to bring citizens close to the hard realities of government killings.
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Yeah.
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And one of the great things about this conversation is that I'm sure that so many of us know her as an advocate, as you described, and someone who's a death penalty activist, obviously against the death penalty. But in this conversation, we go a little deeper and talk about her own spiritual life, her own relationship with God, with Jesus, and just her own journey. So I'm really happy that we're able to see the personal side, the spiritual side of this great public figure.
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C
Now, Jim, of course, Sister Helen has been a longtime advocate against the death penalty, but Catholic teaching has evolved considerably over the years. I'm wondering if you could outline for us some of the major shifts in Catholic teaching around the death penalty.
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Yeah, I'm happy to. And I think it's really important before we enter into this conversation, to know, like, where she's coming from and where the Church is coming from. So I did a little research, and forgive me if I sound like I'm reading, because I am, but in the very earliest days of the Church, right, Very earliest days, it was approved. The death penalty was okay because the church authorities deferred to the state know said civil authorities are okay with doing that. Later popes agreed, as did Thomas Aquinas, the famous medieval theologian, who said there's no sin when authorities administer the death penalty. The first catechism after the Council of Trent talked about lawful slaying, believe it or not, by authorities, and said that civil authorities were legitimate avengers of crime. And as late as Pope pius XII in 1952, the church was still supporting that position. So this is pretty recent. Things began to change with Paul vi, who criticized certain aspects of capital punishment. And then in 1992, and in his document Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II said that it should be used only when others were in danger from the aggressor. Right. In that sort of specific case, later, Pope Benedict XVI called for its abolition. And finally, Pope Francis famously amended the catechism to say that it was inadmissible. And then he continued to speak out against it. So we really have to understand that there's definitely been a development of doctrine when it comes to the death penalty, and a lot of that has to do with Sister Helen Prejean.
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C
Thank you, Jim. That's really helpful. One of the things that we do on this show is we take questions from our audience, and we found one that was especially pertinent for this conversation with Sister Helen. The question comes from Kathy, and it is, how can we forgive someone who has done something to suggest they have little or no moral integrity? Is it possible to forgive an unforgivable act? And you will take up that question with the great Sister Helen Prejean later in this episode. So please stay tuned for that answer. And if anyone would like to write Father Jim a question, you can write to us@thespirituallifeamericamedia.org thanks so much.
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And now onto our conversation with Sister Helen Prejean. Sister Helen Prejean, welcome to the spiritual life.
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Thank you.
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It's great to have you.
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B
Yeah, good to be here.
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You have so many fans here in America, media, also myself and also among our listening audience. So thanks very much. Also Congratulations on the new graphic edition of Dead Men Walking.
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Yes.
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Can you tell us about how that came about?
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Can I hold it up?
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You can definitely.
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So everybody can see this. So the artist who did the pictures in here, Catherine Anyango Grunewald, just flew over from Stockholm last night. And it tells the story of dead man in pictures. And we want to get it out to a new generation. So with the help of donors, I'm getting it to different schools. So we started with Notre dame last week, 1,000 copies. Getting it into theology, criminal justice, human rights, so that we can wake up young people.
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It's great and it's a great genre. Now you've had, let me get this straight. You've had of course the book and then the film that everybody knows with Susan Sarandon and then the opera. Was there a play as well?
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Yeah, stage play. In fact, I just heard from Tim Robbins that he just it's been for schools, but he just talked to producer so it might be able to be on the stage as well. Although we always were interested in just getting it into schools for young people to perform it. And that's been in about 220 schools, high schools and colle. So now we got this. I think it's the last iteration. Unless there's a swinging little ballet company that wants to do Dead man Kicking, that's the only thing we don't have, is a ballet.
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Now for some of the younger listeners, can you tell the story of dead men Walking? Sure. What is this book about?
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Well, it's my story first awakening to the gospel of justice. See, for a long time I believed that the Gospel of Jesus was about charity. Catholic nun Sister St. Joseph taught in an elementary school. St. Francis Cabrini was the director of religious Edna Parish. But it was all out in the suburbs and always to be kind and to be charitable. But I didn't know about justice. I had to wake up to justice. In fact, growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, it was during the Jim Crow days when black people couldn't even sit in the front of the bus. I never went to school with an African American person. The only way I knew African American people was as our servants. So here I am in the big two story house. And the book really shows a good depiction in Goodwood of our house. And in the back was the servants quarters and a couple Ellen. I didn't even know their last names. Ellen worked in the house with Mama, Jesse worked in the yard. And mom and daddy were always kind. Help Jessie get a job at the refinery, helped them buy Their own house. But the word justice, never. I never heard it in my household. And it's a culture. It was a culture. Good mom and Daddy, but culture, well, honey, it's better for them to be with your own kind and us. And I just simply accepted it because the culture gives you eyes, gives you ears to interpret things around you. So it was always to be kind. And then that waking up to the gospel, I heard a talk. Marie Augusta Neal. It's featured here in the. In the graphic. And she talked about Jesus preaching good news to the poor. And see, I thought I knew what she was going to say next, that they were poor now and they suffering with Christ on the cross. One day they'll have a great reward in heaven. And she says, I still remember the line that changed the spiritual trajectory of my life. And she said, integral to the good news to poor people is it's not God's will for them to be poor, and they have a right to struggle for what is rightfully theirs. And I thought to myself, I don't even know one poor person. I left from that conference, began to get on a bus and volunteer to go into the inner city there in New Orleans, St. Thomas Housing Projects, place called a Hope House. And my life is going to change.
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And this is when you were a Sister of St. Joseph that you heard this talk?
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Yep, our sisters were the ones that sponsored the talk. I mean, they had me. In all my growing years, I had all these fanciful ideas how we were going to win the world for Christ. But, you know, the spiritual life was not grounded in the suffering of people, real people on earth yet. And so you know what my little tagline in the community was? There goes Helen again with one of her ideas, her feet firmly planted in midair. And it was true, because I wasn't grounded. But, boy, when I heard that about poor people and the struggle for justice, and I realized I'm out in the suburbs, they're in the inner city. And I moved in with the people and became their neighbors, and they became.
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My teachers, which is beautifully illustrated in your book and in the movie as well. And as I'm sure in the graphic design.
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Yeah, I've been here, too.
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So what helped you to get into death penalty work? How did that start?
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That was like falling down a laundry chute. And that was sneaky Jesus, because, Jim, look what happened. I'm working at Hope House, immersed in the people and their needs, and one day got an invitation. Hey, Sister Helen, you want to be a pen pal with somebody on death Row. I said, yeah, I can write letters. I thought I was only going to be writing letters. I'm an English major, maybe sent a few poems, you know, Never dreamed it was going to be anything other than writing letters. And then it unfolds on you. And first, then he had no one to visit him. So I write and I say, I'll come visit you. Then I get the visitor forms and there are different categories and wife, ex wife, girlfriend. And he said, I'm a Catholic and you're a nun. Would you be my spiritual advisor? So I go fill out the form and little did I think if I had known the way that was going to end, you know how grace is. You only got to say, yeah in the present moment. But two and a half years later, being spiritual advisor meant I'm going to be with him and walk with him and he's going to be killed in the electric chair. And I'm going to be there and telling him, look at my face, look at me. I'll be Christ for you when they do this. I wanted him to know his dignity because you treated like disposable human ways by the state. Handcuffed close to his waist, leg irons, six guards around him, utterly defenseless. And this will be the core of my conversation and dialogue with Pope John Paul. Where is the dignity in the death of deliberate death of a human being that we have rendered completely defenseless and then deliberately kill them? Where is the dignity in that death? Does the Catholic Church only uphold the dignity of innocent life? What about guilty people? What about their dignity?
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What was John Paul's response?
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Well, he didn't send me a letter in return. He had just written that encyclical, the encyclical Evangelium Vitae in which he had upheld the inviolable dignity of human life. And when he got to the death penalty, because, you know, it was in the air, the dialogue was in the air, the moving of the spirit over the waters, as always in the air and coming up from the ground, just globally, about the death penalty. And so in Evangelium Vitae, he had pushed the death penalty to the edge. I thought he was going to in principle come out against it, but he said the death penalty should be rare, if not non existent. But then he had added, but in cases of absolute necessity, the state can execute. And don't you know that Catholic Harry Connick Sr. In New Orleans held up Evangelium Vitae and said, we can't get enough death penalties here in New Orleans. Everyone we get is an absolute necessity. And so I said to the Holy Father, I said, your words are going to be quoted for death. We need principled opposition because the sticking point for the Church had always been upholding the right of the state to take life. So you have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That's happened just Article 3. By being a human person, we have an inalienable right to life. So my letter got to him in 97. It happened around the death of Joseph Odell in Virginia, who was innocent and whom they killed. And then in 99 when Pope John Paul came to the United States, he was in St. Louis and for the first time he put the death penalty in with the other pro life issues, said no to abortion, no to euthanasia and no to the death penalty, which is cruel. Our own Supreme Court will not acknowledge that putting people in small cages for 20 years and taking them out and killing them is a cruelty act. They don't acknowledge cruelty. But Pope John Paul did. He said it's cruel and unnecessary. Even those among us who have done a terrible crime have a dignity that must not be taken from them.
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Well now, how do we get from that to Francis changing the catechism to inadmissible, the famous word, how did that come about?
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Yeah, well, it's very linked my image. It's kind of simplistic, but it makes the point. Pope John Paul put the volleyball right up over the net. And then in 2018, Pope Francis knocked it over the net. Because the last thing that happens is that you change the teaching of the Church because the dialogue has happened in the Church, the change in consciousness and conscience, so that we're ready for the change. I mean, the Pope is never going to go and change something in the catechism where there hasn't been the soil tilled and the people ready. And so because of Pope John Paul making that public statement in St. Louis when he did in 97. And so then when you get to 2018 and Pope Francis from the very beginning began to speak out against the death penalty. And then finally we reach a point. You know what I keep thinking this is my own spiritual life is you'd think Jesus was a farmer with all the men.
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Meaning what? What do you mean?
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It was all about seeds?
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Oh sure.
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Seeds and things growing. Even the seed, the farmer goes to sleep. He doesn't even know how the seed's growing. And I have a deep, deep faith in that, that the gospel of Jesus and the truth, that it represents the compassion and non violence, it represents those of us who are awake and have been witnesses that our job is to keep telling the truth. Because you know what I found out? A lot of people, they don't even know the death penalty exists. It's a secret ritual. And so the power. When I go before an audience and this book is going to be in the hands of people, they have good hearts. They just need to be exposed to what the death penalty is and realize they can be safe as citizens without imitating a crime.
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So is the seed imagery, which I like, because a couple of years ago, I was reading Gerhard Loefinck, the New Testament theologian, and I'm reading his book.
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On the parables right now, which is fantastic.
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And he said it's not only about something. I found this really interesting. It's not only about something small, but it's also. It takes time. Right. Is that why you like that image so much? Because it took so much time or these things?
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Well, the time comes because it's an organic way of unfolding and growing. And so there's a deep patience. And God has given me that grace of a deep patience with this issue, because I've been at it, what, 35 years, and it unfolds in its own way. You can't lay out a blueprint. Here's what's got to happen, and then see your plan unfold. You got to let it. It happens organically. And I noticed that even about my own self, of what happened inside me. First, will you write a letter? Wrote a letter. Then he wrote back. Pat Sonier. And I've encountered a human being. It can be a letter, but it's a real encounter. And I felt his loneliness. Here's a man condemned to death. Nobody's coming to see him. That unfolds inside you. So then I do the next step. I'll come visit you. So then I begin to visit him, and then it ends up that I'm the witness to his execution. It all unfolded like a rose.
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Yeah. That's beautiful. You know, I always love talking to you. I mean, when I think about my own ministry with LGBT people, I've often thought of the slowness. Right. And the kairos. But that idea that you don't know where it's going really resonates.
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And you're not in charge of it.
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Yeah. And you know what the rose is going to look like. You know, you plant the seed, and who knows what kind of flower is going to come up. Right. Did you ever get. I would imagine a lot of our listeners would ask this. Did you ever get impatient or even angry or resentful in some way that it wasn't moving fast enough. Or was there always a sense of trust with all of this?
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Yeah. Never angry and resentful. It wasn't moving fast enough. You know it. And even when I came out of that execution chamber that night, early in the morning, April 5, 1984, in the dark, threw up. And I remember the words of scripture that I remember was Jesus looked at the people. They were like sheep without a shepherd. That the people don't know about this. It's a secret ritual that kept from seeing it. Very interesting. I was just with at Notre Dame in the department in International Human Rights, I met a woman from Rwanda. So you know that in 94, the people just started killing each other. Over a million people were slaughtered by each other.
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And.
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And there was going to be a public execution of seven of the people who had done some of the worst atrocities. And the government made the announcement it would be held in a stadium. And the stadium was filled to see these seven people executed. And they were blindfolded and stood in the middle of this field, came behind each of them with a gun and shot them in the back of their head. The people in the stadium that witnessed it are the ones then that call for an end to the death penalty, because they witnessed it. And that's primarily who I am. I'm a witness to this. My job is to bring the people close. So that seed imagery, that God's going to work it in his own way. And it's true in our country, we're in a bad way now with what's going on in our country, what's happening to immigrants. Got to trust that as the people awaken and we help them to awaken, they're going to take charge of it. And through the elections and way they vote, we're going to change things. But you got to be in there for the long haul, and you can't be tied to your little. This is what I want to see happen. If it doesn't happen in my timeline, I'm taking my bat and ball and I'm going home. I quit. As if.
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No, exactly. Yeah. And it's that the Oscar Romero prayer, which I love so much, or at least written by Bishop Untner. You know, we plant the seeds that someone else, you know, harvest and all that. Let me ask you something. I'm really curious. I never thought about this. We've known each other for a while, and I've read your books, and when you went in to be a spiritual Advisor. Did you have much training for that? I was thinking, did you have spiritual direction training or anything like that before you started?
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And I didn't call it spiritual direction. I called it accompaniment, which it has been. So I didn't have an internal plan for the sky, what it needed to do, because you already find God there. I mean, here a man who, with his brother, had killed two innocent teenage kids. And it was Pat's brother Eddie, who actually killed the kids. But Pat was in there, and part of it. They were abducting kids. And. And the remorse. What. How do you. When you've been part of something and it gets out of control and your brother. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. He's killed two people. Pat's there. He's part of it. And every night he would kneel at his bunk when they dim the light on death lights on death row and pray for the kids and their parents. What do you do with that kind of remorse? You know? And I met God in him. I met God in him.
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What does that mean?
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It means that already that remorse and that conscience and that sorrow, that transparency and that honesty of what he had participated in. He's humble. He's vulnerable. He's transparent. So I knew in accompanying him, I wanted him to know his dignity. And then when he died, he gave me his Bible. And so I saw the psalms that he had underlined. Oh, God, be merciful. I am the most wretched of the earth. They all seek to end my life. I mean, deep human, vulnerable, poverty stuff. And so I learned from him.
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What did you. How did it change? Or did it change your idea of who God was? What was going on inside of you during all of that?
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It became very, very clear to me that Jesus was in that execution chamber. And you know, Jim, I used the two arms of the cross because it's not to make the person who did the crime a hero. It's not to condone. But Jesus is there with him. That inviolable dignity of. And then Jesus with the victim's family, too. And that was a growing thing for me at first. I didn't reach out to the victim's family because I thought they were already so mad, so angry, the prosecutors puts them on a seesaw. If anybody's against the death penalty, they're your enemies because they've gotten them into the mindset. The way we get justice for your dead child is to kill him. Anything less than that is not justice. But it was cowardice that I stayed away, that I didn't reach out to Them and met them, and it's all here in the Graphic. Met them at the worst possible time I could meet a victim's family. It was at the Pardon Board hearing one week before Pat was executed. And they're the victims families, with all their relatives and friends packing that room. It was public. And that's when I met them. And I'm on the other side. I'm asking for the man not to be executed. They're all asking for him to be executed. And we were walking outside while the Pardon Board was voting, and bam. I ran right into the two families. The Bourke family, whose daughter had been killed. So angry. Everybody was Catholic. The Bourkes, the LeBlancs, me. They were just furious at me. And they walked past me in this stone silence. And right behind them were the LeBlanc, Lloyd LeBlanc and his wife Hewlett, who had lost David, their 17 year old son. And I expected the same anger. And Lloyd LeBlanc walked right up to me. He said, sister, all this time you've been visiting with the two brothers and you never once came to see us. We haven't had anybody to talk to. He even said that he and Eula would go to mass in different churches in St. Martinville to see if they could hear a priest talk about the Gospel of Jesus. Because, of course, everybody's calling for the execution. It was a terrible crime. And he said we couldn't go to any church. I couldn't hear from anybody's lips that the Gospel of Jesus is telling us not to engage in that kind of hatred and vengeance. And you haven't been there either. Where have you been, Sister, all this time? What can you say? I was wrong. And then he was grace. And then he invited me. Come pray with me. I pray in this Little Chapel from 4 to 5. I keep visible for the Blessed Sacrament. And so I began to go and pray with him.
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Was it hard for you to kind of admit that to yourself? Was that tough or was it.
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Oh, yeah. In fact, my editor, Jason Epstein, when he looked at the first draft of Dead Man Walking, he said, well, you know, you're letting yourself off kind of easy here. I mean, you're just saying, I'd never done this before. Better to stay away. They were already in pain. And he looked me right in the eye and he goes, well, it was cowardice, wasn't it? You were scared, weren't you? I said, oh, yeah. So he said, look, when you write your book, don't just take people on the peaks of the waves when you did it all right, take them in the troughs where you did it wrong. And then I write about that honestly in the book and I was wrong. Look how he was waiting for someone and he had no one and I wasn't there for him.
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We're going to pause for a short break, but we will be right back. If you're thinking about what's next in your life and you have questions that you want to explore and you want.
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B
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The Boston College Companions program will help you.
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- [28:13]
A
You know, so many of us, you know who are listening, we're never going to have that same experience, obviously, but we have experiences like that in our own lives where we have to admit that we've done something where we failed. What enables you and what enables a person to do that? Let's say there's someone out there who says I have to forgive this person, I have to ask for forgiveness, but I can't because I just feel stuck and I'm embarrassed. And what enables a person to do that? What kind of advice would you give that person who's stuck asking for forgiveness or.
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B
Well, it's not my advice, but it is Lloyd LeBlanc's discovery. The father of what? Forgiveness. Even when you look at the word Jim, you look at that word forgive to give before and Lloyd's and boy, the graphic really brings it out. He was being consumed by anger about the loss of David because he and David were close. They used to fix cars together. The last time he sees his son alive is to go to a football game on a Friday night. And then he never sees his son alive again, only in the morgue to identify his body. And he said, I was angry all the time and I've always been a kind person. But I'm snapping at Yule, I'm making her cry. Vicki, my daughter is slipping through the cracks. And he just kept praying, jesus, you got to help me. You got to help me. And then finally he came to a moment of grace. And he put his hand out like this when he said it, and he said. Then I said, uh, they killed my boy, but I'm not going to let him kill me. And that healing, he got his kindness back. He was back to himself that giving before is not to let your own integrity of heart be taken over by the hatred. He was the only one that showed kindness to Mrs. Sonier, Pat and Eddie. Sonia. She couldn't even go into the grocery store, and she'd overhear people saying loud enough for here, there's that white trash woman. Her sons killed the LeBlanc and the Bork children. And one day she hears somebody on her front porch. She looks at the blonde. She had cut off her telephone. She had her daughter bringing her in groceries and sees this man on her front porch. And she sees he has a basket of fruit. She opens the door and it's Lloyd LeBlanc. And he says, Ms. Sonier, I know you've been going through a tough time in this town. Here's my phone number. As parents, we never really know what our kids might do. I don't hold you responsible for what your sons did. If you need me, you call me. He had gotten back his own integrity of soul to give before, so that he said, people think forgiveness is some kind of weakness, like you condoning, saying it's okay, but it's like with the grace of God, you don't succumb to the hatred so that you die, too.
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A
What enabled you to go to those families and to say I was wrong? Was it an insight or just something that you knew you had to do?
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B
Well, because I'd done it all wrong. And I only met them in public at the pardon board hearing. Ever after that, when I took a family. I mean, when I took a person on death row to accompany them, I always wrote to the victim's family. But look what happens, Jim, with the death penalty. You have this huge adversarial process, and you got to be on one side of the other. I think in the opera the victim's families sing, it's him or us. It's right or wrong. It's black or white. That huge separation which the gospel calls us, to go across that divide, because I'd done it all wrong. Ever after, when I'd write a letter to the victim's family saying, I am the spiritual advisor of the one who has killed Your child, if I can be of any help to you. And I get an angry letter back every time from the lawyer saying, don't you even have any kind of touch with that family? And they defied you. But I try.
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A
Speaking of sort of separation and polarization, I still find that there's among Catholics and Christians this sort of pushback against anti death penalty work. And recently Pope Leo said, I'm going to quote this, someone who says, I am against abortion but says I am in favor of the death penalty is not really pro life. Right. Which I agree with, and I'm sure you do, too. What advice would you offer Catholics who are struggling to receive Francis teaching that it's inadmissible and Leo's teaching on this? What do you say to people who say, well, you know, it's an eye for an eye and, you know, and they're not innocent and, you know, good Catholics who are really struggling with that?
- [33:14]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and it's so understandable. I mean, unborn children are innocent just trying to be born. And here's a murderer who committed this crime. It just, it's not equal. And then some people do the numbers thing of millions unborn children, and you're going to concentrate on a few murderers. But it's that essential dignity of human life, of every person. And when we descend into that, to the heart of it, we're really descending into the gospel. What Jesus taught us. You've heard it said, an eye for an eye, he said. The reason he said that is he knew that anger would destroy us and to be a loving person and always open. And what I say to people, I don't try to give them any advice or much less try to start leveling arguments with them. I just say, talk to some of the people who have the experience. I try to introduce them to people who have had someone killed and choose another road and why they choose another road. I remember one of the victim's family said, it's like I was drinking poison of the hatred and I hoped it would kill him, you know, the one who had done the harm. So I don't have much good advice to offer them because I haven't suffered like these people have. But I point them toward them saying, you know, just, there are so many witnesses. There's a whole cloud of witnesses of people that have had their loved ones murdered and choose not to, you know, respond with retaliation.
- [34:54]
A
You know, one of the most powerful things I've heard is from my friend George Williams, who I think, you know, who worked For a long time. On death, Ron? Yeah. On death row at San Quentin. They don't have a death row anymore. But he said to me, we were in the Holy Land traveling, and he said not only that Jesus was the most famous victim of capital punishment, but that. I never thought of this, that Jesus was on death row right in the night before his execution. Has your own kind of interior image of Jesus changed much since you started this?
- [35:29]
B
This cross is a Jerusalem cross, and it represents all the crosses on Golgotha. Anybody going into Jerusalem might see a thousand people. Jesus was executed as a criminal, and it heard this. Am I right about this, Jeff? It took at least 800 years before the church put the crucifix as a symbol of redemption up in the churches. I mean, you saw the shepherd in the catacombs, the fish, the symbol of Jesus, but not the crucifix.
- [36:04]
A
Yeah. It was such a scandal and such a shameful way. A shameful way to die.
- [36:09]
B
Yeah. And so I've identified a lot more now that Jesus really suffered and that he was abandoned. It's also given me insight into the resurrection because all the apostles fled. Peter denied him, Judas betrayed him, and they all fled. And they were all locked in a room because they were scared the religious authorities were coming after them. And that resurrection appearance. It was Sandra Snyders who gave this great insight in the Gospel of John, where it was like Jesus was in their midst. I mean, he got to be very physical afterwards, that he came through the walls and stuff. You got to let that physical stuff go. But he was in their midst. And the very first words, peace be with you. I know you all betrayed me. I know you all ran. I know you were cowards. I know you left me alone. Peace. Which means Jesus had forgiven them. And then he said, peace be with you, whose sins you forgive will be forgiven. Then those next words were mistranslated for years in the church. He did not say after that, and whose sins you retain or retain, as if God is going to let a human instrument go. I don't think right now we'll. As if the open heart of God doesn't forgive us. The real words were, who sins you? Forgiven. They are forgiven. And those you hold fast shall be held fast. And that has become a big thing in my own spiritual life, that we have to hold each other fast. Our sisters getting old and all of us aging and dying. People we know hold each other fast. That's the Jesus thing. And that's what I do with people that I'm accompanying on Death row to hold them fast, and they hold me fast.
- [38:05]
A
What's your. Since you brought up your spiritual life and this is called the spiritual life, I know people are going to be interested in this. What is your own spiritual practice? What do you do? What does Sister Helen do day to day?
- [38:17]
B
The kind of meditation where you sit and you're quiet. I feed from the scriptures, even if they wash over me and I don't understand a word, you know, not every time you meditate. It's just great.
- [38:30]
A
True boy.
- [38:31]
B
Yang Yang Yong. Here's God, you know, Although there's this great psalm that says unseen, you answered me in thunder. So I have hanging on my wall the Annunciation, Fra Angelica and the crucifixion of Jesus. Those are my two main symbols. So the annunciations always coming. It's listening. Is God calling me to do this now? Is this an invitation of me to do this? And you know how Vatican II told us, read the signs of the times. Read the signs of the times and respond. And I realized that's how I wrote the letter to the man on death row. I was just responding to an invitation, not knowing how it's going to unfold. So prayer for me. So what I try to do is designate Sundays to strip everything else away, to have a Sabbath day, to devote time because I have a busy public life and to meditate, to take time. I'm digging into lofinc's Parables.
- [39:36]
A
It's a great book to always be.
- [39:38]
B
Growing in the spiritual life. And there are a lot of good books, people who. And you know, what Robert Ellsberg has done in Give us this Day with the lives of the Saints. So I feed on all that stuff, but that quiet, quiet listening and throughout the day. Early. When I was a novice, it was Brother Lawrence's practice of the presence of God to just try to be present to God throughout the whole day.
- [40:05]
A
You know, I'm glad you brought that up because that's something we haven't talked much about on this podcast, which is the value of spiritual reading. And I think it's kind of underestimated. I read the forty Parables of Jesus by Lo Fink. I read the Give Us this Day by Robert Ellsberg. I think that's kind of an unheralded way of deepening your spiritual life. There's nothing like reading a good spirituality book, right. To really kind of give you insights. But it's prayerful in itself.
- [40:31]
B
It is.
- [40:32]
A
It kind of calms you down. Let me ask you something, because I know People might ask, wonder about this. So you're looking at the Annunciation and you're sort of discerning what's an invitation and what might not be an invitation. And certainly the invitation to, you know, work with prisoners on death row was something you said yes to. How do you say, you know, what I say yes to and what I say no to? I mean, yeah, I imagine people out there would think, well, I get all these invitations, I should do X, I should do Y, should do Z. What helps the person in your experience discerning which of these sort of paths you should go on? What helps you?
- [41:10]
B
Well, you know what really helps me? Ignatius Discernment. You know that Pope Francis in seven audiences went through discernment. And the big insight I got when I did my 30 day retreat was in learning how to discern spirits. Ignatius what made me happy when I was reading it and imagining it? And it lasted, whereas what gave me a temporary high, but it faded, that was his big thing, was to track your emotions. Here he was, I mean, this military guy wielding his little sword and going around in his little fancy pants and being this swashbuckling soldier. And he got in touch with the emotions. And so I'm still learning, of course, but that discernment of even in conversation, what gives me deep joy. And there are some people, when we're talking to them and we're close to them, it's as we get into the deeper things of the spirit when we're talking to each other and we feel, when we walk away from it, refreshed, deepened, other things where it's just trivial stuff might be funny or it might be, but what lasts? What lasts? And I was moved by this statement of St. Basil. In the 4th century, annunciations are frequent, but incarnations are rare. So when I look at my own life and how things happen with death row, and I recorded it in my journal, I think I'm being called to do this. When you write things in the journal to yourself, you put it into words. What did E.M. foster, the writer, say? How do I know what I think till I see what I say? Even when we write it down, it helps us discern. The latest thing. With Manuel Ortiz on death row that I'm accompanying now, the man is absolutely innocent and he spent 33 years on death row. And he says to me, sister Helen, please write my story. It's the only way to get the truth out. We don't even know if a court will hear it, but to tell the truth, because all the lies that were done at his. He just wants the truth out. So I said yes. I remember going in my journal, I remember looking up at the end, I'd say, should I do this book? And the yes came up. And so I'm working on that now.
- [43:47]
A
I think that insight of something that gives you joy, something that gives you peace from Ignatius and lasting. Exactly. That's what I was saying. I think that's so key because, you know, Ignatius reminds us that this is the way God works and this is a sign of God's presence. And, you know, he. From his own life, he. I'm sure you remember when he was laid up after his injury, he would think about doing great exploits to impress a lady, some famous lady.
- [44:14]
B
Oh, and read all those chivalry novels. Yeah.
- [44:16]
A
And as he said, that would last for. But then when he thought about emulating the lives of the saints, especially Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic, it would last. And he would say, this makes sense.
- [44:26]
B
What if I did that?
- [44:27]
A
But it's amazing that he was able to. To take a digression on Ignatius, someone who had really no training in that. Really to be able to kind of discern that the beginning of the discernment of spirits. So Sunday is your. Is your kind of special prayer day, would you say?
- [44:41]
B
Yes. Oh, no, that's true.
- [44:43]
A
How about during the weekdays?
- [44:45]
B
Daily. Oh, no, no.
- [44:45]
A
Yeah.
- [44:46]
B
When you're busy every day. Every day begins with that quiet time. And, you know, I've seen so much terrible things. I've met people who've done terrible things. You know what I've realized about myself more and more? I keep asking for God's mercy because I've been so privileged and protected, you know, in so many ways. So it's not like I'm virtuous. I've just been protected. And there's a kind of like, man, sooner or later, they all gonna find out I'm just one great big old fraud. I mean, you know, because people give me a lot of, oh, sister, you're doing great work. All that kind of stuff. But deep, deep down, more and more, I find myself praying for God's mercy.
- [45:32]
A
That's interesting. As you grow older, you mean, or just as you come older.
- [45:37]
B
As you grow older, of course, as.
- [45:39]
A
You come to know yourself more, always.
- [45:42]
B
You come in to know yourself more. I mean, you know, that's why the saints are so helpful. Like, look at Augustine's struggle, you know, late have I loved thee coming in. You know, when you get into insight, when we have an insight that is just Pure grace. To wake up to the deeper call of the gospel is pure grace. We can't wake ourselves up. We can put ourselves in situations and we can learn how to better and better listen, but we cannot wake ourselves up. And when we get, you know, Bonaventure, the famous. I put it as an epigraph in my book river of Fire, my spiritual autobiography, ask God, not so much for understanding. Ask for the fire. Ask for the fire. Because when we catch on fire with the gospel, see, I'm real clear about that. I'm the one who's a witness that until I die, got to keep going out to the people. Now we have this book to get to the younger generation, keep going to the people because it's good news for them to know that we don't want our government imitating the crime to punish the criminal. We don't want all this retribution. It frees them. And my job is because I've been a witness. One of my favorite pages. If I could bring it out, feel free. All right, so this was after the execution. First I was with the execution of Pat Sonnier, and they put a mask over his face, and I told him to look at my face. I knew he couldn't see me anymore. And I shut my eyes when they electrocuted him. When I was with Robert Willie, I kept my eyes open the whole time. I knew more that they were going to kill me. I knew what to expect. And so there's a picture in the book here of me sitting there, and the last thing I got from Robert Willie, he wore this little black knitted cap all the time. And he handed over that cap to me when he walked to execution. And it has the saying in here. This time, I do not close my eyes. I watch everything because I know I'm one of the few citizens that's been in there close to see what really happens with these executions. And that's what gives me my mission.
- [48:14]
A
That is so moving, because I'm thinking that, you know, there's so much today that we close our eyes to.
- [48:20]
B
The economy of our attention.
- [48:22]
A
What does that mean to you?
- [48:23]
B
It means all the algorithms. How many times you look at this. We're always being monitored on social media. What we look at the economy of attention, it's one of the great things that all the consumers want to go after. It's our attention. Even the little moving things and ads that come on, hey, look at me, look at me, look at me. Our attention. That's why when we close everything off and sit quietly or when we read a book or the Gospels themselves, we're honing down. And at first it seems like emptiness, Nothing going on here, because we get used to all that stimulation. That's the only way then we can listen for the deeper voice inside.
- [49:08]
A
Yeah, and I think I also meant that we close our eyes to so much suffering, right? We don't want to see people suffering in sub Saharan Africa. We don't want to see migrants suffering in detention. We don't want to see people suffering in the inner city. There's so many things that we don't see and that we sometimes voluntarily don't see. We don't want to look at it. And so to be able to look at something like that, to be able to be a witness, is challenging for people, and yet it changes us.
- [49:37]
B
Well, I got a confession to make. I can't look at a lot of bad news over and over and over again. I can't. I mean, so many terrible things are going on in this country. I'm concentrating on what I feel God's asking me to do, and I'm staying faithful to that. But there is so much bad news, and you can get it all right through your hand with your iPhone, over and over. I think sometimes it might be healthy, fast from all that. Let it go for a while. God is in charge of the world, and eventually that arc of the universe, we got to trust, but we got to be doing what we call to do. And that's what I concentrate on. But I can't continually look at all the bad news. I just can't.
- [50:21]
A
Yeah, I think I meant the temptation to not look at anything, to say, I'm just not doing anything. But I also think, you know, I always learn stuff from you. I think that. But to focus on what you can do is so important. One of the things I loved, I heard this from a spiritual director, was that Jesus took care of the person in front of him. And that even I found this powerful, that even so someone who's sick comes up when he leaves Judea and Galilee, there are still sick people. He didn't help. I mean, you could say he saved all of us, but he didn't help in that way. Every single person. And so we can feel so overwhelmed. And the call is to help the person in front of us to try to work for justice, but to, as you were saying, to do what you can.
- [51:04]
B
Well, I mean, but that's just not an unprincipled thing without parameters, to help anybody comes in front of you, you can't be assured, all the people coming in front of you, what am I called to do? So it also means take an initiative to go to the places to cross the boundaries, like the people that are thrown away and marginated. It takes initiative on our part, too.
- [51:29]
A
Absolutely, Absolutely. Sister Helen, we have an audience question to wrap up, and you're just the person to ask. This is from Kathy.
- [51:40]
B
Hello, Kathy.
- [51:41]
A
There you go. Kathy asks, how can we forgive someone who has done something to suggest they have little or no moral integrity? Is it possible to forgive an unforgivable act, you know, for example, like the person on death row has committed some heinous crime?
- [51:57]
B
Well, I've always felt where the call to forgiveness comes is from the one who has been hurt. It is the victim's family that struggles with whether or not they can forgive in the Lloyd LeBlanc way, the gospel way of forgiving, which means, I'm not going to let that hatred take over me so that I want to do the harm to them that they did to my loved one. But what it means is that we're all, what about us? We are not the direct victims. But for me, the essential question is that we don't want to have our government imitating that kind of action to punish people, and we say yes to their doing that. That's the part we can be responsible for. And then those of us that can and are called, we need to get in those prisons and be visiting with these people that are considered the unforgivable ones, the unredeemable ones, and to meet them. Because once you meet a human being, even those who have done unspeakable acts, you realize there is in that person that everybody's worth more than the worst thing they've ever done. That's what it means to be a human person. And we work with that. We work with that, with that person. I don't know if that really answers it.
- [53:23]
A
I think it does.
- [53:24]
B
You want to add your own wisdom?
- [53:25]
A
No, I think your whole life answers it, too. I just want to say thank you for so many things. Thank you, really, on behalf of so many Catholics for helping to move the church ahead on this issue. Thanks for accompanying these people whom we will never see. Thank you for being a wonderful example of a Catholic leader. And on a much smaller level, thank you for coming on the spiritual life and being with us today. So congratulations on the new graphic edition and keep us in your prayers, too.
- [53:55]
B
Thank you. Can I leave with a quote from Teilhard de Chardin?
- [53:59]
A
Absolutely.
- [53:59]
B
Trust above all in the slow work of God.
- [54:04]
A
Amen.
- [54:05]
B
Amen brother.
- [54:13]
A
Thanks so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed that wonderful conversation with Sister Helen, one of my heroes and one of Maggie's heroes as well. I've written an article on americamagazine.org, going a little deeper about some of the themes in our conversation. You can check that out. Also, I'd like to let you know that I have a new book out, a memoir called Work in Progress. It's the story of finding work through a variety of crazy summer jobs like busboy, dishwasher, caddy, factory worker, and many more, and eventually finding God. Basically, it's a light hearted spiritual memoir about growing up in the 60s, 70s and 80s and is available in print, ebook and audio anywhere. Books are sold. I really hope you enjoy Work in Progress, the Spiritual Life with Father James Martin is produced by Maggie Van Dorn, Sebastian Gomes and myself, Kevin Christopher Robles. Will Gualtieri and Adam Buckmuller engineer the show. The theme score is courtesy of Teddy Abrams and Nate Farrington. You can follow me across social media at jamesmartinsj. Thanks very much and God bless.