Chaplaincy Services

National Chaplains' Conference,
June 2001

Artisans of Justice: A Prophetic Call

Rita Gagné o.s.u.

"We found the prison securely locked and the guards standing at the doors, but when we opened them, we found no one inside. Acts 5:23

For you had compassion for those who were in prison...Hebrews 10:34

Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them...Hebrews 13:3

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Grandfather
Look at our brokenness.
We know that in all Creation
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We know that we are the ones
Who are divided
And we are the ones
Who must come back together
To walk in the Sacred Way.
Grandfather
Sacred One
Teach us love, compassion, honour
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.

Introduction

I feel very fortunate to be with you here today. The things I have become aware of in preparing for this meeting have really astonished me deeply. As a result, I have become more attentive to everything that concerns the administration of justice. I would like to thank you, first of all, for your trust in me, but more so for your faith in human beings.... "[translation] What faith do we have then, which makes us keep alive those before whom we stand powerless? What love do we have for them, a love that is both so basic and so great, because great courage is needed to love just the same those who mortify us so?" It is this faith and this love that we will draw upon together today.

I have read the Correctional Service of Canada's Mission very carefully. The Mission highlights fine, splendid values. I have also read the description of the activities of the Chaplaincy Service. From this reading, for the topics that concern us today, I have noted the following:

• the clear link between the Correctional Service and justice,
• the fundamental value shown by having faith in everyone's dignity and potential,
• the importance, considered a cornerstone, of the quality of human relationships and of sharing in the preferred approach for promoting growth and healing.

I haven't had the same experience as you have, obviously. My inspiration today comes partly from my experience with people but especially from the Word of God, and I would like to reflect with you on the prophetic aspect of your presence in an environment that is intended above all for healing and rehabilitation. As artisans of justice you are called upon to be minister-prophets of successful relationships. Because the term "justice" is in fact a term that governs relationships. You are called upon to be prophets of a new way of meting out justice. Faced with situations that are apparently impossible to resolve, you want to open up breaches to let in the hope that will bring harmony to the crumbling world in which we live. I know how you must dig deep within yourselves to fight against the feeling of hopelessness that so many people hide under indifference so that they can go on their way without being bothered by the so-called throwaway people of a civilization that cares only for progress-at-all-costs.

Of what justice are we to be artisans?

We must live as citizens who abide by the laws that we have set down to help us all to live together as best we can. Your Service's mission is to help people who have been convicted of a very serious crime to become capable of becoming citizens who abide by these laws for living together. I won't be telling you anything new if I say that every system produces people who are deviant, delinquent, and hence excluded. You have to face people who have committed what we consider crimes and to whom criminal or punitive justice must be meted out. But there are so many others. Those who have turned against themselves the harshness or the violence in overly dehumanizing systems or environments. There are the victims of burnout, or even 'burn-in.' There are those who manage not to get caught or judged... and who continue, with impunity, to organize a polluted world.

But, in our faith, we are guided by a deep conviction. We believe that, regardless of who we are, 'we all citizens of heaven'.' Being a citizen of heaven means being a citizen of a realm where relationships can be successful because people have been empowered to meet and to communicate. The Kingdom of Heaven (or of God) is not an abstraction, it is harmony, it is well-being, it is a communion banquet. It is the Kingdom of successful relationships, of right of relationships. We do not only have relationships-we are relational beings. Everything about us is relational. From our external senses to our internal senses, from sexuality to intelligence by way of the heart.

This link with the divine, original and indefectible, is the foundation of a person's truth and his potential for growth. This link is very much like a pilot light that is lit from the beginning. It keeps on burning beneath the ashes of all our miseries. And when the wind is up, the fire draws well!

In this perspective, we consider justice not only in its relationship to the human laws that we pass, promulgate and defend, but also in its relationship to the Law of the Kingdom of successful relationships, which is that of Love. This Law is engraved in our hearts from the beginning. It is the truth of our being. There is within each of us a divine aptitude for relationships. Justice is the compass that leads us to what we are in the deepest part of our selves. From birth, we reach out, from the depths of our bodily selves, toward right relationships between human beings and harmony throughout Creation. We want to live in the 'Promised Land' of relationships that are as nourishing as good milk and as harmonious as a honeycomb. True justice therefore constantly seeks to adjust human laws to the Law of Love, which alone can humanize life.

Isn't this the justice that Jesus wanted to talk to us about in the Sermon on the Mount and that so many other prophets of all spiritual affiliations have preached? A new justice which goes beyond that which is codified in religions and in policies. In all the things we have learned, Jesus said, there are so many laws and prescriptions that make us lose our bearings in our quest for Love and that open doors to violence. Such as, for example, the law of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' So many slogans and sayings justify punishing through exclusion those who have deviated from the path. For there is such a thing as legalized violence! And more and more, our human conflicts end up in court as if we had no internal sources to manage them better.

Jesus was the prophet of a new justice, that which reorients the world toward the heart. Because he understood that the sun shines just as freely on those that we judge to be right as it does on those that we judge to be wrong. Shall he then have given his life in vain, the man to whom we said, when we judged him and then excluded him from life, supposedly to save the temple and the people, that according to our laws he had to die?
This 'dangerous' justice, which goes beyond criminal justice, is the justice of which you are to be the artisans. More than that, you are to be its prophets. But what is a prophet?

Prophet

A prophet can discern the forces of division and of death that are at work in society, in the heart of the political realm as in economics and religion. He can see where they lurk, and sometimes he is driven to fury! He does not speak of Life after death-he is passionate about Life before death, and he wants to shout this to the world. He can taste the bitterness of the deathly brew that the "gods of death" stir up for people who are hungry and defenseless. But he also feels that "[translation] the least step taken by the most indigent person, on the path of love-and even into illusion, the inextricable, and distress-the least step taken forward is already the salvation of the world." It is like the meal that was cast into the pot.

Let me offer you the description of a prophet, as proposed by Yves Prigent, a Breton psychiatrist, in his L'expérience dépressive:

A prophet is someone who prays to feel life and who can then read on the face of the other the prayer: Love me! This prayer is sometimes a poem, often a grimace. When violence overwhelms a man and explodes from him, some people see a need to punish; a prophet sees a need to love. A prophet does not necessarily speak of God. He speaks and acts as if impelled by God, that is, concretely, from the warmest depths of his being, from that divine aptitude for relationships that he has found in himself and that he wants to reach out to in others. He knows that to love is to create someone from the depths of one's being. It means leading him to his truth, allowing him to discover his inner potential, his infinite capacity for entering into a relationship, in other words to find his proper place in the network of relationships that is life. How beautiful it is when one discovers in one's self the command to love!

It is from the very depths of his being that the prophet unceasingly proclaims-whether or not the time is right for doing so-the inviolable dignity of each person. Driven by his faith in people, a prophet stands and strides forth, regardless of the obstacles, witnessing to his hunger and thirst for justice, without himself giving way to the temptation of violence. He does not judge either the offender, or the victim, or those who sit in judgment. He is free and he goes forth full of hope!

Prophet of human relationships

You come into immediate contact with people whom we call offenders. So be it! But each offender is a network of relationships. His relationships may be twisted, they may be broken, but his aptitude for relationships has not been removed. There is no way that you can do a "relationectomy." And bars have no isolating power. Failing at relationships is so painful! A human being needs belonging much more than freedom! What would freedom be worth if we were left to wander in a desert? How can we keep our bearings if there is no community to look after us? How can we restore our faith in humanity without a human environment that allows us to enjoy it and to love it within ourselves, our transgressions notwithstanding?

Whether we like it or not, even when an offender is completely segregated, he is still linked to relationships. He has a relationship to the victim, to his parents, his spouse, his friends, to the community, to nature-and to God. Such relationships may hurt; they may cause internal torture or anger. Sometimes people would rather be dead than to suffer so much! Whether we like it or not, the others, those outside, are also linked to relationships to the offender. Such relationships may hurt; they may cause internal torture or anger. Sometimes the victim even thinks that his aggressor's death would bring relief!

You happen to be at the junction point of all these painful relationships. How can we restore harmony to what has been violated, profoundly disturbed, if not by acting globally and within a network of relationships? Why bother to detect the virus that scrambles the circuits between human beings, if it is not to propose reparation, forgiveness and reconciliation? It is within a communion circle, not situations based on power, that we can find solutions that open up a future instead of leaving people mired in the past!

A prophet does not fight to close down the prisons. It would be a waste of time. He is the one who harbors a secret wish that one day we will find, as in the Acts of the Apostles, the prisons secure, the keepers standing guard, but with no one actually housed inside. People who had been locked up, to the great surprise of many others, would be somewhere else, on the threshold of a community, proclaiming the power and laughter of life.

At heart, a prophet is inhabited by something greater than himself, by a sort of utopia, a dream of successful relationships. He believes that it is possible that the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb. That the day will come when we no longer make judgments on the basis of appearances, when we do not make categorical statements on the basis of hearsay, and when we let everyone have the opportunity to 'be'. Jesus called his dream 'Jerusalem,' that city of harmony where everything and everyone embody solidarity. A prophet knows and believes that a human being must resolutely travel his own road to Jerusalem and that he is capable of doing so because he is inwardly equipped to do so, even though he may be several stages removed from being able to, as were the disciples on the road to Emmaus. But perhaps he does not hide too well the fact that he sometimes feels like weeping over the poverty of the relationships in what we call our communities or institutions? I remember a question that Maurice Bellet posed and answered:

There are so many human beings that need to be freed from their nets that our mission of release can only be ecumenical. We must gather up all the boats that we can find to pick up human beings when they are freed from their nets but remain so terrible vulnerable. There is so much to be untangled in each human being that this mission can only be feasible if we consent to live it in partnership. The prophets of successful relationships are bound to preach and to really live, by any means possible, their mission of ecumenism and partnership. There is no 'private preserve' when it comes to saving what is human in the heart of a man or a woman. Relationships can heal only in a climate that is truly felt to be one that will foster good relationships.

Once Jesus called out two commands which appear to me to best express the prophetic dimension of your pastoral presence and approach: "Come forth!" he said, and also "Unbind him, and let him go."

The command to "Come forth," you must surely feel rising within yourself when facing an offender, so that the man will succeed in leaving the prison, in finding himself, in recognizing that he is greater than his crime, as terrible as it may be. But you also feel the urge to let this cry also be heard in the heart of the victims so that they might break free of the anger that imprisons them and discover that they are greater than their anger. This cry, you are also probably burning to shout to people who mete out justice without really believing in human beings and who remain prisoners of their fears or of popular prejudices, of quick solutions and of inflexible standards meant to keep the established social order intact.

And when you have touched someone's heartstrings, even in the slightest way, I am convinced that you feel like shouting to everyone around him: "Unbind him, and let him go." You feel like shouting it to his fears, but also to the various circles or people who will have to receive him. You know how much people in whom one can see emerging a little bud of hope are still caught up in the bonds of their own fears, in the prejudices of those around them. Our hearts are so slow when it comes to believing that people can change for the better! As Jean Vanier said, one of the most painful discoveries for someone coming out of prison is to see that even his own family doesn't believe that he was able to change during his confinement, and to feel as if he were branded with a red-hot iron.

How can we work on an offender's rehabilitation without working at the same time with his victims, with his family, and with his community if he had one at all. Christian communities commit themselves in their gathering rites to welcoming people at their best or at their worst; they must remain a welcoming community. It seems to me that they have some way to go to look after not only those who are ill but also those who have committed crimes. And yet they are rich in meaningful rites and are an essential component of the healing process, as much for the offender as for the victim.

Healing process

You have seen the slow and difficult process of healing at work in the film Dead Man Walking. In it you saw a woman on a mission-judged naive if not imprudent-to "prospect" humanity and be an angel of reconciliation. Our Native brothers have also told us of their healing circles, held in the most natural context possible, where exchanges lead to the paths of reconciliation in the heart of their community. You can surely bear witness to concrete events you have experienced in one or another of the penitentiaries.; but let us recall together...

The healing process is started when someone begins to agree to seek the truth that makes him or her free, and hence responsible. Being responsible, that means taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions; it means seeking and finding a way to repair the harm that you have done to someone, so that one day you can offer the gift of yourself to society as a whole.

Love alone knows the patience that is needed so that the healing may continue with the help of someone who believes in it, or rather of many people who end up believing in it together. We know that a relationship is true, and therefore right, when people consent to an exchange of their selves, which presupposes reciprocal offering and receiving. This exchange is the goal of what we call the ministry of reconciliation. It is the beginning of something new, a new creation. As long as individuals do not succeed in giving himself or herself and receiving the gift of the other person's self, we remain in a world of exploitation and dependence which, sooner or later, entails domination, violence and exclusion.

An offender can succeed, at the end of a very long and often painful journey throughout which he is given accompanying support, in discovering who he is truly, beyond the veil of his misery, and he may then want to offer the world the best of himself. Victims too may succeed in discovering how profound a gift love is and how freely love flows from forgiveness. They may sometimes need a "bypass" so that love, like blood, will flow again. Their own wellbeing may be at stake in this. Those who have lived through this know it. As Babette said in the film about her feast, let us have a chance to offer the best of ourselves. So many people have never had a chance to discover and offer what is best in themselves! But how can we do this?

Helping someone, whether offender or victim, to look into his heart to seek the truth that releases the gift of self depends on whether you have first been able to establish a primary relationship with that person. In concrete terms it means opening up a breach in his defenses, in his protection system. To protect what is most vulnerable, we build up-often unconsciously-a coat of armour, a wall of concrete or of ice. People who have been through too many upheavals in various relationships may become allergic to any relationship at all, especially one involving tenderness. As soon as someone gets too close to them, their whole body seems to be invaded by a fit of sneezing. But how do we overcome an allergy, if not by injecting whatever it is that one is allergic to?

When the breach has been made and a relationship-fragile though it may seem-is possible, we may then realize how often that person has been wounded in his most important relationships, and in the family circle in particular. How much compassion we need then to succeed in creating the climate of trust that allows someone to name his pain, to talk about it at last even if his words may cause a splash! But that is not all, because the injured person has been wounded in his very body, which is his most intimate identity. He often feels like a leper, so uncomfortable does he feel in his skin, and uncomfortable also as a part of society. He experiences exclusion as a rejection of his self, of his body. And his body reacts sometimes quite harshly, or speaks very loudly to whoever is capable of hearing.

The last bastion which paralyzes a man in giving his most precious of gifts is that of fear. I think that this is the strongest bar in our prisons. The offender is afraid, the victim is afraid, the family members are afraid, the system is afraid and barricades itself. And you, the prophets, are you afraid? And if we were not afraid, what would we do differently?

Steps to reconciliation

When we have returned home-perhaps like the man whom Jesus cured and who took up his bed and walked-and when we have discovered that we are someone with a proper name, the first steps toward reconciliation with others and with our environment may be taken, and this may be called restorative justice. We have the minimum of confidence that is needed to do this. The next stage appears to be a backward move but it is really the sign of a willingness to change. It is to place in reserve the gift that we have discovered in ourselves and that we wish to offer to others. Why? First, to go and ask our victims and the ones whom we have harmed to state the harm that they have suffered, what they have gone through. It is not easy to consent, in such face to face encounters, not only to hear but also to listen; i.e., to let oneself be affected, in order to understand and to make amends. It is so easy for us to talk about the harm of which we are victims because even our body remembers it; but it is not quite so easy for us to recognize the harm that we have caused to others.

The aggressors and the victims who are invited to and are prepared for going through this mutual listening may succeed in discovering each other's depths as persons. They are capable of risking small trust relationships that will foster their release. But for this to happen there must be emotional support from those around them, because feelings are often raw and both discouragement and a low self-worth are very close to the surface. The ability to maintain relationships can only be healed by having relationships. I am convinced that rites are necessary throughout this costly journey and that perhaps we need to invent some. You are in a good position to do just that.

The ministry of reconciliation is a very difficult one, and He who invites us to work at it knew so from experience. In Greek, the word reconciliation means an action that works top-down.... We needed the example of God himself to understand what Matthew asks us to do in the context of the new justice proposed by Jesus: leave our gifts before the altar and first go be reconciled to our brothers, ask them what grievances they may have against us, which might arouse in us the desire to right the wrongs.

God therefore left his offering and came, like a supplicant, to ask us what our grievances against him were. He indicated that he was ready to change so that something new might be born out of his relationship with humanity. And human beings dared to tell God that what they had against him was that, in His superiority as a giver who has nothing to receive, He did not know the burden and the vulnerability of 'the flesh', the meaninglessness of suffering and of death, but especially the mystery that is sin or a rupture in relationships. And God consented to an exchange with us. We gave Him our flesh, He gave us the Breath of life and we have a new being: a God who becomes flesh in a flesh that becomes spiritual. We gave Him our death, He gave us His life and we have a new being: a God who tastes death in a human being who tastes Life. We gave Him our sin, He gave us, in exchange, the grace of love and we have a new being: a God who knows sin and its ravages in a humanity that tastes an overabundance of love where previously sin reigned. O, what a marvelous exchange! An exchange of gifts for a new creation, that is the ministry of reconciliation we must exercise if we have experienced its unexpected manifestations.

Source of reconciliation

The pre-eminent gift to foster in our selves is unquestionably that of love. It is the most renewable natural resource, therefore the most durable and yet the least utilized. "Is it truly possible for humanity to continue to live and grow without asking itself how much truth and energy it is losing by neglecting its incredible power of love?" asked Teilhard de Chardin. But for that to happen we need to agree to give ourselves over to love, to take the risk of loving. That is what Jesus tried to get his disciples to understand before sending them off on their mission as apostles for good. Instead of giving them directions to be followed or tips for their mission, he simply let them contemplate a seed and the unbelievable strength which it contains, like an immense creative force. In the beginning is the Word, the Vision. The Word always holds within it a beginning, a potential for birth. Our life is an unfinished birth, and love is the paternal language or Living Word that each of us is called upon to incorporate into his mother tongue.

After letting them contemplate the mystery hidden in the envelope that is a seed, Jesus showed his disciple-apostles see three separate stories. It is troubling to think how current these stories still are. He showed them a view of what can happen to the world if we do not take into account the inner strength within each person like a creative force striving for fulfillment. Situations that neither civil, medical, nor religious leaders could solve because they were the ones responsible for creating them. Only the power of love which builds true, fruitful relationships between people and also between people and the environment is able to not let them stand or tame them, but to loosen their bonds and heal them.

The first story concerns you most particularly, I think. It is that of a man who has become so violent that he lives unclothed among the tombs, he is bound but breaks the chains with which people want to control him, and no one dares go near him any longer because he has lost his senses; no one, that is, except the prophet who wondered what the man would do if he were not afraid. And he went close to him, subdued him and restored him to himself, he led him to resume the mantle of human dignity and to return home. But you know how this was met by the local inhabitants. After the man's demons entered the herd of swine, Jesus was asked to depart because they had just lost an economic resource.

The second story presents a woman whom physicians are unable to cure, and whom the religious authorities, through laws concerning ritual impurity, have cut off from any fruitful relationship, the only option for her to heal. This woman has been losing blood for twelve years. Blood is life. A woman who, mid-way through her life, is wilting, wasting away. And whom only a true relationship can save, the touch by others which is like touching God because God became flesh.

And the third story shows a child of twelve who lies dying in her house. Her father is the ruler of a synagogue. This child (the creative possibility within each of us) who is dying before she has become fruitful is imprisoned in the sleep of infantilism produced by some systems that are risk-averse or jealous of their power. How many ill children, of all ages, are the product of these systems where people act like functionaries! How many potential subjects to fill the prisons! We are not made to simply 'function'; we are made to live; we are not made to be managed like businesses, but to be accompanied as we seek the fulfillment. A milieu (school, family, church, parliament) where people act like functionaries will sooner or later become a Capernaum where many fall ill. Fortunately when too many children fall ill and are about to die, we begin to ask real questions. The death of children sometimes leads to the healing of adults.

Conclusion

If, in our ministry as prophets, we really want to create breaches to make our whole world more justly human and, therefore, more concerned with successful relationships, it is important for us to be the alchemists of a new way of positioning ourselves in relation to justice. We can offer laboratories of restorative justice to achieve progress for the civilization of life and love. Let these experiences become parables for all of society and its institutions.

This will not just happen; it presupposes a true conversion. A conversion in our thoughts and in our hearts. We must move from thinking dualistically, pitting everything against everything else, to thinking 'holistically' or globally, thereby uniting everything. This cannot be done on the basis of concepts that are learned but by a veritable transformation of mentalities and attitudes. In "holistic" thinking (that of the Bible), each of us in an integral part of a universe that is a network of relationships. Authority is that inner capacity to foster growth, to call upon people to rise and walk. Authority seeks to let people blossom whereas power seeks obedience and submission. Hierarchy then refers not to a pyramidal view, with a head above, but to a concentric view, with a heart that beats in the middle and nourishes relationships. In fact true hierarchy refers first and foremost to the sacred origin of each being, to one's sacred relationship to the divine. It is not a program that will heal you, but a milieu, a climate, a network of relationships.

This kind of thinking does not come naturally, it would seem, to us Westerners. It comes more easily to the peoples of the East and to the Native groups in our various regions. If we are to develop new reflexes, we may perhaps be willing to seek reconciliation with our Native brothers and succeed in making a true exchange of gifts with them. To consent not only to give them our way of thinking as if we were their superiors, but to let ourselves be touched by theirs. They might just reveal part of human salvation to us, a seed from the kingdom of successful relationships, therefore of true justice.

I've been told that the first Natives who were imprisoned because of a theft, for example, were quite surprised by the way we did things. They expected to find an abundance of furs in the places they were taken. They expected to be able to exchange these furs so that they would not have to steal.

The call that touches our hearts is a prophetic call. Let us look to our experiences. Let us invent formulas and rites. Let us give our era a chance to feel its humanity and reduce the line of people waiting at the doors of our courts.... There may be other ways of living and of solving our human conflicts, ways to walk together toward Jerusalem.... But they are hidden in the depths of our hearts. Except you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of successful relationships. This kingdom is not a reign of power relationships; it is a service of washing of feet. Happy are they who can experience that!

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1. Maurice Bellet, L'amour déchiré, DDB 2000, p. 159
2. Federico Mayor, Un monde nouveau, Ed. Odile Jacob, 1999. p. 13.
3. Philippians 3,20.
4. John Paul II, audience of June 7, 2000
5. See 2 Kings 4, 38-41: 'There is death in the pot.'
6. Bellet, op. cit., p. 163
7. Paris, DDB, 1978, p. 199
8. According to Emmanuel Levinas
9. Les mirages de l'amour, p. 208
10. Isaiah 11, 1-9.
11. Maurice Bellet, Incipit, p. 8.
12. See Luke 5, nets and disciples
13. John 11, 43-44.
14. Sirach (Ecclesiastes) 28, 1-7
15. Babette's Feast, 1988.
16. See in particular Mark 1, 21 to 2, 12. Jesus entered into Capernaum.
17. 2 Corinthians 5, 18-21
18. Matthew 5, 23-24
19. in On Love.
20. See, for example, Luke 8.