We must each sanctify our own sphere of influence… even if it is in a prison
By Marcellus Allen Roberts *
This artist’s depiction of the crucifixion is entitled Compassion. It is by 19th century French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Note: This essay is by a prisoner in a jail in Texas, who through his writing wishes to bear witness to Christ.
It was supposed to be a gangster party. Five separate gangs had all gone in together to throw a Halloween party on H block. They had cooked up enough prison wine to down an elephant and a respectable selection of illicit drugs were made available to the inner circle of each clique.
On this unit, each cellblock has one common area that is shared by all of its 192 residents. It’s called the “day room.”
When one security threat group decides to celebrate, everyone else in the day room is a disinterested spectator at best, or an innocent bystander if things take a turn for the worst. There is always the choice to stay in the cell, but even the best of cellmates need time alone, solitude to maintain a healthy mental state. Everyone eventually finds themselves in the day room at some point. The sooner you get used to it, the better.
Weeks before the Halloween party, a sign-up sheet was posted in the day room. Turns out that the gangs were hosting a talent contest to serve as entertainment for the night. Each gang would enter their own champion in the competition, but to make things interesting, they opened it up to anyone else on the cellblock who might want to enter. There was also a twenty-five dollar payout to the winner — prize money collected from each gang to lure out unaffiliated talent.
I had turned my life around. Hosea chapter 10, verse 12 is the Scripture that I had been inspired to take up as the theme for my prison sentence. The first two years of my sentence were almost solely focused on sowing righteousness into my life. I figured that since God had proven true to His word by allowing me to reap the fruit of the wickedness that I had sewn, sowing righteousness ought to carry the same weight and authority.
But up until this point I had little evidence and even less confidence that God wanted me to serve Him with the skills I had developed in my past life as an entertainer. Yeah, he had given me a few songs here and there since I had confessed to my crimes. But these were the most intimately prayerful songs I had ever written, nothing like anything I had written while I was outside of His grace. How do you perform a personal prayer? Is that possible?
As I prayed and asked God about whether to participate, I discerned that my Father was asking me to make His presence known and represent Him in the contest. I chose a song in a style that my audience could relate to: a southern, sing-song, Gulf-coast-rap delivery that I was certain would hold their attention long enough to receive the message. The chorus was lifted from the Joachim Neander hymn, “There Is a Fountain,” its one verse written a year prior.
But one verse wouldn’t be enough. I spent the two weeks leading up to the party crafting a new verse and practicing at work when I found myself alone in the wash bay of the sign plant. Those new lyrics went like this:
“Everybody falls short of the glory of God.
You can’t erase the stains.
Filthy rags is all you’ve got.
You can’t double back or rewind the track
It’s written in permanent ink.
No matter how you try, you deserve to die
Simply for the thoughts you think.
No matter what you do this will still be true,
You’re guilty. But there’s a place you can go
To the Cross of Christ, He can save your soul….”
The night of the party I was the fourth performer. The three performers before me were all affiliated gang members. The subject matter of their offering was what you would have expected: crass, violent, decadent and sexually explicit — all reflections of my former way of life. When my name was called, there were audible snickers from the intoxicated judges’ panel. I walked up to the beatmaker and beat-boxed the mental drum pattern I had written the lyrics to (there’s almost always one guy on a cellblock with exceptional rhythmic skill who can bang out a bumping groove on the stainless steel tables).
The beatmaker had no difficulty picking it up, fueling that nervousness that a poor performance now could overshadow all previous performances.
I had an advantage, though. I was a nobody. Having arrived on the unit only twenty days prior, nobody knew what to expect from me. So as I began nodding my head to the rhythm, a hush fell over the entire day room: Bloods, Crips, AB’s, Tangos, Folks, Woods, solos, disinterested spectators, innocent bystanders — everybody.
The words of my recently written first verse came flowing out smooth and soulful. But when I realized the room was hanging on my every word…just like that — “bloop!” — my mind went blank. I had forgotten the words halfway through the first verse.
Boos came hurtling at me from all sides, cackling from every corner. And as the heckling rose in my ears, something difficult to describe also rose up inside me. Maybe it was adrenaline, or perhaps it was pride lashing out to defend a bruised ego. I believe it was akin to what Samson experienced before he slew a thousand Philistines with the donkey’s jawbone. I became bold as a lion, wagging my index finger at the hostile crowd and barking orders at the drummer to “Run that beat back!”
This time the first verse came roaring out, and a silence deeper than the last settled among the slack-jawed audience like they were eyewitnesses of a resurrection. In that moment, I wasn’t singing; I wasn’t rapping; I wasn’t even performing. I was preaching from my proper place, a space the priest couldn’t reach: one of the myriad nooks and crannies that make up the lay person’s pulpit. The wider world will be sanctified by an emboldened laity, who, after receiving the Sacraments and tuning their antennae to the frequency of the Liturgy, enter their own sphere of influence unafraid to fulfill the obligation our “Ite missa est” professes.
The second half of this Second Vatican Council century will be a season of leaf-budding for bare branches. Some trees neither fruit nor flower without a minimum number of hours spent in below-freezing temperatures. I choose to view the Council and the last fifty-plus years of its implementation in that light. What I won’t do is deny the Holy Spirit’s active participation in the Council. What I do believe is that after winter, there must come spring.
There was stillness in the air when the song ended. Then the day room erupted in applause, hoots and cheers so sincere as to sober the shocked judges. It was undeniable that I was, hands down, the crowd favorite. But the judges bickered amongst themselves.
I competed in two extra, trumped-up rounds before the gangs unanimously conceded the victory to me. In the second round I sang a song entitled, “Washed Away,” which was birthed during a meditation on Psalm 51. Then I triumphed in the third round with these lyrics, sung full-throated and a capella, without a beat:
“The just live by faith. I’ve answered the call.
God’s just to forgive, if I confess it all.
He’ll keep my feet from a slip and a fall.
And I’ll give Him praise behind prison walls.”
As Catholic writer George Weigl said in his book To Sanctify the World, “That was why a Council was necessary: to… empower a revitalized Church to offer the modern world a path beyond incoherence — or, worse, self-destruction -—through an encounter with Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.”
We have been supplied the proper tools; there is no looking back.
If God has called you to sanctify the rectory, trust that he has called someone to sanctify the rec yard. Parents, sanctify your children. Kitchen workers, sanctify the chow hall. I’ve got the day room covered.
Let us all go in confidence and peace, remembering that it has been prophesied that we defeat the enemy by the Blood of the Lamb and the words of our testimony….
*Marcellus Allen Roberts is a 42-year-old Prison Oblate of St. Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, Kansas, serving a 25 year penance in the state of Texas.
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