A Closer look on the inmates: The Reality of their Hunger

It was year 2001 when I was introduced to prison ministry. I believe it is a call to a divinely arranged and appointed task. I was not yet ordained a priest (just a months old deacon) when I myself experienced my own “prison walls.” I suffered depression since I found myself running away from my parish assignment. But even that early, as a lost lamb, I already sensed the Good Shepherd wanting to hold me and keep me. Eventually I recovered after years of relapses and hiding. Our Lord is really a providential God that after undergoing processing and healing through these first five years of my priesthood, He entrusted me to be His co-shepherd of His most cherished lambs, our brethren behind bars.

There are so many things I learned from the ministry but this significant area in the lives of the inmates I want to dwell: their experience of hunger. Many lambs got lost and fell prey to the wolves for three reasons: first, their myopic vision, second, their delicate physique and lastly, their search for food. These are also evident to us, humans not excluding me and the inmates.

I learned that there are three kinds of hunger we are all experiencing: first, hunger of the mind, second, hunger of the soul and lastly, hunger of the heart. Likening ourselves to the lambs, we suffer those hungers due to the same experience of the former. Our vision is also myopic, we have a delicate and sensitive frame-up and we always crave for something that will make us happy.

I realize I was called to this kind of ministry to address these different hungers that together with us, these miserable and yet so “blessed” creatures within the prison walls are experiencing.
What are all about these hungers? How can the prison ministry at least with all its limited resources address these hungers? How does my experience of the ministry in turn help me to grow more in my pastoral care as their spiritual shepherd?

First, hunger of the mind. Inmates like us normally look for answers and solutions to questions and problems that we face especially when a difficult ordeal comes to visit our life. They impatiently and unconsciously search for life’s meaning amidst its so many intricacies. They found other imprisonment out of their ignorance from truths and realities man has to learn and discover.

There enters our ministry to introduce to them the role of the Word of God in their lives that will nourish their mind and their whole being as they little by little find the answers to their questions. But most importantly, they come to experience God speaking to them personally through His Word in their pains of rejection, aloneness and hopelessness.
Secondly, hunger of the soul. Inmates experience this thru their struggle to hurdle on their emotional setbacks which manifest in their feelings of low self-image, self-pity, anger, thoughts of revenge, unforgiveness and the likes. Others even experience to suffer physical sicknesses. This is very critical because it calls our ministry to help them uncover their secrets from the deepest recesses of their soul which God can only have an access to.

Our ministry paves the way for them to come into encounter with our merciful Lord, who “came not for the healthy but for the sick” thru sacramental confession. I believe this is the main reason, if not the only one, of their experiences of pain. Their issue is their experience of sin that places them in all kinds of misery. There is no misery worse than this kind because this makes them fall apart from God and thus deprives them of His presence and action in their lives. God loves them, deeply longs for to save and heal them in order to fill in with His grace that hunger of their soul. This I experience so vividly and concretely every time I minister to them in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This makes me so privileged to witness by my very own eyes their spiritual resurrection and personal conversion.

Lastly, hunger of the heart. This manifests in their experience of alienation and abandonment. They feel alienated and abandoned after being separated from their loved ones at the outset of their jail confinement. And worse, they feel frustrated and betrayed as their family members fail to visit them. They are desperately longing for their love and attention but are just left alone.

Our ministry focuses on trying to find ways first and foremost on how to show them God is the one who completely satisfies the longing and hunger of their hearts. We minister to them how God is so close to them and loves them in His own way especially in the celebration of the Eucharist. They just need to open their hearts to Him in gratitude, generosity and surrender. This we make them particularly feel by our apostolate of presence and care by smiling with them and listening to them.

I believe that over and above there are still so many needs, these are the concerns that they need to focus on along with their growth as persons made in the image of God. I always tell them that they are really so blessed because they are the ones so close to the heart of God. There is always a light at the end of the dark tunnel where the Good Shepherd will meet and welcome them home!