From a Letter Written to a Prisoner in the Michigan Department of Corrections: January 13, 2012 My dear K..., Happy New Year to you.  I believe that if you are actually able to walk the path you have chosen and can continue to understand your life in the terms that you say you are currently making your priority (putting God first), that you will find this year of 2012 to be a great turning point for you. It is very encouraging that you say you are now sensing God's voice and that you are aware that He is directing you according to what He would have you do in your life.  You say He is telling you to focus on yourself and on getting yourself ready for all of the changes that will occur when you are released from prison.  As you grow in faith, you will become able to hear God's voice more clearly.  In turn, you will walk more closely with Him and become more deeply acquainted with Him in the person of His Son and our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Nowhere in your letter do you mention Jesus Christ.  Therefore in this letter, I am going to mention Him often, for when God tells you to turn inward and focus upon yourself, He is doing so in order to point out to you your own human deficiencies, and your deep need for Christ.  My role is to turn you towards Him.  This will prepare you for the vast changes that He will cause to take place in you which, as a matter of course, will prepare you for life outside of prison.  Christ enters into your life on earth to release you from the greater prison of sin, and this prepares you for your eventual life in heaven.  To be so prepared for heaven is to be ready to serve Christ on earth as well.  If your character becomes such that you can qualify to serve Christ on earth, then you will more than satisfy the requirements of the state in determining if you are a man of peace who is able to maintain free citizenship.  Concentrate on the former sincerely and achieve it, and you will also gain the latter.  The focus of a Christ centered life is not getting out of prison:  It is preparing in the correct way to go to heaven.  If you should get out of prison in the course of this process, consider it a bonus and thank God profusely for what is merely an additional and undeserved grace.  In no way does He imply or promise that if you give your life to Christ, you will gain your freedom.  You are currently learning that when you forfeit your rights to the state and go to prison, it immediately becomes both necessary – and much more difficult –  to live a lifestyle that reflects true Christian character.  What He does imply and promise is a transformation in you that will forever separate you from the adolescent mentality that caused your downfall, and allow you to finally blossom into the Christian man He created you to be.  Should you do so, you will find that the system that used to work against you will now quietly work in your favor, and the process of preparing you to come home will be well underway.  While you are in prison, those who are responsible for maintaining security around you need to know that you are a man of peace, for they cannot protect you against the threats you encounter if they perceive you to be threatening to them.  That's why you are in the hole.  They're letting you sort this all out.  They're hoping you're going to come to the conclusion that you are, above all else, a man of peace.  If you are a man of peace then they can do their job for you, rather than doing a job on you, and tossing you into segregation until you get it figured out. You wouldn't be the first man to come up out of the hole saying he met God and claiming to be a new man in Christ.  But those who truly are show themselves to be suddenly transformed in character, newly humbled, and speak little of the experience that caused the transformation.  That comes later.  Above all else, the man of Christ is a man of peace, because when a man falls on his knees before the Cross and truly beholds the Body of Christ, broken through the violence of the world, he comes away from the experience broken of violence forever.  When this peace is evidenced in the transformation in Christ that has taken place in you, and witnessed to others in a new and more Christlike attitude and behavior; when the Man of the Cross becomes your model in all that you do, and His peace becomes yours, you will prove your case to be free.  And you will have earned it, along with the satisfaction of doing so.  When a man encounters Jesus at this deepest level, which is at the Cross, the spirit of Christ that he encounters provides the strength to confront violence as did our Lord, with peace and submission rather than rage and aggression.  When you can demonstrate that you are a man willing to take a beating without attempting to give one, then there will be those who work in your midst who will either know that the power of Christ has transformed you, or at the least will know enough to observe the effect it has had, because it will be obvious that something truly has changed in you.  And so your relationship with the officers and staff will improve, you will gain deeper fellowship with those who have also encountered Christ, and you will gain the respect of even those who would persecute you for your faith.  And when you can demonstrate yourself to be a man of true peace in this way, you will also demonstrate to those charged with making such determinations that you are a man worthy of rehabilitation.        As you sit contemplating all of this in the hole, you have not yet begun the task of changing the reputation you have built by resorting to violence.  It is bold to be contemplating parole while sitting in the hole as the result of an act of violence, and it makes no difference to me, the staff there, or Christ Himself, who was at fault or who started it.  Home is a long way from the hole, K..., it really is.  Your task at the moment is to truly be transformed in Christ at the Cross so as to be the man of peace that your handlers need you to be, so you can be protected from the enemies your past behavior has made you.  And you're going to have to be willing to have your ass kicked if that's what it takes to show the change in you.  This is what is meant by reaping what you have sown. While it is a long way home from the hole, it is but a short distance to the Cross.  On the night he was betrayed, Jesus was arrested, interrogated and, in a mystical way, thrown down into the hole with you.  That's why so many men encounter him when they are in your current circumstances.  The devil himself, I'm told, doesn't go down in the hole, but Jesus does because He gave Himself up to be thrown in there with you.  He is on His way to the Cross, and you are blessed to have this time alone with Him.  And it gives Him the opportunity to not only share in your degradation with you, which He does willingly, but to beckon to you from it to follow Him to the Cross, where He will die in your place, and through this act of divine love, offer you the gift of eternal transformation.      We have a name for this transformation in Christ that takes place:  It is called “conversion.”  “Conversion” means the process of change that occurs when the soul is deeply affected by God, and God has no deeper place at which to affect us than at the Cross.  Conversion at the Cross is the deepest and most profound conversion.  Those who experience it in the fullest sense actually bear the wounds of Christ upon their bodies.  However, all of those converted at the Cross can feel that place in their own hearts where the lance broke the flesh of His Sacred Heart, from which our salvation poured forth.  Once converted, you will focus this pain in your own heart upon His Sacred Heart that was wounded for you, and He will take your anguish upon Himself just as He did your sin.  In its place he will give you the peace and joy of knowing salvation.  And while the initial process of conversion is that time from which you encounter Christ and He takes your sin until you have the peace and joy which comes from joining Him in regular Communion at the Cross in the Mass, the greater process of conversion is life long and ongoing – as long as we have sin and pain in our lives, and until we can be transformed fully from the flesh and totally into the spirit at the time of our death.  At the time of God's judgment, those who have succeeded in conquering sin through Jesus Christ will be converted to the same complete and sinless form our Lord and His Mother now enjoy, and this is called the Resurrection.  It is at our Resurrection that our conversion is completed. This gift of Resurrection from the dead comes to us from God the Father, to Whom Jesus teaches us to pray.  He is so far above and beyond our human comprehension, and man, through sin, had fallen so far away from the initial and intimate contact we enjoyed at our creation, that it became necessary for Him to enter into to human flesh and identify Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ; a man of flesh and blood as surely as you and I are, but beyond His humanity, He is also God Incarnate.  “Incarnate” merely means living in carnal, human flesh, the same as you and I.  But because Jesus is also God, He is able to live in this same carnal flesh that we do, but He does so without succumbing to the urge to sin – temptation – that plagues our lives and has brought us to the destruction of death.  God loves us so much that He chose to follow us into the destruction that our human sinfulness caused and willingly take upon Himself the sins that condemned each of us to death.  When we confess these sins to Him, He takes them from our sin tainted souls to His sinless Self and allows them to die with Him.  The instrument where this takes place is the Cross.  And because the Cross is that place where the ultimate spiritual truth of all eternity – God in the person of Jesus Christ – meets the ultimate reality of human life – death through sin – It is a place where we are invited to join with Him time and again so as to more fully understand, and participate in, the process that has resulted in our salvation.  Since our salvation was achieved through His Sinless Body, broken for our sins, and by His Most Precious Blood, shed for our redemption from evil, we receive Him in this way in the elements of Communion – the bread and wine.  At Communion, the form of the bread and wine remains, but its substance is miraculously transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into the spiritual Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and we receive Him totally in this way – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.  Since the form of the bread and wine remains, the way we know that this miraculous transformation has taken place is through faith:  Through our own personal faith in Jesus Christ, and through the faith of the Church, which has passed this process down to us from the time of the original events until today.  And it is the sacred duty of the Church to continue to pass on this process that unites man to God until Jesus Christ returns to earth in fulfillment of the promise that He Himself has made to us.           If our faith was great enough, we would know that our sins have died with the human Jesus, and that the divine Christ was ascended to God the Father in heaven.  But because we are such creatures of doubt and severely limited spirituality, Jesus Christ rose miraculously from the dead to demonstrate to us, in no uncertain terms, the glory of the Resurrection from the dead, and to teach us first hand of our potential, through Him, to do the same.  Since the physical aspects of this miracle of Resurrection occurred in the same time and place as did the crucifixion, the historical reality of this event was witnessed most notably by those closest disciples who had known him in his earthly life as Jesus of Nazareth.  In his Resurrected state, Jesus Christ instructed them to take their witness of salvation through Him to the world: Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted.  And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." Matthew 28: 16-20 And to prove the point of His Resurrection and give us a glimpse into His true identity as the Christ, the only begotten Son of God, He rose to heaven before  the very eyes of these same disciples: So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"   He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth."  And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.  And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?  This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." Acts 1: 6-11   Those who witnessed Jesus in the flesh; who knew Him first as prophet and teacher, and who came to know Him in faith as “...the Christ, the son of the living God,” and then saw this faith fulfilled in no uncertain terms at the Cross, and then proven likewise by the Resurrection, were thus sent out to take this message of salvation to the world.  They are called “apostles,” a word which means just simply that – “sent out.”  Chief among these apostles was Peter, and so he became the first pope.  The other apostles, likewise charged to take the faith to the world, became the first bishops.  And to this very day, in an unbroken chain, this witness to Christ and the miracle of Communion which we call the Holy Eucharist, has been passed down through the ages to us, and the process and authority by which this is done is called “apostolic succession.” And apostolic succession has brought the witness to the historical and spiritual truth of salvation at the Cross down through the ages and into our very midst through the institution of the Holy Catholic Church. You have told me that you don't understand the Bible.  My answer to you is, “The Cross.”  You may not have realized it yet, but when you prayed to God to reveal the Bible to you, He heard your prayer as a plea for your soul.  That's the message of the Bible.  It is the story of how your soul is delivered from sin.  You have asked me what the Bible means and I have told you:  It means the Cross.  The long and winding road of faith that runs through the Old Testament ends at the Cross.  The story of salvation told at the Cross in the New Testament comes down to us through the Church inspired by It, and though the world (and sometimes even worldly souls within the Church) would like you to think differently, It has lost none of the power It has to save us. The Church has preserved the story of salvation at the Cross in the form of the book that we call the Holy Bible.  As you go back and study your Bible now, do so knowing that at the very heart of the story it tells is the Cross.  Let the light of Christ illuminate every page and teach you that the journey from the original sin of Genesis to the golden streets of heaven in Revelation must pass through – and stop in awe at – the Cross.  To begin with, read about nothing but the Cross, take your soul here every chance you get, and linger until Christ touches you with the deeper spiritual knowledge He longs for you to have.  Once you have gained this knowledge, the entire Bible will make sense to you in a way that you never anticipated it could.  Without the Cross at the center of its meaning, it is merely the stories of another time told with neither reason nor purpose.  In short, it is not the Bible that saves you, but Christ at the Cross.  The Bible is a tool that the Church has provided for you as a gift so as to help you encounter Christ at the Cross.  It has no power to save you in and of itself, but it leads you to He Who does. I want you to know that I am not preaching at you or speaking down to you at all.  I am talking to you as one sinner to another.  There was a time when, given my own human weakness, had I been in the circumstances you were and had I been tempted as you were, my behavior may likely have been as sinful as yours was.  However, since the moment that Jesus Christ revealed Himself in my life and confronted me with my sin, convicted me of my sin, and then proceeded to forgive me of this sin, I have gained a knowledge that allows me to see the evil in such actions, and a strength that allows me to avoid them.  Along with this is a certain amount of God given reason that allows our minds to weigh our actions in the terms of their consequences.  As you have learned, the consequences of sin in this life can be severe,  and yet what you endure now pales in comparison to the consequences of an eternity of suffering caused by separation from God, both in the person of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and in His eternal Father and ours, to Whom He reconciles us at the Cross.  This is my personal witness to you:  The answer you are seeking to all of the questions in your life right now is just this simple: “The Cross.”  There it is, on a hill far away.  And here's the best advice you'll ever get:  Go there.  That's the message of the Bible.  It is the story of how your soul is delivered from sin.  And as one vile sinner to another, who by the same grace that you are now seeking has encountered Him, I can show you the way to Christ by leading you to where He awaits you: at the Cross.  All life radiates out from the arms of that Cross, and the arms of your Lord, nailed there for your sin, long to embrace you in this gift of life, for the heart of that Cross belongs to none other than Jesus Christ, the one and only Son of God.  And it is as a true sinner who is aware of what has been forgiven Him at the Cross that I can take this walk through your heart with you and help you discern the truth of who you really are.  And the discernment is not in believing me and trusting what I know (which isn't much):    The discernment is of He Who has conquered sin and death and longs to lead you out of prison just as surely as He seeks to lead you out of the grave.  It is not what it is in  my heart for you that saves you, but what has flowed out of the heart of He Who hangs there Sacred and Sinless: His heart, pierced for your sin and flowing with the dual elixir of salvation, the Water and the Blood.  The Most Precious Blood that flows out from His Sacred Heart is the potion of salvation, and the Water is the baptism that washes away the filth of these sins now forgiven and in doing so, weds us to the Body of Christ, His Bride the Church.  And as the Holy Water of baptism washes the scales from your eyes, I am merely another sinner on the road who points you towards Calvary, which is where the fountain of living water flows that will cause the miracle you seek to take place in you.  You asked me about the Catholic Church, and I have done my best here to give you a taste of the Catholic Faith.  From here, the Church provides a way for you to have the forgiveness of your sins acknowledged regularly, and then return to the moment when Christ died for you and accept, over and over again, the Sacred Body that has been given up for you, and the Precious Blood that has been shed for you for the remission of your sins.  How is this possible?  No one knows.  It is a mystery.  One of the things we must accept is that God's ways are so much higher than the ways of man that we cannot begin to understand them, and for the act of salvation to take place in us, we must receive Christ into our physical being so that we may also be linked with Him spiritually.  When this happens, the spiritual waste that our sin has caused flows to Him and dies with Him once again at the Cross, cleansed away by the water of our baptism renewed, and by the power  of His Holy Blood to atone for us.  What does atone mean?  Break it down into two words and it means “at one.”  It means we must become one with Christ so that His higher nature can intercede for us, take away the burden of our sin, and offer us forgiveness and life in the place of the death we truly deserve. And so, when we enter into the Holy Presence of God in the Mass, we anoint ourselves with the water of baptism, and then travel through time and space in a mystical way so as to be present with Christ at the Cross.  Here we encounter a priest, whom Christ Himself has anointed to the task, who passes the very Real Presence of Jesus from the Cross to the altar and then, in turn, to us.  In this way, we encounter Christ in person and in fact, and we interact with Him, and have our sins once again forgiven and cleansed from our souls.  The authority to determine who this priest is who serves Christ at the Cross and at the altar is held by the spiritual descendents of the original Twelve Disciples, who ministered by the side of Jesus in the flesh, and who were given this power by Him personally.  This is witnessed in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (more on this later). This miraculous power to bring Christ into our midst has been preserved and continually passed down through time from the ancient world in the institution of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church has seen us through the time of the great persecution, and through the rise to temporal power and the time of darkness that ensued.  She has brought us through the Eastern Schism, and the time of crusading adventurism, through the age of enlightenment and doubt, through the time of the great apostasy and the revolt of the Protestants, and into the modern world.  The Catholic Church has, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, preserved the Gospel message of salvation by Christ at the Cross that you are hearing today.   While our fallen human state is such that even those who serve the Church have never been sinless, today we live in a world that has seen those charged with the task of bringing Christ to us so exposed in mortal sin – mortal sin that is much more debased than what you are serving time in prison for – that it has caused many to see the Church only as a flawed and failed institution: a relic filled with primitive superstitions and medieval ideas, which rapes her children while seeking the acquisition of wealth and the wielding of worldly power.  In spite of this, Jesus Christ continues to manifest Himself at the center of our community in the Mass, and within the heart of every repentant sinner who turns to Him in devotion at the Cross.           There is sin in the Church because we are a Church full of sinners!  And because our redemption at the Cross is such a private matter, there are those who come into our midst with no intention of giving their lives over to Christ, but who come rather to exploit the wealth of the Church and violate the innocence of her people, and we have no way of identifying who they are  until their deeds are exposed.  As with Judas Iscariot, betrayal comes from he who dips his bread in the Master's cup and sups with Him at the Holy Eucharist.  And  even though the Bride of Christ, as the Church has always been called, has betrayed her Lord in the most debased and sinful ways of the world, He remains steadfast in His love and devotion to her and will not leave His people, nor the Church He Himself founded to bring the grace of salvation at the Cross to the world.  Where Christ is found is where the devil chooses to attack with the greatest intensity.  Therefore, Jesus warns us, "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.  Beware of men; for they will deliver you up to councils, and flog you in their synagogues...” (Matthew 10: 16-17).  The synagogues were the "churches" of the Jewish world Jesus was addressing and, sadly, His warning loses none of its meaning within the modern Church.  This is why I put so much emphasis to you on the Cross:  For the devil and those who serve Him cannot bear it and shrink from it.  Accept Jesus in His broken human form at the Cross, and you will gain the power of the risen Christ, Who as divine King now sits upon the throne of heaven and rules the faithful of His Church through the many called by Him Who do remain faithful to her.  So while we are a Church full of sinners, we can be divided into two basic camps: those who have turned from sin and those who indulge in it (many times even unaware that they are doing so).  Devotion to the Cross and conviction to the truth of all it stands for is the wisdom that keeps us as sheep following our divine Shepherd, and protects us from the wolves that roam in our midst seeking whom they may devour.                      We must understand that the sins of the Church are also the sins of  all of her people – ourselves included.  And so we must be continually diligent in seeking atonement for our own personal sin, while urging and encouraging those other faithful pilgrim brothers and sisters among us who seek to do likewise.  We do this by making the journey to the Cross together in the Mass every week, or even every day if we are particularly blessed.  In doing so, we join the Church on a deeper level that the world itself cannot see.  To be sure, even many who belong do not see this.  And when we join with Christ's Church at this deeper level, we join the protectors of the faith that saves the world.  And it is the posture of faith that we gain at the Cross that provides us with the courage to support our hierarchy – those modern day apostles who serve us and rule over us in Christ's name – so that they may, in turn, have the courage to defend the faith as He would have them do.  And when sin is found to be present in the earthly structure of the Church, it is contingent upon us to pray for and support our faithful clergy and bishops so they may be diligent in their policing of sin within the laity, all others who serve the Church, and including (and especially) within their own ranks.  The sin you see in the Church is no different than the sin of the world, but it has no place in our midst.  It is too often the result of those who stand in the place of the apostles cowing to the ways of the world, rather than kneeling before Christ at the Cross and being convicted in their hearts by His words, “Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”  One reason they do not hear the voice of Christ is because the faithful who have been convicted at the Cross do not speak up loudly enough on His behalf.  That's a discussion for another day.  For now know that in my instruction  to you, I seek to lead you towards a true discipleship at this deepest level of the Cross, which seeks only Christ and leaves the worldly matters of the Church to those Who God has charged with addressing them.  I do this because the prison world in which you live demands nothing less of you, and because the greatest need the Church in the world has is for disciples of Jesus who have been washed in His Most Precious Blood at the Cross and who seek to serve Him only and not the world.  Accomplish this in the difficult environment of prison, and you will find yourself well prepared for the challenge God has for you once you are released back into the world.  Learn the faith and learn to defend it as a man of peace in prison, and you may well be called upon to do this when you are released.       And consider this about the Catholic Church:  The world we live in, though rendered imperfect by man's inherently sinful nature and lust for evil, was prospered and lifted out of the mire of earlier dark times by the Church, which managed to hold the Cross of Christ up as a beacon of faith and the standard by which the world should be led.  Through sin, both within the Church and the world, the light of this beacon has been dimmed until now the world rejects not only the Church's power to determine and regulate what used to be known as “Christian Society,” but rejects even the very person and authority of Christ Himself.  And this brings us to the dawning new and even darker age where the very existence of Jesus Christ as the Son of God is denied, and the power of His Most Precious Blood to save us is rejected as the religious mythology of an earlier and more superstitious time.  Take up this standard of the Cross in prison, where you have been rejected by the world, and you will discover that the Light of Christ still shines forth from it as brilliantly as ever.  And hear in these words the message He has sent me to bring to you and others which is simply, “Come.  The Master has need of you.” Because Christ has been rejected by the world, it should not surprise us that the world is sinking ever deeper into sin and depravity, and, in turn, a deep poverty of the spirit and person.  This is what sets the trap of sin that young men like you fall into.  This is why you have fallen into the deep poverty of the prison system.  But because He has been rejected by the same world which has rejected you and been cast into prison with you – He because of His sinless nature and you because of your sin – it gives you the hope of St. Dismas, the thief who hung beside our Lord and asked to be remembered when Jesus came again in His glory.  Since we are all prisoners to sin, everyone should take this same hope in Christ, Who has promised us that He will reappear and pass the final judgment on the world for the rejection of God that brought Him to the Cross, and His people to their knees before It.  It is, therefore, contingent upon us to remain faithfully upon our knees before the Cross, for this is where we receive the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist (the substance of His Body and Blood miraculously made to appear for us and enter into us in the form of bread and wine), so that our spirit may be touched directly by His.  This is what sustains us.  It is, therefore, also contingent upon us to receive His Real Presence in the Mass until His Real Presence in the world is revealed to all at His Second Coming.  And the first step in this for you is to pray to Him in earnest before the Cross, where His life was offered up for yours.  You do this and then it becomes my responsibility to see that the Church responds by bringing to you the Real Presence of Jesus that your soul now craves. “What is the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant,” you ask?  Most simply put, a Catholic believes what I have just written to you here, and a Protestant, to some extent or other, does not.  Catholic belief is called the “fulness of faith,” because it contains all the teaching that God has revealed to us in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, and as preserved for us through time by His Church.  For example, the Eastern Rite Orthodox (the Greeks, Russians and others), recognize the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but do not believe that the pope is the highest authority on earth be virtue of Matthew Chapter 16: Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?"   And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"  Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."  Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Matthew 16: 13-21 With the Church thus established in Peter, Jesus' journey to the Cross begins.  This is the same spiritual journey you are now embarking upon, so this is where you must start also.  That's why we're here.  And the Catholic Church's witness to you that this is so is based upon a line of 264 popes since the time of Peter, who have held this same position and claimed this same authority and power, and this line runs in unbroken succession to our current and 265th pope, Benedict XVI.            The Protestant Churches originated from the so called “Reformation” of Martin Luther that renounced not only the pope's claim to apostolic authority, but also denounced the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.  In it's place is taught the idea of “Sola Scriptura,” which teaches that all power and authority is vested in a personal and solely spiritual relationship with Christ that denies His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, and sees the act of Holy Communion as merely symbolic.  The authority to make this determination comes directly and solely from the Bible – which is what Sola Scriptura means.  In short, in the Protestant Churches, each individual church claims to gain its authority from the Bible, which, in turn, gains this authority directly from God's inspiration.  In the Catholic Church, the Bible gains its authority from the Church, which in turn, gains this authority directly from Christ.  The Protestants can only trace this belief back to the 16th century when they came into existence, whereas the Catholic Church can trace her authority through history to the time of the apostles, and through them directly to Christ, and through Him to the Cross, and through the Cross ultimately back to God the Father and the moment of our creation.  And those who deny that this is not so according to the Bible must base their claim on the assumption that the passage above from Matthew 16 somehow does not say what it most clearly and obviously does.  I realize that this is a lot to digest, and I don't expect you to understand everything over night.  What I have written to you so far here is in response to your claim that you are, “...ready to be a new person in God.”   If that is the case, then you should know what to expect and what is expected of you.  I have also done my best to begin a discussion with you here that will serve to raise more questions than it answers.  I am positioned in such a way in this ministry that, for at least the present time, visiting with you in person is out of the question.  There are others who will do this.  But clearly, I am willing and able, as God directs me, to serve as your mentor in teaching you the Catholic Faith through our continuing correspondence.  My advice to you is to be patient concerning procedures and details and instead focus your entire spiritual being at the Cross.  The Cross!  The Cross!  The Cross!  I cannot emphasize this enough, K.... In my last letter, I sent you some Catholic materials that were supposed to pique your interest and begin introducing you to the faith.  I'm glad they did.  Be patient as you learn.  The idea of the Holy Rosary is to introduce you to our Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, who longs to get to know you and is anxious to teach you about her Son, Jesus Christ.  You will also find her presence in your spiritual life to be very uplifting and comforting.  She is real and she is not only the Mother of God in the person of Christ Jesus, but when we join with Him as Christian brothers, she becomes, in a very real and substantial way, our mother as well.  When you cry out for your own mother as you have been doing, and she chooses to ignore you, Christ answers you with His.  This is a tremendous gift from God that Protestants do not begin to know how to understand or appreciate.  Pray the Rosary according to the instructions in the pamphlet.  If you don't understand, just talk to the Blessed Mother and ask her to pray for you like this: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen The Chaplet of Divine Mercy is a prayer for mercy upon your soul and for the world.  “Chaplet” means prayer.  It is prayed on a rosary.  Again, see the instructions.  The Chaplet came from a nun named Sister Faustina Kowalska, who had it shown to her by Jesus in a vision.  She wrote a diary of her religious experiences.  That's the diary referred to in the pamphlet.  I've included some more information here.  For now, pray for mercy like this: Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.  For the sake of His sorrowful passion have mercy on us and on the whole world. My suggestion to you is to speak with your chaplain once you are out of the hole and tell him (or her) that you wish to become a Catholic and that you would like to sign up for Catholic Services (if you are blessed enough to have them there).  Show him (or her) these letters, if that will help.  Once you are able to establish fellowship with other Catholics there will be those who will be able to teach you more about these things.  Ask around as to who is Catholic and you will find that God will put who you need right in front of you.  He sent me to you, did He not?  It is possible to join the Catholic Church while you are in prison, but there are obviously some difficulties involved and some obstacles to be overcome.  But they can be overcome.  I've helped others do so, and  I may be able to help with this or at the least help you guide the process. Most of all, give all of your worries and concerns to Christ at the Cross and you will find that all will be taken care of in due time.  You must trust in this.  When your time for parole approaches, the details for your release will be worked out.  Housing is provided for sex offenders and since you have no means of support, you should be eligible for MPRI.  You will not be kept in prison once you have demonstrated that you are capable of success in the world simply because you have no prearranged housing.  You will be provided what you need to succeed.  The state is under great pressure to make sure that when you are released you will be successful  – that's the rub for you right now.  It's up to you to be who you need to be so this determination can be made in your favor.  My impression is that it will take some time for you to convince those who are responsible for your release once you have accomplished this.  Your ERD was October 11, 2011.  If you were flopped for 12 months, then you are not eligible for 8 or 9 more months.  Use this time wisely and know that there is no substitute for simply being the person they need you to be so you can gain release.  Since this is what you want, too, and this is the reason you wrote to me for help, this should work out for you.  Should you get another flop, suck it up, be a man, chalk it up to God's will, and continue. When you are released, ministry to you from Christ's Church and people becomes much easier.  Sign up for a mentor with Operation Transformation when the opportunity is offered to you, and specify that you want a Catholic mentor.  I will most likely know the person and I can help him get to know you.  He will get you involved in a local parish (church) community, introduce you to your pastor, and life with the Church becomes a beautiful thing, with regular access to the sacraments (most importantly the Holy Eucharist) and regular fellowship with like minded Catholic Christians.  In the meantime, I will delight in teaching you the faith, and I will help you become Catholic while you are still in prison.  If you are considering whether or not the Catholic Church is right for you consider this:  Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church is reaching out to you right now through me and is anxious to embrace you not in spite of your sin, but because of it.  We are all sinners.  You have no stigma with us, and the Church, guided and nurtured by our Blessed Mother, loves you as she does her own divine Son, and as does Christ Himself.  You are welcome in the Church.  Your soul is saved here unto eternal life.  The angels and saints in heaven rejoice at your salvation, and will celebrate with you at your acceptance into the community of believers.  You will never receive a better offer.             In closing, there is one more aspect that you have to consider in giving your life to Christ, and that is what this does to your family relationships.  If you truly give your life to Jesus, you will be putting Him first and foremost in your life to the possible exclusion of all others.  Here is what He says about family relationships;  I suspect you will find this somewhat shocking: As they were going along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head."  To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father."  But he said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."  Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home."  Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." Luke 9: 57-62 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him.  Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”  He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”  Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.  For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Matthew 12: 46-50 "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, `This man began to build, and was not able to finish.'  Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace.  So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26-33 Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. Matthew 10: 21-22 Pray about these passages and ponder these things in your heart.  What I meant about your son is to pray earnestly for his well being and know that should it be God's will to separate him from your custody, so it must be.  It is easy to submit to God's will when it is easy, but much different when it is hard and tears at your heart.  And sometimes it is hard and tears at your heart.  Give your life to Christ and He will restore those who love you to you, but only if they also seek Him as you do.  For now, separate yourself from all worldly concerns and from all loved ones but Him.  When you can put Christ before all else and do this without reservation regardless of what has been lost from your previous life, and when things don't go your way, then you will know that you have become His disciple.            Yours in Him, Chaplain Phil    enc. PS:  Your assignment:  Go through the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament.  Pick out and read the words that Jesus speaks.  Pray before the Cross and meditate upon what you have read.  Write me back.  Ask me questions.  “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”  Matthew 7:7