A Nun's Story

Growing up, I often listened to “Art Linkletter's House Party” at noon on KFI, Los Angeles. I didn't like the variety show part of it, but, each day, he interviewed four children from a local school. Based on these interviews, he later wrote a book, Kids Say the Darndest Things which became a national best seller. Questions like "What did your mother tell you not to say?" elicited answers like, "Don't tell him about your father's drinking," or "Don't tell him about grandma's jail sentence." Of course the kids had just done what the mother had told them not to do. I sometimes wondered what waited them when they got home. One day, the school kids were from an Adventist school. Art Linkletter probed, as usual, for the oddities. "What do Adventists believe?" he asked. The little six-year-old said, "We hate Catholics." The audience gasped. But I knew what he was talking about. Though no adult in our denomination would have put it quite so bluntly, we “knew” the Roman Catholic church was the great whore of Babylon; she wore the number 666 and that the pope was the antichrist. Over the years, the official position of the Adventist denomination has softened and only die-hard fringe groups preach this. Having left Adventism a number of years ago, I can look back with shame and horror at what we were taught and what I once believed. Now, more than fifty years later, I have been shamed even more; all the progress I have made in the Lord both before I met all of you and in my time with you has been shown to be such a miniscule thing-and all this by a Catholic nun. She is called Sister Antonia. She lives in La Mesa prison, Tijuana Mexico. She cares for, loves, blesses the prisoners in one of the worst prisons in Mexico. She has done this for over a quarter century. She left Beverly Hills to do this. She was wealthy; she belonged to the elite crowd; she knew and lived among many of the Hollywood glitz set. And she gave it all up to live in this squalid prison where her neighbors are murderers, drug traffickers, prostitutes and pimps. She sees them not for what they have done, but as Christ Himself. Once when a guard was beating a prisoner, she shouted, "Stop! You are hitting Jesus Christ." More than the facts, she does it with a sense of joy and excitement. It is not a drudgery or task but a privilege to her. In things large and small, she finds her only frustration in not being able to help more. She sees in mankind, perhaps even in me if we were to meet, her Lord Jesus Christ. She ministers to Him in the person of even the worst offenders. Tears come to my eyes as I think how little I contribute, how little my life and time touch those around me. "Touching the Lord," has a whole new meaning now. Yes, turning toward Him alone or in worship with all of you, but more than that, touching Him in each of you and somehow realizing the dream He has in me to touch those who are untouchable in our world. *** The book is by Mary Jordan, The Prison Angel, Mother Antonio's Journey From Beverly Hills to a Mexican Jail. Note: This was originally written as an essay to the small home church to which I belonged at the time. 5 1 08