Who Needs Communion?

The last Mass held at Federal Correctional Institution Bastrop was on Friday, March 27, 2020. Why a Friday? In federal prisons, each faith group is assigned one hour of worship. Between our priest’s availability and the prison’s scheduling, Friday became our “Sunday.” I’m not complaining. Unlike many incarcerated Catholics, we at FCI Bastrop have a pastor to minister to us. We consider ourselves a mission church of the local parish. And a vibrant mission we were: over fifty regular Mass attendees; a music ministry and parish council; an active catechism class with eight men scheduled to enter the church that April; Bible study and rosary groups.

In the first months of 2020 we anxiously watched the news as Covid crept toward our fences. We sensed something ominous approaching, and our faith communities prayed for the swift end the government predicted. On April 3, as the first large-scale outbreaks ravaged various prisons, the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons went on a preventative quarantine. For three months we remained in our cells twenty-three hours a day, with one hour of liberty restricted to our immediate floor. Needless to say, collective worship ground to a halt.

As our Catholic community’s pastoral coordinator, I felt prepared to handle my devotional needs for the interim. I knew the times Mass airs on the radio. With my Bible and a few spiritual books, and subscriptions to St. Anthony Messenger, National Catholic Register, and Plough Quarterly, I was ready for solo devotion. But my Catholic brothers in the dorm had a fraction of my resources, and my daily hour of liberty often involved encouraging men through their doors, sharing radio program times, and trying to jam whatever print resources I had over their thresholds. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was what I can only describe as spiritual loneliness.

It was jarring to change so abruptly from communal worship and participatory faith to purely solitary devotions. Sharing a seventy-square-foot cell with two other men for twenty-three hours a day, one may think that a little community would be inherent. But in such prolonged, forced proximity, I found myself in the juxtaposition of craving solitude to worship while also yearning for the companionship of my brothers in Christ. To me, Christianity is a team sport. Without companions, it loses much of its meaning and is impossible to practice effectively.

Come July, our out-of-cell time increased to two hours daily, and we were able to mix with more floors of our dorm – maybe one hundred fifty men in total. I wasn’t alone in my hunger for fellowship. When some other Christians started a daily prayer and encouragement group, I joined. But unfortunately, few of my fellow Catholic Christians chose to attend.

A common theme I’ve observed of the Catholic brothers over the years is an aversion to attending events not involving Mass or including a priest. I suspect this issue isn’t specific to prison parishes. Yet our ecumenical fellowship, born of exigency, was the most beautiful and consoling manifestation of our faith that I experienced during those long months. We soon learned that similar groups had sprung up in every dorm, a powerful example of the Spirit at work. Every night, one of the group leaders would deliver a short exhortation. Afterward we would join hands and each send our petitions and thanksgiving to the Lord, then hurry back to our cells. If only prison-themed reality TV would show fifteen men in a hallway, hands joined, sharing their hopes and fears with God and each other.

Photograph by Carlynn Alarid

Covid finally breached our walls in October. Roughly half the prison fell ill. Fortunately, only one man died. Sixty days of total lockdown, only allowed out of our cells every seventy-two hours to shower, silenced our burgeoning fellowship through Advent and Christmas. Looking out my little window at the gray sky, I listened to Christmas Mass at the Vatican, struggling to imagine only thirty worshipers in cavernous Saint Peter’s Basilica. The prison fed us a special meal in Styrofoam containers, but what I hungered for was the Eucharist.

In January, I was moved to another dorm for a special program. Now allowed out of the cell all day, we were still locked in our building and segregated from the other dorms. Winter passed into spring, and we continued to practice our faith communally in whatever corner we could squeeze into, and individually with our rosaries. As ten of us celebrated sacred liturgies huddled in a dark hallway, I took comfort that our simple service was more akin to the first Christian liturgies than the Masses being offered in the grand cathedrals of the world.

We recently learned that our ministers have been cleared to return, and that Masses will be resuming. We’re still segregated by dorm, but at least the ten Catholics with whom I live can finally partake in communion together. Fifteen months of reciting a prayer for spiritual communion while I listen to voices on the radio consume the real thing is becoming rote. And to be honest, it is not nearly as spiritually consoling as the occasions we share a bagel and grape juice in our ecumenical gatherings.

I know that the absence of our ministers for fifteen months is due to the prison’s Covid lockdown and not their unwillingness to serve. Yet I can’t help but feel, as I know many do, that the institutional church has not risen to the mission of shepherding the faithful through this tribulation. I remember reading of the priests and nuns who braved the plague to administer the sacraments and accompany the sick and dying, of Saint Damian of Molokai and Saint Francis’s ministry to lepers. Yet during the pandemic, even the healthy, free faithful were largely cut off from their pastors, locked out of their churches, and left to read a substitute prayer instead of communing with Christ. It seems like, in an overzealous attempt to protect the health and life of our bodies, we sacrificed the wellbeing of our souls. “For those who want to save their life will lose it …” (Mark 8:35).

Prison operations will eventually go back to normal – whatever the new “normal” may be. We don’t know who remains of our Catholic community. Between releases and transfers, turnover has been massive. There are dozens of friends and brothers whom I will not see again this side of heaven. We’ll have to start over with our catechism. Our parish council will need new members. And our first order of business will be similar to the challenge of real-world parishes: convincing men who haven’t been to church in fifteen months to return.

Thankfully, I don’t need to worry about results. The Lord will call whom he wills: both new and long-dormant seed. The mission church of FCI Bastrop will continue. And my faith, though sorely tested, has developed, deepened, and endured. I pray that what we’ve created during this Covid purgatory endures. Namely, our hunger for the Eucharist.