The Least of our Brothers<br/><br/>

I recently visited Kingston’s Joyceville Federal Correctional Institute with about ten of our young parishioners and presided over mass there. Joyceville is a medium security facility incarcerating inmates with sentences of over 2 years. Felons with sentences less than 2 years are sent to Provincial Correctional Institutes.<br/><br/>

We made this visit at the invitation of Rita Pang, the facility’s Chaplain. At ECCCLC 2001, Rita shared her personal experience of being the chaplain at a correctional facility, which drew the interest of many of the young campers. She sincerely invited our parishioners to experience for themselves this meaningful work. We actually planned on visiting Joyceville last year but the trip was postponed until now due to last year’s SARS outbreak.<br/><br/>

Over 20 inmates celebrated mass with us, sitting with and among our young people. Besides Rita, no other prison workers accompanied us.<br/><br/>

I chatted with two inmates during a short refreshment break after mass. One of them is Christian. He told me that through that day’s Gospel message, he found the answer to one of his questions. I can see God working in him in the look in his eyes. The other inmate is an agnostic. At first, he said he only had “one question”. When we finished talking, he had asked no less than 10 “last questions”. No matter what, we have started a dialogue on faith.<br/><br/>

For our young parishioners, this was an upbeat and fruitful visit. In the words of Peter, “I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene--walk!" (Acts 3:6)