Fr. Kurt Denk, SJ

"For I was … in prison and you visited me." (Matthew 25:35-36)

Hard as it is for me to believe, I have been a Jesuit for nearly fourteen years. Reflecting on that time, and on three years now of ministry as a priest, two dimensions come into view.  On the one hand, Jesuit life has a way of bringing full circle the interests and talents that are alive in a candidate for the Society. On the other hand, Jesuit life undeniably expands the horizons of possibility for those interests’ and talents’ integration into ministry. I have served as a prison chaplain for the past six years—three of those as a newly ordained priest—and I will, within a month’s time, complete a law degree. The story that brought me to this point, and that will further shape this ministerial identity in my future work as a Jesuit, illustrates these dimensions.

Early in my undergraduate career, before I had even slightly contemplated a Jesuit vocation, I anticipated pursuing a law degree. As studies, extracurricular involvement, and my spiritual and religious quest to live my faith as a young adult continued to form me, I began to think of the world, and my own place in it, differently. A sense of calling to service had always been important, but my expectations of how that would or should or could play out shifted. I changed my major, dropped the idea of law school, and, to make a long story short, eventually found myself applying to the Jesuits as I finished college. Service was still the key, a calling to religious ministry its particular form, but law was certainly behind me. Or so I thought.

Fast forward through novitiate, first studies, regency, and the first year of theology, and the cumulative effect of ongoing prayer and spiritual direction, diverse fields of study, and exposure to a variety of ministry and apostolic experiences presented anew the question, “how am I called to serve?”  I had become involved in ministry at California’s San Quentin Prison as a first-year theologian, and it awakened in me something both familiar and new.  Suddenly my longstanding interests in philosophy, law, politics, and justice, and their intersection with spiritual and religious identity, had found a place of integration. Prison ministry presented new possibilities for living that intersection as I learned about restorative justice, prison policy, and the role that moral intuitions and reasoning—sometimes explicit, usually subconscious—play in our society’s criminal law. And so, one winter afternoon, a Jesuit friend of mine asked, “what about law school?” And something clicked. After all of those years of Jesuit formation, a kernel of identity that long had been a part of who I am—but that the experience of grace manifesting through experience had shaped in previously unimagined ways—opened my eyes and heart to a new horizon of possibility for living out Jesuit apostolic service.

What grace unfolds by visiting the Lord in prison, as Matthew’s Gospel counsels? I have come to know men who have committed terrible crimes, and who actually come to terms with that fact and with their often-wrenching life histories, and who find God.  Many of these men have developed some of the most articulate voices I have heard to promote faith, justice, nonviolence, and reconciliation. Men whose lives our society has categorically consigned to the margins—at best—have taught me how to be a better person of faith. Working for six years in an institutional environment that in many ways is nothing short of cold, harsh, irrational, arbitrary, and brutal, literally has affirmed my belief in God.  Because how else could someone who lives in such an environment, become more humanized, more compassionate, more faithful, more hopeful, more loving? I can think of no other explanation save the fact that Jesus himself inhabits our prisons. The Body of Christ is harmed every time one human being commits a violent act against another human being. And the Body of Christ restores us to ourselves and to God when we permit the violent to amend and redefine their lives, and to commit to the healing of those whom they have harmed along the way. Matthew the Evangelist knew what he was writing about: Jesus himself lives at San Quentin, including among the approximately 700 human beings whom the State of California has condemned to death and houses in a grim building within San Quentin simply named “East Block: Condemned Row.”

Enter a man named Richard, who lives on “East Block: Condemned Row.”  (Yes, lives—because he continues to seek forgiveness for his terrible crime, and continues to come alive as a man of faith.)  Many men at San Quentin have shaped my life.  But Richard confirmed for me that pursuing a law degree, as a Jesuit priest, was what God had stirred up in me.  Richard did not even know of my law school plans, but one day asked me, in succession, to look over a letter he had received from his lawyer, to discuss a restorative justice program that mainline inmates had started, and then to pray with him and give him communion. Later that day in prayer, in an epiphany of sorts, I realized that the decision—whether to go to law school, and whether to stay in California to do so—was easy.  In my desire to integrate a commitment to criminal law reform and restorative justice, with my identity and vocation as a Jesuit priest, going to Berkeley Law while continuing to serve at San Quentin was clearly the path to choose.  It was a path of grace. 

Jesuit life tends to bring you full circle, while setting your eyes and heart upon a horizon you could not imagine on your own. Like when you visit Jesus in prison.