It is right that I should think this way about all of you,
because I hold you in my heart,
you who are all partners with me in grace,
both in my imprisonment
and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel.
For God is my witness,
how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
During our recent exile in the country of Covid, I celebrated Mass in the spirit of the imprisoned Saint Paul. Although the VA chapel in Louisville provided ample space for several people to maintain a healthy apartness, no one was permitted to participate in the Mass with me. I had only a TV camera and all the saints and martyrs of the past, present and future; and the blessed angels; and our dear Mother Mary to accompany me in the universal prayer of the Church. (In the meanwhile, hospital staff often crowded shoulder-to-shoulder around the nurses' stations. The talking heads apparently didn't see that on their monitors in their sealed cubicles.)
But if my misery was never as severe as Saint Paul's incarceration, the consolation was the same. I held the whole Church in my heart, because we are all partners in grace.
Catholics do not pray alone; and we have many stories -- often recent ones -- of emprisoned men and women who survived solitary confinement and torture to tell us of how they lived in hope. A quick Google search tells us of Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, Cardinal Ernest Simoni, and Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty. We might notice that the Roman empire was kinder to Saint Paul than the modernity, its cowardly leaders, and their sycophants.
Whenever we feel alone, we should invoke the sacred company and blessed memories of saints and martyrs throughout the centuries. No one is alone in God's sight. Even the wicked detest one another within their echo chambers.
