Of All Places

I perform works of mercy in every soul. The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to My mercy. My mercy is confirmed in every work of My hands. He who trusts in My mercy will not perish, for all his affairs are Mine, and his enemies will be shattered at the base of My footstool. (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 723).

I retired in 2014 from a twenty-five year career as Correctional Peace Officer. My duties required the direct supervision of inmates of such historic criminal notoriety that they’ve been made the subject of books and Hollywood movies.

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you. – Friedrich W. Nietzsche

Nietzsche was an unapologetic critic of Christianity. I quote the 19th century German philosopher because this best describes my daily work environment which was often referred to as the belly of the beast. 

I gazed long into the abyss as a maximum security prison guard but, thanks be to God, I humbly consider myself living proof that He truly can do the most extraordinary things in and through His most ordinary and broken creatures.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

Cake Walk

As a young man and in the first years of my marriage, I was a lukewarm, smorgasbord Catholic at best. I believed I was living a good life pleasing to God but I was living an illusion of the Catholic life. I was living a lie. I clocked in at Mass for one distracted hour every week and I couldn’t tell you what the Gospel was about by the time I got out to my car.

I was living more in the world than I was in the grace of God. I confess that my faith walk was more like a cake walk.

Satan paid no attention to me. Why would he? I wasn’t in his way.

Gun Tower Pentecost 

I worked many years early in my career as a gun officer. I stood watch on rooftops, in elevated cages and control rooms of multi-tiered halls, open dormitories, and perimeter towers. Being a maximum security gunner can be summed up with months of uneventful hyper-vigilance indelibly shattered by minutes of anarchy and one irrevocable, split-second life or death decision. This isn’t a lesson I learned in an academy classroom text book.

The Mundane Hours

The perimeter lights shined just enough through the tower windows for me to pass the late night, mundane watch hours by reading a Dean Koontz or Anne Rice novel. I wasn’t interested in spiritually formative reading but I was intrigued by the book I received through a dear friend whose brother, a priest I didn’t know, requested it be sent to me along with a note that simply stated “I think Brian should read this.”

Garabandal

Our Lady Comes to Garbandal by Joseph A. Pelletier, A.A. is an account of the Marian apparitions of Garabandal, Spain that allegedly occurred between 1961 and 1965. It contains the diary of Conchita Gonzalez, one of four teenage visionaries in the remote Spanish village.

Until this reading, I may have occasionally pondered spiritual things but I never considered myself in need of being knocked off of my high horse and blinded by a flash of divine light. In hindsight, that’s precisely what made this a perfect time for such a powerful and radical intervention.

I don’t remember my exact place in the pages of the Garabandal story when the grace of Divine Mercy washed over me and through me like a heavenly tsunami. It was an unsolicited and unexpected mystical event. I was spiritually, emotionally, and physically overwhelmed by the power of the undeniable and unconditional love of Jesus and Mary.

There are no words to describe this experience. All I could do was completely surrender my entire being as the tears of healing and contrition and cleansing were streaming down my face in the dimly lit prison gun tower.

I drove to work that day without giving one minute of one thought to Jesus and Mary. I drove home that night certain that I have a spiritual Mother and that Mary is humanity’s spiritual Mother. Jesus and Mary love me beyond my comprehension and I was ever-so-gently convicted that I did not love them as I should.

I understood that I could not love Jesus and Mary or enjoy the fruits of a genuine relationship with them without freely and intentionally choosing to know them, without being vulnerable with them, and without spending prayerfully intimate time with them. Waking up the next morning was like breaking the surface of dark, deep water and breathing with a set of new lungs. I consider this extraordinary grace my personal pentecost.

A Fate Worse Than Prison

Correct me, O Lord, but in just measure; not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing. (Jeremiah 10:24)

Jeremiah 10:24 was the first bible verse I memorized as a young adult years before I would ever step foot in prison. More than ten years after my personal pentecost, I would come face to face with a monster more hideous than any other I had faced before – my sin – and God’s Word would return to me in full measure.

It was deep within my soul that the Most Holy Trinity and our loving Mother would shine a liberating Light of Love to pierce the darkest dungeon.

…so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I intend, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

U-Turn

It occurs to me today, more than twenty years later, that despite the circumstances of her incarceration, the young woman was more free than me. She was living her call to sanctity and perfection in Christ, as our Father is perfect, more perfectly than me. (Matthew 5:48)

It was her child-like love of God that liberated her and filled her with the Light of Joy within the darkest confines of her prison cell.

Through His beloved daughter, God would perform the most extraordinary work in me.

In the radiance of her genuine humility, I was humbled by the reflection (interior awareness) of my sin of rash judgement rooted deeply in the capital sin of pride – the excessive love of one’s own excellence. I was sanctified in that awareness in that it increased my dependence on God’s mercy.

I would confess and be liberated once again.

Romans 5:20

Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…in prison – of all places.

The abounding grace of Jesus awaits you in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and in His presence in the Most Blessed Eucharist.

Trust in His mercy and your enemies will be shattered at the base of His footstool.

© 2025 Brian Kravec

Brian is a cradle Catholic, husband and father. He’s a writer, speaker, and the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Possibility Productions, a 501(c)(3) faith event evangelization apostolate in service of the Body of Christ.