Lessons From A Holy Man

by Mark Yaconelli

It was late, and the resturaunt was closing when the question was asked. We looked at each other—lips greased from burgers, cheeks reddened by  the late hour. No one responded. We were pastors, teachers—professional Christians and yet the poverty of our own lives was obvious. Certainly none of us were holy. We gazed awkwardly at the table. Then Pam saved us:

“I met a man. A Franciscan. It was a one-day conference on nonviolence. I was up in the front pew. Next to me was this woman who sat with her spine straight, legs crossed in some Yoga contortion. She had this very serene look on her face. Too serene. She held some kind of prayer beads, and when she saw me, she gave me this little bow and smiled with this sweet, peaceful smile—the kind that makes you want to empty your bowels in public.
The two presenters were former military men, and just before the conference began, these two guys were razzing each other. One was ex-Navy, the other Army. They were making jokes—Army versus Navy jokes. One would say, “Can you hand me those notebooks?” And the other would say, “You Navy guys…always expect someone else to do your bidding.” They’d laugh, and then the Navy guy would make some equally cutting comment.

It was clear these guys were friends, but the woman next to me was getting visually agitated. She’d frown at the men, then close her eyes and exhale loudly. She was trying to do everything you expect a holy person to do—you know, act peaceful, serene, and removed from it all. The two presenters called everyone to attention and began to start the workshop when the woman next to me raises her hand.

She stood and confronted the presenters. She told them she overheard their conversation and was so disturbed and appalled by the way they joked about the military that she’d have to leave the conference. She started lecturing the presenters in a loud voice so that the whole room wouldn’t miss a word—”Don’t you understand the violence the U.S. military is engaged in?!”

She went on and on while these two poor guys just stood there looking awkward and embarrassed—two guys, by the way, who’d seen military combat, two committed Christians who’d spent many months in prison for nonviolent protests against U.S. involvement in Iraq. And yet this woman, in $300 linen Yoga workout sweats, lectured them about what’s appropriate.

She finished her little tirade, and the whole audience was just seething at this woman. She was so full of herself, so pompous. She made a big deal of packing up her things, like she was too holy to be involved in the workshop. All of us couldn’t wait for her to go.

Then, all of sudden, from somewhere in the back of the room this elderly man started walking forward. He had this look of anguish on his face.

He knelt down next to this woman and with a pained look said he could see that she had been hurt. He took her hand and told her how sorry he was that this occurred. He told her that these presenters are actually good men, and that that whatever pain they’ve caused was unintentional. He then asks her to stay for the conference.
All of us were in shock. This woman was so phony and self important, and yet this man took her seriously, offering her respect and dignity—more dignity than she offered the presenters.

The rest of the day, we talked about the nonviolence of Jesus and did all sorts of analysis and went through a bunch of exercises. But the thing that will stick with me most was the presence of this man—his compassion for someone who was so completely false and annoying.”

“What was his name?” I asked.

“Father Louis Vitale,” was her response.

In Search of a Holy Man…

I went home that night and Googled Louis Vitale. I found out he’s a Franciscan monk and a primary leader of the nuclear-freeze movement of the 1980s. He spent years in jail for protesting nuclear testing in Nevada. He was also head of the Franciscans in North America but got in trouble when he tried to give away the order’s endowment to the poor.

I read that he spent the past ten years working with homeless folks in San Francisco. He let them sleep and eat in St. Basil’s Cathedral at all hours, even when Catholic and San Francisco leaders protested. I read and read and then found out that sure enough he was in a federal penitentiary in El Centro, California.

In November of 2006, he and Jesuit Stephen Kelly attempted to deliver a letter opposing the teaching of torture techniques at Fort Huachuca, Arizona—headquarters of U.S. Army Intelligence and the training center for military interrogators. The priests were arrested as they knelt in prayer halfway up the driveway at the army base.

On a whim I sent an e-mail to Father Vitale’s community, asking if I could visit Vitale at the jail. The next day I received a reply. He was only allowed two visitors a week, and visits could only last 30 minutes—and the community was willing to give me a slot. Two months later my friend Frank and I made the drive two hours east of San Diego to El Centro.

“Why are we doing this again?” Frank asked me as we crossed the dry desert.

“Pam said he’s a holy man,” I replied. “Don’t you want to meet a holy man?”

Holiness Behind Bars

In the Imperial County Jail, behind a two-inch-thick Plexiglas wall stood 76-year-old Father Louis Vitale in an orange jumpsuit. He had a large, slightly goofy grin. His white, half-moon hair stuck up like he’d rubbed it with a balloon. After the guards unlocked his shackles, he waved at Frank and me then sat down while lifting two heavy black phones to each ear—one for Frank and one for me.

“Welcome to the Imperial Jail!” he shouted.

The first thing I noticed was how excited he was to talk to people. He spoke rapidly, almost hyperactively, moving from topic to topic. It was as if we were continuing some conversation that had to be completed in haste.
He told us about the facility—no windows, fluorescent lights glaring 24 hours a day. Meals were served at odd, irregular times—breakfast between three and four in the morning, for instance. He talked about the inmates—mostly Mexicans arrested for crossing the border. He told us he was learning Spanish so he could communicate with his cellmate.

He talked about being in solitary confinement for the first months of his imprisonment. He said he enjoyed it. It was like his novitiate (the time period before taking priestly vows)—lots of solitude and silence, time to pray. He told us Martin Luther King once said that in a cell, alone, in silence is where real prayer can happen. He told us he found that to be true.

He told us of the letters he received. “All these people who tell me they’re praying for me. I just feel so loved. If everyone could receive letters like I’m getting here in prison, there would be no war or hunger.”

Father Vitale also talked about his years in the military and his epiphany that the military consisted of regular people who meant well but made mistakes. On and on he talked without giving us any space to reply. I began wondering if this guy was holy or just crazy. He reminded me of homeless men I’d met on the streets of our town—men who seem half-crazy, act overly familiar, and speak in overly friendly streams of consciousness.
I thought a holy man would be calm, serene, self-contained. Father Vitale was the opposite—excited, energized, talkative, eager to connect. He laughed often, and he looked us in the eyes with something like an intense friendliness.

I interrupted with a question: “Why are you in jail?”

He paused. His face changed demeanor. A kind of grief came over him as he said, “Hearing that this country is engaging in torture just hit me in the gut. It should hit everyone in the gut. That’s where I feel God: In my gut. I just had to do something. I think if I didn’t, I’d just get depressed.”

He leaned forward toward the glass and paused to look me in the eye. “This isn’t just about the victims,” he added. “This is about the people who have to inflict the suffering as well.” He told me about Alyssa Peterson, a young U.S. Army interpreter who trained at Ft. Huachuca. She was sent as part of the interrogation team to one of the U.S. prisons in Iraq. After just two sessions in the cages, she committed suicide.

We talked about America’s involvement in Iraq. He rattled off the history of U.S. involvement in Abu Ghraib and the creation of Guantanamo Bay. But what’s most striking in this conversation was Father Vitale’s demeanor. Torture is a serious issue, and obviously Vitale has been responding with his life, and yet his demeanor was light. He smiled and laughed easily; there was little animosity in his voice toward the military commanders or Bush administration officials who’ve authorized and advocated torture.

This is different than most activists, even Christian activists I’ve met. Most of them seem angry, repressing the same kind of violence they seek to counter. In conversing with Father Vitale, I noticed how often he tried to see things through the perspective of the military, the policemen who arrested him, the Bush administration.
“I can see myself in their shoes,” he said. “I used to be in the military, I shared many of their viewpoints at one time.” When I asked him how he’s able to avoid bitterness and anger and demonizing those who’ve placed him in prison, he smiled and said, “Well, I like people. I’ve always liked people. I’ve never met anyone who I wanted dead. I’ve never met a person who I wanted to see in hell or anything like that. I’ve always liked people.”

Finding One Shred of Good

Then he told us about a man who was recently brought into the prison. He had murdered his stepfather in a particularly cruel and inhuman manner. Vitale nodded over to the visitor booth next to us. We see a white man with a shaved head—his arms, hands, and neck covered in tattoos. “That’s the guy there,” Vitale tells us. “All the inmates want to kill him. He shouts and screams all night long so no one can sleep. He shouts the most awful obscenities at the guards. He throws urine and feces at people through his cell bars. I think he’ s probably got some kind of mental illness.”

Vitale paused, then continued. “If I stand on my bed, I can just see into the top of his cell. I can see his television set. The other night, about two in the morning, it was quiet. I couldn’t sleep. I stood on my bed and looked over and could see that this guy had his television on. I could just see the top of his head. He was standing watching a documentary on the Egyptian pyramids.”

Vitale paused again and smiled. “Now, you just gotta like a guy like that.”

The guards tapped him on the shoulder. He stood, and they handcuffed him behind his back.

Vitale smiled at us again—a big goofy grin—and then yelled. Loud enough so we could hear him through the glass. Was something troubling him?

“Don’t feel sorry for me! I’m a blessed man!”

Frank and I walked out of the jail. Immediately we started laughing. What a crazy old man! He was nothing like we expected. He didn’t match any of our images of holiness. We sat, we talked—and here’s what we learned.

Holiness Revealed

There are 10,000 forms of holiness. Just as God creates 10,000 forms of beauty, there are 10,000 ways to hold and shine God’s love and compassion. Holy people aren’t those who’ve imported some kind of saintly personality; holy people have somehow embraced who they are.

They’re truly themselves; they’re the people God created them to be. The presence of God doesn’t remove—but rather shines through—their personalities, their wounds, their unique quirks and idiosyncrasies.

To be liked is much more powerful then to be loved. To love is often an obligation, a commandment, an expectation. How many times have I listened to adult friends tell me of neglectful and abusive parents but then end their comments with, “But I know they loved me.” If given a choice I’d much rather be liked then loved.

What’s holy about Vitale isn’t that he’s become something “other,” something spiritual that’s removed from the flesh and blood and struggle of human living. What makes him holy (if in fact he is holy; only God knows) is that he’s even more engaged, immersed, and intertwined with human beings—and in particular, human suffering.

Vitale likes people; he likes the person being tortured as well as the military commander inflicting the punishment. When you like people more than ideas, then you can’t stand to see them harmed, and the reality of torture hits you in the gut, shocks your conscience—and you have to do something. You have to make it stop.

Holiness is about our capacity for compassion. What was most striking about Vitale’s stories was the apparent level of understanding and compassion for the people he spoke of—even those who put him in solitary confinement, arrested him, tortured people, etc. This was most apparent in his story of the convicted murderer. We could tell that something disturbed Vitale about this violent inmate who screamed all night, incurring hatred from the prison population (in fact, Vitale suspected the man would soon be killed by other inmates).

What bothered Vitale, I think, was that he hadn’t found a way to like, to make a connection, to feel compassion for this disturbed man. He told us he’d never met a man he wanted dead, and yet this man was so despicable, vile, and inhuman that it was testing the limits of Vitale’s compassion. And so the 76-year-old Franciscan couldn’t sleep. Then at two in the morning he got up, stood on his bed, looked through the bars into the cell of the disturbed man, hoping to find a way to connect, to get a glimpse of the man’s troubled soul.

When he saw this angry, violent man watching the Egyptian documentary, Vitale suddenly felt a sense of relief. He finally saw the man’s humanity. He’d found a way to like, to feel compassion, for the disturbed murderer. Then he could sleep.

To be holy in ministry is to accept fully who you are. No pretending. No hiding. Confess what is broken, without shame. Confess what is gifted in you, without false modesty.

To be holy in ministry is to like people. To struggle to see the humanity of people, the divine spark within those we’re drawn to as well as those who irritate and repulse us. To enjoy the company of people—even people who are strange or different.

To be holy is to struggle to feel compassion for others. It means trying to see the world through another person’s eyes. It means struggling to find what’s likeable, what’s good, what’s vulnerable in another—even if that person appears violent, mean, or troubled.

To be holy is to feel blessed. It means to live the Christian life, not as a burden, but as a way of life that’s open and receptive to all the gifts of love that God and other people offer us.

Finally, to be holy is to enjoy the moments we get alone with God. It means that we fall into prayer during those moments. It means we fall back into the One who loves the world into being.

May we seek to spend each moment in companionship with the God who has compassion on us all and sees each of us as growing saints.