The Prisoner: An Invitation to Hope

by Paul F. Everett

Paulist Press, 2005

193 pages, $16.96

To order: (800) 218-1903

paulistpress.com

As the cold prison doors locked Jim Townsend inside his cell, he figured his young life was already over. At age 20, he had just been handed a life sentence for the murder of his wife.

God had other ideas.

Born in Pennsylvania during the Great Depression, Townsend was the son of an alcoholic father who had beat him and an absent, chronically ill mother. When he was 19, he met the girl who would, after just a three-month courtship, become his wife. Things were looking up for the couple, but the good times didn’t last long.

Townsend was laid off work. When his wife became pregnant, he misread the emotional changes she was going through. Scared he might be losing her, he cut off that possibility by shooting her dead.

Once in jail, Townsend quickly made it clear that he was not to be messed with. But when he learned that the appearance of good behavior could lead to privileges, he started attending Mass and Bible study, and even going to confession. In his mind, the Catholic faith was nothing but “hocus pocus,” but it came in handy for making a good show of his “rehabilitation.”

That began to change when the prison chaplain, Father Richard Walsh, gave Townsend a copy of Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain. The convict realized that his story wasn’t all that unique. The scales began to fall from his eyes. Eventually he would go on to say:

“Here at Rockview I am still behind four walls — no, four fences. I still can’t get out, but for the first time in my whole life I have peace and joy and I know love. This is a new place I have never been before.”

After this, he began to allow Father Walsh to lead him along the slow, painful road to forgiveness — not only of all the people he had hurt over the years, but of himself, too.

After spending 20 years behind bars, Townsend had his life sentence commuted. Several years later, he entered the Order of the Capuchin Franciscan Brothers. Since then he has shared his story with thousands — including author Paul F. Everett, who recounts Townsend’s story, to stirring effect, in The Prisoner: An Invitation to Hope.

Today, at age 78, Brother Jim’s ministry has slowed down. Plagued by deteriorating health, he spends much of his time with the kids in the lunchroom at the Catholic grade school next to his friary outside of Pittsburgh.

As conversion stories go, this is a perfect one with which to launch into Lent. Mercy and contrition take on faces and names. Interior transformation is made manifest in outward acts of faith, hope and love for Jesus Christ. And the life-changing power of the sacraments is shown to extend beyond the recipient thereof.

“I realized that I had been so blessed by (Brother) Jim through the years,” writes Everett in his preface, “that I wanted to be part of telling one of the most powerful stories I had ever heard about what God could do with a human life.”

Everett’s writing is plain and to the point. Perhaps he is trying to emulate his subject’s Franciscan simplicity. Most of the time, this style works well. There are places, though, where the narrative would have benefited by more detail and a more catechetical approach. He might have gone further to show, for example, how Brother Jim’s story is, in a certain sense, our story too.

No matter. Brother Jim’s story is our story. And Everett tells it well, showing that, while we are not all incarcerated, we are all trying to break free of the prison of our own sin. This Lent, The Prisoner can help you start sawing away at the bars.

Eddie O’Neill writes from

Green Bay, Wisconsin.