Today is the Feast of All Souls, also known as the Day of the Dead.
This morning I celebrated this Feast with immigrant families waiting to visit their detained loved ones outside Delaney Hall, the private for-profit immigrant prison in Newark, NJ. Despite the estimated $60 million annual profit GEO Corporation makes on the operation, they force families to wait outside for hours on an active driveway for a chance to see their loved ones. Thankfully a group of dedicated volunteers are there each visiting day to provide practical support with beverages, food, chairs, blankets, hats, gloves and perhaps most importantly compassion.
In the first reading for today from the Book of Wisdom we hear: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God.” And in the second reading from Romans: “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Every time I am at Delaney Hall I leave with more hope, even in the face of the intentional cruelty done in the name of my country, because of the goodness of people.
Today one of the families woke up at 5 am to make tamales and Mexican hot chocolate which they brought to share with others families and the faithful volunteers who are there during visiting hours to support the visitors. The family told us they wanted to give to us like we give to them. I will admit this brought tears to my eyes. And I was not the only one. (Plus the tamales and hot chocolate were delicious)
Homemade tamales!
Other volunteers brought toys and art supplies for the kids. And there was even a face painting station. For children whose families have been torn apart and who wait for hours outside a chain link fence topped with concertina wire for a chance to see their detained mom or dad, these simple gestures also give them a chance to be a kid and have some good memories to see them through.
Face painting
Other volunteers set up a colorful altar, an ofrenda, for the Day of the Dead. We remember our loved ones who have gone before, so fitting as an emotional and spiritual support for the families visiting their detained loved ones.
Indeed hope does not disappoint because God’s love is poured out freely into our hearts. We in turn pour this love into the world, especially places and spaces of suffering and oppression.
In the words of the collect from today’s liturgy:
Listen kindly to our prayers, O Lord,
and, as our faith in your Son,
raised from the dead, is deepened,
so may our hope of resurrection for your departed servants
also find new strength.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
I spent yesterday morning with other volunteers at Delaney Hall providing hospitality and solidarity to families visiting loved ones.
I have been recovering from Covid so hadn’t been in a while. As always I found myself inspired by the courage of the families waiting to visit loved ones and the open hearts and dedication of the volunteers. I was also heartbroken. This time it was the children who have to face this cruelty, some born while their fathers have been detained. Others just trying to be a kid in very difficult circumstances. I couldn’t help but think of the words of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
Last night as I went to bed, I realized that not only was my heart broken 💔, I had over estimated my post covid energy level. While I had planned to attend the prayer service this morning outside Delaney Hall, instead I prayed at home with the Scriptures for todays liturgy, where I found strength for the journey.
The Prophet Habakkuk was reading the signs of injustice in his own time and calling on the people to hold fast in faith. It is one of my all time favorite passages.
“How long, O Lord? I cry for help / but you do not listen! / I cry out to you, “Violence!” / but you do not intervene. / Why do you let me see ruin; / why must I look at misery? / Destruction and violence are before me; / there is strife, and clamorous discord. / Then the Lord answered me and said: / Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, / so that one can read it readily. / For the vision still has its time, / presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; / if it delays, wait for it, / it will surely come, it will not be late. / The rash one has no integrity; / but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.”
In his letter to Timothy St. Paul tells his community (and us):
“Beloved: I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”
The Gospel from Luke is a call from Jesus to risk the bigness of smallness.
“The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
As Pope Leo XIV said when he first stepped out on the balcony at St Peter’s Basilica: “God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail. “
God of justice, love, and mercy, help us to remember and always to be animated by your love. Give us courage to act in the face of oppression and violations of human dignity. Help us to participate in your creating power of love in ways big and small. Most of all, increase our faith that we may truly believe in You who are bigger than it all. Amen
This morning during my contemplative prayer time, these words came to me over and over: “YOU are God.”
God is love. God is the source of everything that is good. God is God, and we are not … hence all the humanness of our shared reality.
God is.
As the saying goes in the Black church: “God is good all the time. All the time, God is good.”
YOU are God. These words grounded my heart during my silent prayer this morning, as my mind wandered to the many troubles plaguing our human and earth community. God is God. Those humans in power and those abusing power are not God.
Later, I found myself reflecting on the character Groot in the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Just as the one phrase, “YOU are God,” repeated over and over again in my heart during my meditation this morning, Groot has just one phrase: “I am Groot.”
Yet this phrase has a surplus of meaning. In the Marvel universe, Groot is a a member of the Flora Colossi, a race of treelike alien beings from Planet X. Highly intelligent creatures, Flora Colossi have a stiff larynx that is only capable of making a sequence of sounds that we hear as “I am Groot.” His friend Rocket apparently understands Groot’s language, and helpfully offers his interpretation skills for the benefit of all. What sounds to us like three simple words can carry a variety of meanings, depending on the context and delivery. Without giving away any serious spoilers, at one point Groot’s sequence of sounds meaningfully shifts to “We are Groot” after a moment of self-sacrificing love for his friends.
Now, WE are not God. Yet we are made in the image and likeness of God. We are made to love. We are made to be and do good. We are made to care for creation and one another. We are not good all the time, but all the time we are called back to love and goodness through the mercy of God. And for that, I am very grateful.
This morning a small group of us prayed outside the gates of Delaney Hall, the for-profit immigrant prison operated by GEO Group in our name. We gathered outside for a simple prayer service while the first group of families were forced to wait on an active driveway outside the gates for the chance to visit their loved ones detained in this 1,100 bed facility. This was the second week of the Let Us Pray Sunday morning prayer service outside Delaney Hall. Different faith traditions will be leading prayer each week. This week’s prayer was in the Christian Tradition and organized by Pax Christi NJ.
We began singing the song, Please Prepare Me, praying that we might be a sanctuary for the families and their detained loved ones.
We then listened to the word of God: Jeremiah 17: 5-11, Romans 12: 1-12, and Matthew 11:28-30. I was then honored to offer a brief reflection on the scripture readings, which is copied below. It was a beautiful experience of church with friends and strangers praying together that we may find refuge in God and be rooted in love.
Reflection by Susan Francois, CSJP – Delaney Hall (August 31, 2025)
Scripture: Jeremiah 17:5-11, Romans 12:1-2, Matthew 11:28-30
Chances are, right now, you have a piece of paper or a coin in your pocket with the words “In God We Trust” written on it. Our currency has carried these words since President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law making “In God We Trust” our official national motto in 1956. The context of this law, of course, was the Cold War. The inclusion of the motto on our nation’s money was seen as a response to the anti-religious stance of the Soviet Union.
We just heard proclaimed words from the prophet Jeremiah, in which he reminded his community to trust in God, not people and not money. His preaching was in a different context. He was worried that the people were placing their trust in the wrong things and turning their hearts from God. He wanted them to understand that actions have consequences. He predicted (correctly as it turns out) that they would be exiled to Babylon.
I can’t help but wonder what he’d make of our context today. Take the last line from the passage from Jeremiah, where he compares a partridge that broods but does not hatch to those who acquire wealth unjustly. In the end, they are just fools. Unjust fools.
The building behind me is operated by GEO Corp under tax-payer funded 15-year $1 Billion contract. GEO’s own press release announcing the deal in February proudly predicted that the “contract is expected to generate in excess of $60 million in annualized revenues for GEO in the first full year of operations.”
And yet, even with all this profit, families with small children, pregnant mothers, and elderly relatives of persons detained behind these walls are not provided with a safe place to wait for the chance to see their loved ones before they are deported. They are required to wait hours in the hot sun—and with this being Labor Day weekend, we know colder and wetter weather is around the corner—without shelter, without access to a bathroom even. I suspect that the prophet Jeremiah would have looked at this private-for-profit prison operation and declared that the GEO shareholders are earning their wealth unjustly.
Let’s shift Jeremiah’s focus from those detaining our migrant brothers and sisters to their faithful loved ones who come to stand at the foot of these gates today. Despite the odds, despite the difficulties, no doubt even in despair, they come each weekend in hope to spend a few moments with their loved ones. “They are like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream. It does not fear heat when it comes, its leaves stay green.”
The leaves that sustain them, I suspect, are rooted in love. Love for their husband or wife, son or daughter, mother or father, brother, sister, or friend who are inside these walls. Love for each other. Those of us who have been privileged to volunteer here these past few months have seen so many actions of kindness and love between strangers on this driveway. Volunteer to visitor. Visitor to visitor. Visitor to volunteer.
By our very presence—as visitors, as volunteers—we are refusing to conform to this age of inhumanity where cruelty seems to be the point. We trust in love, and my Christian tradition teaches that God is love. Jesus, God-with-us, love incarnate, invites us in the passage we heard from Matthew’s Gospel to find sanctuary in his love, where we will find rest.
May we be love. May we be loved. May we be sanctuary for one another. May we trust not in the unjust laws of men or the unjust pursuit of profit through human suffering, but in the love of God.
I will be honest. Given the state of the world, it felt a little self-indulgent to spend a week away in silence and the beauty of God’s creation this year. And yet I leave renewed and strengthened by God’s love, grateful for the wisdom of tradition and my community’s expectation that each sister take an annual retreat (it’s in our Constitutions!).
Mother Evangelista, one of the first sisters to profess vows in the community in 1884, taught this to her novices:
“Retreat – What is it? A Spiritual Holiday with our Lord. … God comes to us now with His hands spread out over us, and filled with every kind of grace and gift. Are these gifts for me Lord? Is it I?“
I can relate. This year, I returned to Wisdom House, an interfaith retreat center in Connecticut run by the Daughters of Wisdom. When I was a novice, I made my retreat here both years. It is a sacred space filled with beauty where I have received many graces and gifts, this year being no exception.
I leave with three messages tucked into my heart from this week, wisdom for the journey.
1. Strengthen Your Weak Knees
The week before my retreat I twisted my knee. Given that one of my favorite things to do on retreat is go on long walks in the woods, this was problematic. Thankfully I am improving and was able to take (slow) walks with the help of a knee brace.
God has a (serious) sense of humor, however. The Sunday reading as I began retreat was from Hebrews 12:
For what “son” is there whom his father does not discipline? At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.
So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed (emphasis added by me).
I burst out laughing at mass as this passage was proclaimed. OK God, I get it. But just to make sure I got the message, later that same day, I was listening to new music by Sandra McCracken, who it happens released a song based on this same verse in July!
Strengthen your weak knees became a theme of sorts for this retreat. The journey is not without challenges, but I find strength in God and community (and knee braces) and stay on the path. Speaking of paths, I visited the Montfort Fathers Lourdes Shrine in Litchfield and made a prayer video set to the song.
2. Do Whatever He Tells You
I attended daily mass this week at a local parish, where on my second visit I noticed a beautiful stained glass window of the wedding at Cana. I love the look on Mary’s face as she looks over her shoulder at Jesus. Aren’t you going to do something, her whole being says to her son. And to the servants (and to me), she says simply, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Life can be overwhelming on the best of days. Right now … well. Sigh. I have been mostly unplugged this week but have been reading (and praying with) the news. Enough said.
I also carry with me the stories of the immigrant families I have met on my visits to the Delaney Hall detention center in the face of cruel, inhumane, and constantly changing visitation policies at the for-profit prison. Another reflection point this week that kept coming up for me (and is in the video above) was standing at the foot of the cross. My experience of accompaniment at Delaney Hall has been a true foot of the cross experience. I can feel helpless in such moments. Like Mary and the other women, I suppose.
As I prepare to return back to real life, I am encouraged by Mary to follow her son. “Do whatever he tells you. He is the way. Love is the way.” My task is simply to listen to him and act accordingly. Small acts of love add up. And as Pope Leo reminded us that first day from the balcony at St. Peter’s… “God loves all of us and evil will not prevail.”
3.Be Like Wise and Rational Fish
Bear with me here … This morning, on the feast of St Augustine, I was drawn to look at the Office of Readings for the day, which I presumed would have something from him. Sure enough, it was the “Late have I loved you” bit, which is lovely and worthy of reflection, to be sure.
But it was the daily reading from St. Columbanus (different from Columba apparently), a sixth century Irish Missionary that caught my attention. Reflecting on Living Water, he wrote:
“We are called to the source and fountain of life … From this Life comes everything: wisdom, life, eternal light. The Creator of life is the fountain from which life springs; the Creator of light is the fountain of light. So let us leave this world of visible things. Let us leave this world of time and head for the heavens. Like fish seeking water, like wise and rational fish let us seek the fountain of light, the fountain of life, the fountain of living water.“
His words came back to me later as I happened upon a bubbling brook on my morning walk in a nearby nature preserve. Remember, I was necessarily walking slowly thanks to my weak knees so I noticed things! I even took advantage of a conveniently placed bench to ponder this living water (and later make a video, because why not?).
God’s love is everywhere if we but have eyes to see and ears to hear (and weak knees to slow us down). God gives us living water to sustain, refresh, and renew us. May we, like wise and rational fish, remember to seek out and be light and love in the darkness amid the dry times in which we find ourselves.
Thanks for reading. I have been praying for you, yes you, during these days of retreat. May we all remember that God is good. All the time. And so are we.
Friends some seriously (and apparently intentionally) inhumane actions are being perpetrated in our name and funded by our tax dollars. This is true on many levels and across the country, but this particular story is local and takes place a 20 minute drive from my house at Delaney Hall, a private for profit prison in an industrial area of Newark, New Jersey where immigrants are detained on behalf of our federal government.
There are many issues with the lack of due process, lies and deception by ICE officials, and violations of established legal protections that have led to up to 1,000 of our immigrant brothers and sisters being detained at Delaney Hall on any given day. Then there are the questions about how these human beings are being treated while in detention. Those are topics for another post.
This story is simply about the arbitrary and constantly changing rules for visitors, rules that are cruel and inhumane. Inhumanity seems to be the point and motivating factor. There is no other explanation to what is happening to the families desperate to see their loved ones one more time before they are deported.
Like the 14 year old US citizen child who was in tears today, trying to get into the detention center with her Aunt. Her mom and dad are both detained at Delaney Hall. They heard that her father might be deported tonight. They were desperate for accurate information regarding the fate of her parents. They could not afford legal assistance. Listening to her story was simply heart breaking.
Or like Bella who was denied the right to visit her daughter Mary during the scheduled 7:30 am visitation time allotted for just 15 visitors each Saturday for the up to 100 female detainees in Mary’s ward. Bella made an early morning trip from her home across the Hudson in New York to get there in time, at great expense. The published visitation rules signed by the Delaney Hall security chief say you may be denied entry if you arrive after the start of visitation hours. She arrived by 7:20 but the guard decided she was too late and told her to come back tomorrow. I tried to advocate for her but to no avail. He kept just saying she should have come earlier and he was within her rights to deny her visitation. Even though they had not yet let the 7:30 visitors inside, and they had not met the limit on the number of allowed visitors. I asked to speak to a supervisor, after identifying myself as a Catholic Sister/clergy, but he refused and again just said he was within his rights to deny her entry.
Bella literally dropped to her knees and opened her arms wide in supplication, calling out to God for mercy. She was in tears, as was I. Powerless in the face of inhumanity and injustice.
These are just two stories of many, just from today during the morning hours at this one detention center. Visitation is no longer allowed during the week at Delaney Hall, only on the weekends and during very limited hours. Family members line up hours early, waiting in the hot sun, often after driving hours to visit, without any guarantee they will be allowed inside. The visitation hours and rules published on the Delaney Hall and ICE websites are incorrect and out-of-date at best, if not intentional misinformation. Each week the guards seem to change the rules or at least apply them inconsistently. The families suffer, as do their loved ones who are waiting for a visit that never comes. Why? I can’t help but think it is by design.
And then this afternoon, after navigating this whole ordeal to set eyes on their loved one for a few minutes, a group of visitors came out to find their vehicles had been ticketed or towed by the Newark Police Department. Because, you see, not only is there not a visitor parking lot at this detention center (operated by tax dollars under a $1 Billion 5 year contract with ICE), there is also not any legal parking on the public city street outside the detention center. There is a public parking lot next door at the Essex County Detention Center, but visitors to the private prison next door are not allowed to park there, although staff apparently are. Again, why? I can’t help but think this inhumanity is by design.
This is not ok. We cannot be silent.
Now for good news. A group of folks organized in mutual aid swiftly organized to help the visitors get their cars out of the impound lot. Others are strategizing how to work with elected officials on a long-term parking solution. Many folks spent time outside Delaney Hall today in solidarity and support of the visitors, providing umbrellas and tents to protect them from the sun while they waited hours outside the gate. Offering coffee and donuts and water. Creating a play area for the children. Making and holding up signs as public witness to say that profiting off of human misery is immoral, that no human being is illegal, and that we are called to love our neighbors. Some of the visitors even brought toys and snacks themselves to share with others. Community at its organic best.
Goodness, in other words, was present even amidst the inhumanity. Love is always stronger than hate.
“Ecclesiastes, invites us … to come to terms with the experience of our limitations and the fleeting nature of all things that pass away (cf. Eccl 1:2; 2:21-23). On a similar note, the Responsorial Psalm presents us with the image of “the grass that is renewed… in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers” (Ps 90:5-6). These are two strong reminders which may be a bit shocking, but which should not frighten us as if they were “taboo” issues to be avoided. The fragility they speak of is, in fact, part of the marvel of creation.
Think of the image of grass: is not a field of flowers beautiful? Of course, it is delicate, made up of small, vulnerable stems, prone to drying out, to being bent and broken. Yet at the same time these flowers are immediately replaced by others that sprout up after them, generously nourished and fertilized by the first ones as they decay on the ground. This is how the field survives: through constant regeneration. Even during the cold months of winter, when everything seems silent, its energy stirs beneath the ground, preparing to blossom into a thousand colors when spring comes.
We too, dear friends, are made this way, we are made for this. We are not made for a life where everything is taken for granted and static, but for an existence that is constantly renewed through gift of self in love. This is why we continually aspire to something “more” that no created reality can give us; we feel a deep and burning thirst that no drink in this world can satisfy.”
Today, this brown eyed Susan turns another year older. Three years into my fifth decade and I continue to be astounded.
Astounded by the love of God who created all things even you and me and everyone and everything in between, for all eternity … created out of and for love.
Astounded by the beauty of creation. No words necessary.
Astounded by the gift of life and the invitation to share my gifts (and even vulnerablities) for the good of the whole, to be present to the beauty and the pain, to witness to God’s love even amidst suffering, and to remember and re-member in service of God’s dreams for us.
Astounded by the witness, love and challenge of family, friends, community, colleagues, strangers, bunny rabbits and birds and dragonflies. You name it.
Last night I made this prayer video featuring pictures of our global family set to a song that has been in my heart of late, Turning of the World by Sarah Thomsen.
Then, in this morning’s liturgical readings, I heard in Psalm 37:
Turn from evil and do good,
that you may abide forever;
For the Lord loves what is right,
and forsakes not his faithful ones
And from the Gospel of Matthew:
But beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
We are in times when much evil is being done by those in power. This leaves us with a choice. What will we do as …
Millions of children and families lose their lives that could have been saved with humanitarian food and medical assistance, which has already been funded by our government.
Families are torn apart by an inhumane immigration detention system on steroids fueled by greed and ideology.
The coffers of the ultra wealthy are overfilled by stealing life saving food and health care from those on the margins though drastic budget cuts and eliminating the social safety net.
We must call this what it is … social sin. We cannot be silent, even if as Jesus points out in this Gospel passage, there may be consequences. We must use whatever privilege we have and also take risks to turn from evil and do what is good, trusting in the Spirit of God.
Together we can turn the world through our loving, healing, and dreaming. Let us be hope for one another.
Source: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1995)
A friend shared this poem with me this morning, and so I share it with you. In these times where we stand and who we listen to, and what we choose to see are important.
At the Corner of Susan and St. Joseph 