In honor of Holy Week, I want to say something about a very unusual book that I have been reading for Lent. The book is, Light Over the Scaffold: Prison Letters of Jacques Fesch.

Jacques Fesch was a 27-year-old Frenchman who was guillotined fifty years ago this October for shooting a policeman. The case was notorious in France: first, because the policeman was a widower whose little daughter was orphaned by the tragedy; and second, because Fesch was not some ignorant, underprivileged youth, driven to crime by desperation. Indeed, the newspaper accounts of his capture described him as a “well-dressed juvenile delinquent.”

He was the son of a banker. Although he did poorly in school, his father –- and, after he married, his father-in-law –- took him into their respective businesses. For various reasons, he failed at his work and at family life. He drifted, he sponged off his relatives, he had extra-marital affairs and he separated from his wife and baby girl. Eventually, he decided to chuck everything and sail off to Polynesia. When his father refused to buy him a sailboat, he turned to robbery. In this, too, he failed, injuring several people in the attempt, in addition to killing the aforementioned police officer.

And yet this selfish, dissolute young man — who told the chaplain when he arrived in prison that he “had no faith” -- underwent an extraordinary conversion in the three years leading up to his trial and execution.

Some might object to the word “extraordinary.” After all, when a man is stripped of everything he values in life and is facing eternity, wouldn’t it be natural for him to turn to God as a last resort? There are no atheists in the foxholes.

But if you think about it, it would be just as likely for a man in Jacques’ position to despair — to give up on himself, or to conclude that he had put himself forever beyond God’s mercy. Moreover, when Jacques was converted, he had not yet been tried. Because he felt he had not committed premeditated murder (he insisted that had panicked and fired blindly when his pursuers closed in on him, without intending to kill anyone), he hoped that the worst sentence he would receive would be a long term in prison. His state of mind at the time of the bungled robbery can be inferred from the fact that while committing it, he accidentally shot himself in the hand with his own gun.

To me, Jacques’ letters ring true because of the extraordinary depth of his spiritual insights. Of his conversion, he wrote: “Before that, the true God was an indifferent tradition as far as I was concerned. Now, He is all that matters. He is at the center of the world, He rises above my being. He invades me totally, and my spirit cannot escape from Him. A powerful hand has seized me … It constrains me, and yet I am free. It transforms my being, yet I do not cease to be what I am.”

Jacques was not brought to trial until three years after his crime. In the interval, public opinion had hardened rather than softened towards him. He was convicted and condemned to death. The President of France personally reviewed the case. While he was inclined to show clemency, this was at a time when French police were being killed by Algerian terrorists, and he felt that he could not commute Jacques’ sentence without endangering the lives of others.

Jacques accepted this refusal with Christian resignation. He wrote: “Jesus allows this death in order to save whoever he wills to save.” And yet, in the same letter, he speaks of his joy: “I am living through marvelous hours, and feel as if I had never lived any other life than the one I’ve been experiencing for a month now. Jesus draws me to himself, and knowing the weakness of my soul He gives me so much while asking for so little. For each small effort that I make I receive another grace, and, in view of the shortness of the time, this ascent towards God is being achieved far more quickly than it would be for someone who still had years ahead of him.”

The publication of Jacques’ letters in France made a profound impression, especially on young people. In time, he was compared to the penitent thief who was crucified with Christ at Calvary. Thirty years after his execution, the archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Lustiger, signed a degree that may one day lead to his beatification and, ultimately, his being declared a saint. The Cardinal’s action was criticized for potentially creating a patron saint of cop-killers. But Lustiger declared that he wished to see Jacques beatified “to give a great hope to those who despise themselves, who see themselves as irredeemably lost.”

It was the penitent thief who said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”

And Jesus replied: “Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.”

This is the only man for whom we have the word of Christ himself that he made it into heaven.

For those who wish to read more about Jacques Fesch, there’s a web site with further information:

http://www.santificarnos.com/2006/08/jacques-fesch-saint-who-killed.html