They say that God raises up saints when we need them.

I think it’s more than safe to say that we are living in the world with at least one obvious saint: Jimmy Lai. (And because I’ve hugged Bill McGurn from the Wall Street Journal, I would like to think I am one degree from having hugged Lai, since Bill is the convert to Catholicism’s godfather; Bill was previously stationed at the Hong Kong bureau of the Journal.)

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(Note: I learned a long time ago to be cautious when calling living men and women saints. Their stories here are not over. We never know what is truly in another’s heart. But it seems quite obvious in the witness of Jimmy Lai.)

Lai’s daughter, Claire, has been outspoken in recent months, especially since a ruling came down in the sham trial against him. The man is being persecuted. And, as Bill has pointed out, Donald Trump is in a unique position to pressure China, demanding Jimmy Lai’s release.

Some of what Claire has said and written points to her father’s extraordinary faith. She said he lives freedom, even in solitary confinement. The man is grateful, generous, and at peace, despite the injustice of his ordeal, his poor health, and the cruel conditions forced upon him simply for speaking truth.

He is willing to die for the truth. He is willing to die for Christ.

He is living in the world with us today. What an honor for us. What a challenge for us.

Claire wrote for UnHerd:

On Dad’s first day in prison, he told me he was in God’s good hands. He has repeated this multiple times throughout his imprisonment to his daughter, who is not good at very much other than worrying. Recently, when I left Hong Kong, five years into his imprisonment, I wrote to him expressing doubts about myself and about him. He chided me asking me why I doubted when God is so good. He wrote: “So, my dear daughter, though I understand your frustration, why did you doubt? Trust that God leads you in his ineffable way. The way is darkness for us, but [also] the best possible way for us, because He loves us more than we love ourselves.” And as his teeth and nails rot, his immune system gets worse, and his heart is in an alarming state, “his trust in divine providence grows only stronger.”

On Dad’s first day in prison, he told me he was in God’s good hands. He has repeated this multiple times throughout his imprisonment to his daughter, who is not good at very much other than worrying. Recently, when I left Hong Kong, five years into his imprisonment, I wrote to him expressing doubts about myself and about him. He chided me asking me why I doubted when God is so good.

He wrote: “So, my dear daughter, though I understand your frustration, why did you doubt? Trust that God leads you in his ineffable way. The way is darkness for us, but [also] the best possible way for us, because He loves us more than we love ourselves.”

And as his teeth and nails rot, his immune system gets worse, and his heart is in an alarming state, “his trust in divine providence grows only stronger.”

The conditions in which my father is being kept have gone from bad to worse, and his health has deteriorated dramatically. He has developed worrying heart issues, visible signs of a compromised immune system (tooth rot and nail rot), and a litany of new conditions have appeared while previous ones have worsened. Yet his trust in divine providence grows only stronger. Echoing Saint Thomas More’s letter to his daughter, he has told me, “If we seek heaven on earth, we cut ourselves off forever from true happiness.” In one letter I received from him, he called the dire prison conditions in which he is kept a “holy sanctuary”, a retreat where solitude allows him to better feel God’s abundant grace and its ongoing impact on his life from even before he knew Christ. And while seeing his body breaking down cuts at me, he has used much of his time comforting me, telling me that suffering has cured him of his previous ignorance, acting as a “renewed baptism”. It has had the effect of bringing him closer to Jesus this life and next. And, in imagery I now often evoke, I’m reminded that although Christ suffers most, he teaches his disciples to pretend they are hiding at the foot of the crucifixion, which represents profound voluntary suffering. My father said he was grateful for the suffering that got him closer to God’s presence, saying “God’s action confounds but always turns out to be marvelous for us.” In prison, my father wakes up in the middle of the night every night to pray. Before the crack of dawn, he wakes up to read the Gospel by leaning against his cell door to catch light from the corridor. I worry for his back and his waist but am comforted by the joy it gives him. He has said that doing so is like “touching the cloak of Christ” and that it ensures that “life is full, peaceful, and meaningful”.

The conditions in which my father is being kept have gone from bad to worse, and his health has deteriorated dramatically. He has developed worrying heart issues, visible signs of a compromised immune system (tooth rot and nail rot), and a litany of new conditions have appeared while previous ones have worsened. Yet his trust in divine providence grows only stronger. Echoing Saint Thomas More’s letter to his daughter, he has told me, “If we seek heaven on earth, we cut ourselves off forever from true happiness.” In one letter I received from him, he called the dire prison conditions in which he is kept a “holy sanctuary”, a retreat where solitude allows him to better feel God’s abundant grace and its ongoing impact on his life from even before he knew Christ.

And while seeing his body breaking down cuts at me, he has used much of his time comforting me, telling me that suffering has cured him of his previous ignorance, acting as a “renewed baptism”. It has had the effect of bringing him closer to Jesus this life and next. And, in imagery I now often evoke, I’m reminded that although Christ suffers most, he teaches his disciples to pretend they are hiding at the foot of the crucifixion, which represents profound voluntary suffering. My father said he was grateful for the suffering that got him closer to God’s presence, saying “God’s action confounds but always turns out to be marvelous for us.”

In prison, my father wakes up in the middle of the night every night to pray. Before the crack of dawn, he wakes up to read the Gospel by leaning against his cell door to catch light from the corridor. I worry for his back and his waist but am comforted by the joy it gives him. He has said that doing so is like “touching the cloak of Christ” and that it ensures that “life is full, peaceful, and meaningful”.

You see what I mean? This is the stuff of sanctity.

I feel humbled and unworthy to live on the earth at the same time as Jimmy Lai.

I’d encourage you, whatever you do or do not believe, to print out one of his drawings from prison. His favorite subjects are Jesus and Mary. He’s not allowed to send them out anymore — schoolchildren who have written to him when it was allowed were known to hear back from him with a drawing — but thanks to Bill McGurn, there is one hanging in the still relatively new business school of my alma mater, The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Jimmy Lai is about forgiveness, gratitude, and peace:

Claire shares this in a reflection in the National Catholic Register:

 letter after letter, my father writes of his delight in offering his suffering to Our Lord. When imprisonment dawned, my father, drawing a parallel with Luke 24:13-25, said he realized he “was actually walking under the shadow of material and ego’s galvanized gratification. A life serving myself as an idol. Now in prison, I am led to the right path to the Kingdom of God, glimpses of true light and real joy in front of me, serving God, not myself.”

 letter after letter, my father writes of his delight in offering his suffering to Our Lord. When imprisonment dawned, my father, drawing a parallel with Luke 24:13-25, said he realized he “was actually walking under the shadow of material and ego’s galvanized gratification. A life serving myself as an idol. Now in prison, I am led to the right path to the Kingdom of God, glimpses of true light and real joy in front of me, serving God, not myself.”

He’s also said: “Many would do what I did for freedom if they put it to the test. For in the depth of our hearts, we all yearn for freedom which is a gift from God.”

Humility is not a virtue my father was previously known for. Yet those close to him will attest that through experiencing the sufficiency of Our Lord in imprisonment, it is one he has come to embody. In a prayer I read on days I worry, he wrote, “O Lord, in prison you have taken me out from my own keeping. I resign myself entirely to your will. Therefore, Lord, I cry out to you and entreat you that you would keep me from myself and from following any will but yours. I bargain for nothing, but to serve you the rest of my life.”

Humility is not a virtue my father was previously known for. Yet those close to him will attest that through experiencing the sufficiency of Our Lord in imprisonment, it is one he has come to embody. In a prayer I read on days I worry, he wrote, “O Lord, in prison you have taken me out from my own keeping. I resign myself entirely to your will. Therefore, Lord, I cry out to you and entreat you that you would keep me from myself and from following any will but yours. I bargain for nothing, but to serve you the rest of my life.”

In this way, Jimmy Lai reminds me of an interview I did in 2016, at the height of the ISIS genocide on Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq, with Fr. Douglas Bazi, a Baghdad-born priest who was tortured by Islamic militants. Lit cigars were put out on his back. His teeth were knocked out with a hammer. Unspeakable things happened to him. I said to him his faith must have been so strong to withstand the barbaric ordeal. He said to me — and I was likely in tears as he did: You would have done the same thing. God gives you the grace. He wanted to impress upon me that he was not special, it was only by God’s power that he survived.

Go ahead and print out this or this or this — from Jimmy Lai’s artwork. (I wish we had one of the images of the Pieta he’s been working to refine.)

Put your printout somewhere you will see it regularly.

If you pray, pray for him and all those whose names we don’t know who are being tortured by Communist China or other tyrannical regimes. If you do not pray, consider his courage.

And back to your prayers: Ask God for the courage to stand for truth — and for Him — in whatever ways God calls you to. All of us: Let’s make courage contagious. We can start by making Jimmy Lai’s name a household name.

And it couldn’t hurt to write the White House and State Department (the president, the vice president — himself a convert to Catholicism — and Marco Rubio) to remind them we have a moral responsibility to those who fight for freedom, who are willing to die for freedom, while they are living some of the freedom of Heaven even in a hell of man’s creation.

Saints show us true love, united to Divine Love, pointing not to self, but to God Himself.

Thanks be to God for Jimmy Lai.

© National Review