As Lent begins, I share my father’s witness from prison, where he has come to embody humility and trust in God’s grace.
“When I muse on my life, my heart fills with gratitude.”
This is what my father wrote to me one day, three years into his imprisonment, which has now lasted more than five years. His cell is smaller and older than others, about 60 square feet. The window is blocked, preventing natural light and air from reaching him, and no one is near him. Even during his hour of exercise, he is brought to an area completely sealed and, on the way there, covered by a thick black cloth. In the summer it bakes, reaching almost 105 degrees Fahrenheit and leaving heat rash all over his body. In winter, his compromised immune system is far more susceptible to the cold. Yet all my father feels is gratitude.
My father, Jimmy Lai, was born around the time the communists came to power in China and went to school for only one year before working odd jobs carrying luggage to earn extra change. One day, a man tipped him with a half-eaten bar of chocolate. When Dad tasted it, he immediately asked where the man was from. “Hong Kong,” the man replied. From then on, my 8‑year‑old father dreamed of going there.
It took about three more years before he made it. Dad often told us he arrived with nothing in his pockets but hope and optimism. From there, his story became a rags‑to‑riches one. Much later, he recognized he was guided, in his words, “by a being beyond my comprehension to the way of light.” The way he described it reminded me of St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “By the grace of God I am what I am. … I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
My father taught himself English and how to read balance sheets. There were sleepless nights and endless days, but, in his words, it was “with God’s blessing” that he had a curiosity for knowledge and a zest for learning that allowed him to succeed, and “a poor and ignorant kid” was met with “success in my family life and business life.”
His first success came in manufacturing and retail. He opened a company called Giordano but was forced to close it after criticizing the government in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. He then went into the business of delivering information to people who yearned for it, giving them agency and thus freedom.
Reflecting on this in prison, he 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.”
Political pressure had long accompanied his work, but five years ago, he was charged and incarcerated for it. A few months later, the company he founded was forcibly shut down, as detailed in Acton Institute’s documentary The Hong Konger. Yet 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.”
I write this on the feast day of Blessed Michał Sopoćko, the teacher of St. Faustina Kowalska. As I looked through my father’s letters, I was reminded of what St. Faustina famously heard Jesus say during adoration:
“When a soul approaches Me with trust, I fill it with such an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself, but radiates them to other souls.”
My father’s faith has certainly affected those around him, especially me. I share his words today in the hope they will touch others, too.
- Published verbatim from NCRegister article written by Claire Lai
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