I Wait in the Night

What drives a man to commit murder? And what can bring a murderer, an embittered atheist, to love God? The story of Servant of God Jacques Fesch could have been one of potential cut short in infamy. Instead, it’s the story of a man who found faith on death row and struggled in his last days to love God, even while human emotion threatened to overwhelm him.

I Wait in the Night presents the prison journal of Fesch, translated by and with commentary from Fr. Rupert Allen, Cong. Orat. In a frank and sometimes brutally honest way, these pages tell the story of the hope that has come to a young man in a five-by-two-meter cell while he waits to be executed for a murder he committed in the course of a robbery.

This is not a Damascus experience, but the slowly dawning realization of the love of God for all his children. It is a story of mercy, forgiveness, and redemption. There, in the dark solitude of death row, Fesch found light. That light was carried by his family, the prison chaplain, a monk who befriended him, and a lawyer who cared for his soul as much as his case. But above all, he found the light in his own encounter with Jesus Christ.