A Brown Scapular was draped over the threshold of the inner door to the chapel. It was the first hint that something was wrong as I opened up the church early on a Sunday morning. The scapular was always in the hand of the statue of Our Lady, but there was no statue!

I immediately saw that our three big statues were missing: those depicting Our Lady of Mount Carmel, St. Joseph and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. They were gone without a trace. The banks of votive candles still flickered undisturbed. Everything else was fine, and despite the statues’ absence, I didn’t suspect that anything was afoot.

The chapel at St. Mary’s Church in Canton, New York, is open 24/7, so the door was unlocked. We were having the floors refinished that week, so I wasn’t surprised that the statues were gone.

“I guess we had a worker bee last night that I forgot about,” was my first thought. But that scapular — I was unsettled by it being abandoned on the threshold. The parish volunteers would not let a scapular fall to the ground unnoticed.

So I texted our business manager, Paul Schrems: “Did you have a crew remove the statues from the chapel last night?”

His response was a single keystroke: “?”

Then I knew something was wrong. I called the local police department. It was Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023. It’s important to know the date, because exactly a year afterward, and after much effort, my parish and I witnessed an amazing grace.

One of the thieves joined us for Sunday Mass on Jan. 28, 2024, to publicly acknowledge his crime and seek forgiveness. He helped carry the statue of Our Lady back into its rightful place in our chapel. More on that in a moment.

On the day of the crime, it didn’t take long for the statues to be found. The plaster trio was found standing in the snow-covered quad of the local college campus. The college students had pulled a foolish prank.

They set out to steal lawn ornaments from a local sorority house to bring to the same location. When the ornaments were unavailable, they surveyed the neighborhood until they found our church, discovered the one unlocked door, and saw the three statues. In their intoxicated state, they decided that our objects of devotion were a suitable substitute for sorority ornaments.

Each of the three statues is plaster, four feet tall and close to 100 years old; not things that do well in the bed of a pickup truck — certainly not when being handled in the wee hours of the morning by drunken college students.

The statues are beautiful and old, but even more, they are a treasured part of our local history. Miraculously, there was an apparition of St. Thérèse here in Canton, New York, in 1932. She left a miraculous rose in the convent chapel. The statue was purchased (despite the ongoing Great Depression) to honor the apparition of the Little Flower that day. (See CantonCatholics.com for the story.)

The history of the statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is personal and poignant for many parishioners. Our Lady’s statue came to St. Mary’s Church in Canton from St. Paul’s Church in nearby Pyrites when that 100-year-old oratory was closed in 2020. At that sad time, the beautiful statue bridged the divide between the two communities. Seeing it so badly broken and covered with snow felt, to many of us, like an attack on our united parish.

It didn’t take long for us to find the statues. Finding the students was almost as easy. They were picked up that very day since their truck was recorded by our security cameras and then spotted outside of a local fraternity.

The week after the theft, I preached about mercy and justice and expressed hope that one day I could look the perpetrators in the eyes and ask them, “What were you thinking?!”

One of our parishioners, Melissanne Schrems, the wife of our business manager, asked me, “Are you sincere? Do you really want to meet with them?”

That opened the door to a long, challenging and beautiful process called a restorative-justice circle. In previous years, Melissanne had worked with Duke Fisher, an expert in the field of restorative justice. Consequently, they led us through the process. They interviewed parishioners and members of the college community. They also interviewed, with the cooperation of the lawyers, the two college students who caused the damage.

The interviews opened up the possibility for a meeting between select parishioners and the perpetrators. It was powerful. Seven hours long, the encounter included a lot of stories, a lot of vulnerability, and a lot of honesty.

The students promised to pay for the damages. We all easily agreed on that. But after our time together, both they and we wanted more than just a monetary fix. We wanted more than just repaired statues. We wanted healing for the hearts that were hurt. We found that together when one of the students, Garrett, joined us for Sunday Mass earlier this year.

On Mount Carmel, Elijah heard the voice of the Lord in a still, small voice; and in response, Elijah hid his face in fear (1 Kings 19:12). Our Lady of Mount Carmel led us to a similar gentle and fearful sight: Garrett hid his face at parts of the Mass, but in the end, he responded to the gentle mercy of the Lord seen in the people of St. Mary’s.

He had carried the statue out in an inebriated stupor the year before; now, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he carried the same statue back. For the parish, both our statue and our spirits had been restored.

When she gave him the scapular, Mary promised St. Simon Stock, “Whoever dies clothed with this habit shall be preserved from eternal fire.” I received a scapular at my first Holy Communion and began wearing it daily years later when my cousin entered the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles.

Before it fell to the ground in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2023, did Our Lady’s scapular brush the hand of the eventually repentant thief? Might that gentle caress have been enough to open him up to the still, small voice of the Lord? How did he have the courage to come back to us a year later, acknowledging before us his crime, seeking our forgiveness, and returning our historic statue to her proper place?

I think I know.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.

Father Bryan Stitt is the pastor of St. Mary’s parish in Canton, New York.