The Last Face He Saw

In the final scene of Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean walks alongside Matthew Ponselet as he is led to the execution chamber. Ponselet — played with devastating rawness by Sean Penn — is a convicted murderer. He has lied, deflected, and blamed everyone but himself for most of the film. He is not a sympathetic man. Yet Susan Sarandon's Sister Helen has stayed. She has listened. She has refused to abandon him.

In that long walk to the gurney, Ponselet finally breaks. He admits what he has done. He whispers an apology to the father of one of his victims. And as the needles are prepared, Sister Helen leans close and says, "I want the last face you see in this world to be the face of love. So you look at me when they do this thing. I'll be the face of Christ for you."

It is almost unbearable to watch — not because it minimizes the horror of what he did, but because it insists that even the worst among us are not beyond the reach of grace.

That is the scandal of the Gospel. Forgiveness does not wait until people become worthy of it. Christ stretched out His arms on the cross not for the deserving, but for the lost, the broken, and yes, even the guilty. "While we were still sinners," Paul writes, "Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

Forgiveness is not approval. It is love refusing to let evil have the final word.