According to the Diocese of Fall River, a man unknown to the parish walked into the church that Monday evening during Confession and Adoration, began knocking items off the altar, and reached for the monstrance in which the Eucharist was displayed. Father Peschel moved to stop him and walked him toward the door, where the confrontation turned violent. A bystander stepped in to help subdue the man until police arrived.
The man, identified by police as 59-year-old Jose Nascimento, was arrested and charged with assault and battery, threatening to commit a crime, disturbing the peace, and disorderly conduct. He was taken for a hospital evaluation the next day and, after an outburst during his Sept. 2 arraignment that required his removal from the courtroom, was ordered held for twenty additional days of evaluation.
Father Peschel, treated and released, did not ask for punishment. "I forgive him," he told reporters, adding that he was "just glad nobody else was hurt." Bishop Edgar da Cunha of the Diocese of Fall River echoed that spirit, asking the faithful to pray not only for Father Peschel's recovery but for the man who attacked him, since little is yet known about his condition.
A Man Who Would Not Let Go
Set that scene plainly in your mind. A priest, hearing confessions, keeping watch over a sanctuary lamp and a silver vessel raised for the adoration of ordinary sinners, sees a stranger knock over what is holy and reach for it with both hands. He does not call for security. He does not step back and let it happen. He puts his own body between the intruder and the Sacrament, and he takes a fist and a beer can to the face for his trouble.
My friend, there is something in that instinct that reaches down past strategy and training into the oldest instinct a shepherd has. A hired hand runs when the wolf comes. A shepherd stands. Christ said as much of Himself, and every pastor who has ever meant his calling has felt the pull of that same standing ground, whether the threat is a wolf, a mob, or one confused, wounded man swinging a beer can in a dim church on a Monday night.
But look past the courage to the forgiveness, because that is the harder miracle. A man could be struck in the face defending something sacred and walk away nursing a grievance, and no one would blame him. Instead Father Peschel's first public words were "I forgive him." That is not weakness. That is the gospel working itself out in real time, in a man's actual blood, in front of witnesses. It is Christ on the cross saying "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," lived out in a parking lot outside a New England church instead of a hill outside Jerusalem.
The world does not run on that logic. The world runs on getting even, on lawsuits and grudges and the quiet satisfaction of watching a man who wronged you suffer for it. The gospel runs the other direction entirely. It says the debt has already been paid by somebody else, so you are free — genuinely, dangerously free — to let go of what you are owed.
"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." (Matthew 5:44)
Notice the Lord does not ask you to pretend the wrong did not happen. Nascimento is still charged, still facing a court, still accountable under the law that governs a civil society, and that is right and proper — mercy in the heart does not erase justice in the courtroom. But the heart itself is asked to do something the law can never require: to bless instead of curse, to pray for the very hand that struck you.
You may never stand between a stranger and a stolen vessel. But you will be struck, one way or another — by a friend's betrayal, a stranger's cruelty, a family member's careless word that cuts deeper than any fist. When that day comes, remember the priest in New Bedford who took a blow to the face and answered with three words that cost him nothing but pride and bought him everything Christ promised. Forgiveness is not the absence of a wound. It is what a healed man does with one.