A Midnight Mass Is Celebrated 12 Hours Early in Prison : Religion: Catholic bishop leads an upbeat and reflective service. Prisoners and guards join in ‘Silent Night.’

Larry Evens, known as “Moses” to his fellow inmates, has been going to church since he was a child. But he had to be locked behind bars before he discovered the true spirit of Christmas.

There are no presents for him to open at the California State Prison facility here, and he doesn’t expect any visitors during the holidays. But he was thankful to be where he was Saturday, serving as a chaplain assistant to Auxiliary Bishop Armando Ochoa of the San Fernando Pastoral Region, who celebrated an early midnight mass just after noon at the prison.

“ ‘Moses’ means ‘drawn out of the water,’ and I was drowning in sin,” said the 41-year-old Evens, who was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in 1988 and became a devout Christian a few months later.

“When you’re at the bottom of the barrel, you’ve got to look up somewhere.”

About 35 inmates attended the hourlong Catholic Mass in a small white room that serves as a chapel within one of the sprawling prison’s five buildings. It was Ochoa’s first Christmas Mass at the prison, although he has said two Ash Wednesday Masses there.

The bishop--who oversees 48 parishes primarily in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys--emphasized in his sermon how Jesus Christ spent his life among those held in low esteem by society because he believed in them.

The first to see Christ after his birth, Ochoa added, were shepherds--people who had a “bad reputation” because they were often unkempt. And he compared himself, a Catholic clergyman, and other faithful to the ostracized inmates he was leading in worship.

“You and I are shepherds too,” he said. “Just because you’re here and just because I wear a Roman collar, there are many people who want nothing to do with us.”

Since about two-thirds of the inmates attending were Latino, Ochoa conducted parts of the service in Spanish. A steady flow of inmates also went individually into a room at the side of the chapel, where another priest heard their confessions.

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Inmates at the service were generally upbeat or reflective, with few overtly mourning the loss of their freedom. Evens helped set much of the mood with seemingly endless enthusiasm.

“Let’s get together and sing a song while we’re all waiting,” he cried out to the inmates as they sat quietly waiting for Ochoa to appear. He coaxed several into standing in a line in front of the lectern and singing “Joy to the World” and got those in the audience to join in.

“You got any more songbooks?” asked Don Lubbers, an inmate sitting near the back, as Evens tried to start a second song.

“Yeah, I got yours right here,” Evens replied, waving the program he was sharing with Gerard Depaula, another inmate he had brought to the front. “Come up here and sing with us.”

After a bit more coaxing, Lubbers finally acquiesced, singing “Silent Night” with his arms around the shoulders of Evens and Depaula. Even the four correctional officers gathered at the rear of the chapel chimed in, and Ochoa joked about making a permanent choir out of the inmates.

“I’d love to take you as my travel squad, but I don’t think they would allow me,” he said.

But for Evens, who said he plans to continue his prison ministry when he is released in six months, the service was also a time of quiet reflection. He hopes to be reunited with his family, a wife and three children now living in New Orleans, after his sentence is completed. For now, he said, he has one item that dominates his Christmas wish list.

“Please ask my victims for forgiveness,” he said.

Ochoa delivered a similar Mass Saturday morning at the Challenger Memorial Youth Center in Lancaster, and another is scheduled today at Sylmar Juvenile Hall. He said Cardinal Roger Mahony and the seven bishops in his jurisdiction make it a point to include correctional facilities in their holiday schedules.

A Mass at midnight Saturday at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Northridge was also on Ochoa’s schedule, but he said the busy agenda didn’t bother him. Besides, that gives him an opportunity to ask free Christians to pray for their brethren behind bars.

“I can have the folks I see this evening remember them in that service,” he said.

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Many of the state prison inmates said the service provided a genuine Christmas spirit, despite their bleak surroundings. For some, such occasions also provide their biggest sense of hope.

“A lot of time is going by, I’m getting older, and more of my family seems to be disappearing,” said Peter Bommarito, 54, a convicted murderer who has served 20 years of a life sentence.

“This is my family, it gives me a feeling of community belonging.”