By Kristine Schroeder
Lessons Learned
“Eternity touches time only in the present.” – Peter Kreeft
Walter Ciszek (Chee – shek) was born on Nov. 4, 1904, in the coal mining town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The seventh of 13 children of Polish immigrants, Martin and Mika Ciszek, he was described as a pugnacious child, quick to fight or quarrel. A member of a street gang, at one point his father took him to the police saying he didn’t know how else to handle him. Obviously, it came as quite a shock when, at the age of 13, Walter told his parents he wanted to become a priest!
In 1928, Walter entered his Jesuit novitiate in Hyde Park, New York. After his studies, he volunteered to serve in Russia, confident from an early age that this was God’s call for him. However, in 1938, Father Ciszek, SJ, was sent to Albertyn in Eastern Poland. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, his assignment lasted only a year as the Russians invaded the country and burned his church. Walter then assumed the alias Wladymyr Lypynski and, along with a fellow priest, crossed the Russian border as laborers while clandestinely working for conversion in this atheistic country.
Within a year, he was arrested by the KGB and incarcerated in the notorious prison Lubyanka, charged with being a “Vatican spy.” Tortured, starved and repeatedly interrogated, Ciszek’s resolve broke after two years, and he signed a confession. He spent three more years at Lubyanka before being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a Gulag, a Siberian camp for political prisoners above the Arctic Circle.
In his book, “He Leadeth Me,” Father Ciszek explains his conversion experience while surviving unendurable conditions. He admits that God had to break him of his pride. Candidly, Ciszek explains that as a young priest, he believed that he was in charge of the events in his life. Prison broke him of his hubris. Gradually, he came to understand, “God’s will for us (is) in the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances He set before us in time.” How we respond to our situations will determine the outcome.
Fortunately, God rarely calls us to respond to such dire circumstances or extreme expectations as people of Father Ciszek or Mother Teresa’s caliber. While both are exemplary models of a life lived in total union with God’s will, we are all asked to respond similarly to whatever circumstances God places in our path.
In a unique way, their lives remind me of my grandparents. Living on an 82-acre farm, their actions were dictated by the needs of the present day. Feed the animals, plant or harvest crops and garden, wait until the rain breaks or pray that the drought ends. They had little control over the daily events. Rather, their role was to respond willingly to the circumstances of the present moment. It was a simpler time, a time ruled by God and not always by choice.
How did Father Ciszek survive? His youth as a tough street kid aided him in handling harsh circumstances. His faith was reinforced by his training as a Jesuit. Through this training, Ciszek had learned to recite Mass by memory, pray 15 decades of the Rosary and quote poetry by heart. This he did daily to diminish the monotony and despair of prison.
Also, while in the Gulag, he secretly heard confessions, held retreats and said Mass for prisoners. All of these practices were performed under the threat of death if his actions were discovered. Finally, Ciszek repeated throughout his book, “… the power of prayer reaches beyond all efforts of man seeking to find meaning in life. (It is) a power available to all. It can transform man’s weaknesses, limitations, and sufferings.”
In a world that continually propagandizes that we can “have it our way,” Ciszek’s book delivers a counter cultural message. He tells us that it is only in turning our lives totally over to God that we will experience the true freedom we seek.
If you read no other spiritual book in the New Year, I encourage you to read “He Leadeth Me.” Ciszek survived because he discovered the truth about freedom and leading a holy life.