“He Leadeth Me:
An Extraordinary Testament of Faith.”
— Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., with Daniel L. Flaherty, S.J.
A profound journey of faith and resilience. Father Ciszek shares his extraordinary experiences of faith and survival during his 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and labor camps.
He illustrates here how he found courage in prayer, how he grew spiritually through the imprisonment, and how spiritual contemplation allowed him to deepen his faith amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him.
I am including valuable quotes from the book in this post. Everyone can benefit from this book and should read it. In the meantime, following are some great quotes that helped me to strengthen my faith that I hope can be helpful to others as well.
Abandon Yourself Entirely to the Will of the Father
The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of “all the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of the day” – and who then acts upon it by accepting unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as truly sent by God – has perceived with an almost childlike faith the profound truth about the will of God. (p. 40)
I knew that I must abandon myself entirely to the will of the Father and live from now on in the spirit of self-abandonment to God. And I did it. I can only describe the experience as a sense of “letting go,” giving over totally my last effort or even any will to guide the reins of my own life. It is all to simply said, yet that one decision has affected every subsequent moment of my life. I have to call it a conversion. (p. 80)
Up to this time, I had retained in my own hands the reins of all decisions, actions, and endeavors; I saw it now as my task to “cooperate” with his grace, to be involved to the end in the working out of salvation. God’s will was “out there” somewhere, hidden, yet clear and unmistakable. It was my role – man’s role – to discover what it was and then conform my will to that, and so work at achieving the ends of his divine providence. I remained- man remained – in essence the master of my own destiny. Perfection consisted simply in learning to discover God’s will in every situation and then in bending every effort to do what must be done. (p. 81)
[…] the situations themselves were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. (p. 81)
It meant losing the last higgen doubt, the ultimate fear that God would not be there to bear you up. It was something like that awful eternity between anxiety and belief when a child first leans back and lets go of all support whatever – only to find that the water truly holds him up and he can float motionless and totally relaxed. (p. 81)
It is not really a question of trust in God at all, for we want very much to trust him; it is really a question of our ultimate belief in his existence and his providence, and it demands the purest act of faith. (p.82)
I looked no longer to self to guide me, relied on it no longer in any way, so it could not again fail me. By renouncing, finally and completely, all control of my life and future destiny, I was relieved as a consequence of all responsibility. I was freed thereby from anxiety and worry, from every tension, and could float serenely upon the tide of God’s sustaining providence in perfect peace of soul. (p.84)
Secure in his grace, I felt capable of facing every situation and meeting every challenge; whatever he chose to send me in the future, I would accept. (p. 84)
The thought that I was doing his will, trying to fulfill whatever he demanded of me each day, gave me that confidence. No evil could touch me, ultimately, as long as God was with me. (p. 120)
By man’s first disobedience, says Saint Paul, sin entered the world, and through sin, death. And only by man’s obedience, by conformity to the will of God, will sin be eliminated and so suffering and death. (p. 124)
My ways are not your ways, says the Lord; as far as the heavens are above the earth are my ways above your ways. (p. 127)
Each day, every day of our lives, God presents to us the people and opprtunities upon which he expects us to act. He expects no more of us, but he will accept nothing less of us; and we fail in our promise and commitment if we do not see in the situations of every moment of every day his divine will. (p. 145)
The kingdom of God will not be brought to fulfillment on earth by one great, sword-shining battle against the powers of darkness, but only by each of us laboring and suffering day after day as Christ labored and suffered, until all things at last have been transformed. And this process of transformation continues to the end of time. (p. 146)
Whether we are married and taking care of home and family, or studying in school, or working in an office or a factory or on a farm, whether we are dedicated to the priestly or religious life, matters little – in whether we do, we must always seek firs the kingdom of God. […] We experience daily just how difficult it is, therefore, to promote the kingdom of God in our personalizes by fulfilling his will in every respect. (p. 176)
We constantly need to remind ourselves of the humble Christ, the Christ who did always the will of the Father, if we are ever to learn. (p. 181)
[…] God made us to love, reverence, and serve him in this life and so to be happy with him in the next. We are not saved by doing our own will, but the will of the Father; (p. 181)
[…] but it was there at the heart of their being; they believed in God and his Church. They trusted in him, turned to him in difficulties, gave thanks to him in moments of happiness, and fully expected to be with for all eternity. (p. 190)
Suffering
God must contrive to break through those routines of ours and remind us once again […] that we are ultimately dependent only upon him, that he has made us and destined us for life with him through all eternity, that the things of this world and this world itself are not our lasting city, that his we are and that we must look to him and turn to him in everything. Then it is, perhaps, that he must allow our whole world to be turned upside down in order to remind us again it is not our permanent abode or final destiny, to bring us to our senses and restore our sense of values, to turn our thoughts once more to him – even if at first our thoughts are questioning and full of reproaches. Then it is that he must remind us again, with terrible clarity, that he meant exactly what he said in those seemingly simple words of the Sermon on the Mount: ” Do not be anxious about what you shall eat, or what you shall wear, or where you shall sleep, but seek first the kingdom of God and his justice.” p.22
In this subtle insight of the soul touched by God’s divine power lies the root of true interior joy. And as long as the vision persists, as long as the soul does not lose sight of this great truth, the inner joy and peace that follow upon it persist through even the saddest and gravest moments of human trial and suffering. Pain and suffering do not thereby cease to exist: the ache and anguish of body and soul do not vanish from man’s consciousness. But even they become a means of nourishing this joy, of fostering peace and conformity to God’s will, for they are seen as a continuation of Christ’s passion…(p. 124)
It is not the Father, not God, who inflicts suffering upon us but rather the unredeemed world in which we must labor to do his will, the world in whose redemption we must share. (p.122)
It is much easier to see the redemptive role of pain and suffering in God’s plan if you are not actually undergoing pain and suffering. It was only by struggling with such feelings, however, that growth occurred. (p.125)
But if you can learn to see the role of pain and suffering in realtion to God’s redemptive plan for the universe and each individal soul, your attitude must change. You don’t shun it when it comes upon you, but bear it in the measure grace is given you. You see in it a putting on of Christ in the true sense of the word. Out of this insight comes joy, and an increase of hope: out of it, too, grows compassion for others and a hope that they also may be helped to understand the true meaning of life and its trials, its joys and its sufferings. (p. 126)
No man’s life, no man’s suffering, is lost from the eyes of God. For each of us has been created to praise, reverence, and serve God and by this means to save our souls and help in the salvation of others. (p. 127)
We tried to help them to see that their lives, too, had meaning: that their work and their sufferings had a value each day: that there could still be dignity in what they did in God’s eyes, if not in men’s. So we taught them to say the Morning Offering – to dedicate to God all the prayers, works, and sufferings of each day in conformity to his will – as a means of winning grace for others, especially for their families and friends. (p. 148)
We for our part can accept and offer back to God every prayer, work, and suffering of the day, no matter how insignificant or unspectacular they may seem to us. (p.182)
Freedom
[…] the greatest sense of freedom, along with peace of soul and abiding sense of security, comes when a man totally abandons his own will in order to follow the will of God. (p. 164)
A spirituality based on complete trust in God, therefore, is the surest guarantee of peace of soul and freedom of spirit. In it the soul must learn to act not on its own initiative, but in response to whatever demands are imposed by God in the concrete instances of each day. Its attention must always be centered precisely and primarily on God’s will as revealed and manifasted in the people, places, and things he sets before us, rather than on the means required to fulfill it. Then no matter what these means demand – suffering, risk, loneliness, or physical hardships such as hunger or sickness – the consciousness of fulfilling God’s will in accepting them makes the sacrifice ease, the burden light. (p.166)
Purpose / Sense of Accomplishment
A man needs something, some sense of accomplishment to maintain his sense of human dignity, of is value and worth as a person; even under the most stringent, most repetitious and boring routinge, a man seeks something to maintain his sense of dignity and of worth. Sometimes, in the harsh conditions of the camps, a man could get that satisfaction only from the knowledge that he as a person had survived the system one more day. (p.139)
“It is in the simple things of this world,” says Saint Paul, “that God has chosen to confound the wise.” (p.206)
that every moment of our life has a purpose, that every action of ours, no matter how dull or routine or trivial it may seem in itself, has a dignity and a worth beyond human understanding. No man’s life is insignificant in God’s sight, nor are his works insignificant – no matter what the world of his neighbors or family or friends may think of them. Yet what a terrible responsibility here. For it means that no moment can be wasted, no opportunity missed, since each has purpose in man’s life, each has a purpose in God’s plan. (p. 207)
The Body
“Man is a creature composed of body and soul […] But until the body fails us, or pains us, or forces itself upon our attention by some little twinge or complete collapse, we tend to take for granted this first and most precious of God’s gifts to man or to give it short shirft. (p.95)
No machine ever devised by man could have withstood, day in and day out, the constant, punishing grind of work in the severest kind of weather that the human body proved itself able to withstand in the Siberian slave labor camps. (p. 97)
What came to me in the prison camps was a tremendous respect and love for the poor old body. It was the body that bore the brunt of all suffering, though the soul might well experience anguish. And it was the body that had to sustain you for all the strength of will and determination a man might have. […] I had always in many ways taken the body for granted. […] Yet it was only now, when each day ended with exhaustion and the body cried out for every extra minute of rest, every little respite from work, every extra crumb of food, that I really came to appreciate the marvelous gift of life God had given man in the resources of the human body. (p. 98-99)
It is in the body that we exist and work out our salvation. It is in the body that we see and take delight in the beauties of God’s created universe, and in the body that we ourselves bear the marks of Christ’s passion. The mysterious interplay of body and soul is an essential characteristic of our human nature. If the body is sick or sore, tired or hungry or otherwise distressed, it affects the spirit, affects our judgment, changes our personality. So slight a thing as a headache can affect our relations with those around us. It is through the body that we express and experience love and kindness and comfort. We excuse our snappish, petty, ill-mannered conduct to one another on the grounds that the body is having a bad day. We are constantly, day in and day out, hour after hour, under the influence of these mysterious working of soul on body and body on soul. (p.99)
We don’t often stop to reflect on the most basic meaning of this doctrine: that God, too, knows exactly how it feels to be cold, or tired, or hungry, or sore with pain, because he, too, has had a body. (p.100)
Prayer
[…] prayer does not take away bodily pain or mental anguish. Nevertheless, it does provide a certain moral strength to bear the burden patiently. Certainly, it was prayer that helped me through every crisis. (p. 58)
[…] I learned to purify my prayer and remove from it the element of self-seeking. I learned to pray for my interrogators […] I learned to stop asking for more bread for myself, and instead to offer up my sufferings, the pains of hunger that I felt, for the many others in the world… (p. 58)
The Our Father is a prayer of praise and thanksgiving, a prayer of petition and of reparation. It encompasses in its short and simple phrases every relation between man and his Creator, between us and our loving, Heavenly Father. It is a prayer for all times, for every occasion. It is at once the most simple of prayers and the most profound. (p. 59)
If we could constantly live in the realization that we are sons of a Heavenly Father, that we are always in his sight and play in his creation, then all our thoughts and our even action would be a prayer. (p. 59)
Prayer, true prayer, is a communication – and it occurs only when two people, two minds, are truly present to each other in some way. So in prayer we must do more than merely visualize God as present as some sort of father figure. His fictionalized presence will not do; his imaginative presence will not do. By faith we know that Gos is p resent everywhere and is always present to us if we but turn to him. So it is we who must put ourselves in God’s presence, we who must turn to him in faith, we who must leap beyond an image to the belief – indeed the realization – that we are in the presence of a loving Father sho stands always ready to listen to our childish stories and to answer to our childlike trust. (p. 60)
[…] the Morning Offering is still one of the best practices of prayer […] For in it, at the beginning of each day, we accept from God and offer back to him all the prayers, works, and sufferings of the day, and so serve to remind ourselves once again of his providence and his kingdom. (p. 191)
We cannot pray always […] But we can pray always by making each action and work and suffering of the day a prayer insofar as it has been offered and promised to God. (p. 191)
Responsibility
But he also expects each man to accept, as from his hands, the daily situations he sends him and to act as he would have him act and gives him the grace to act. What each man can change, first of all, is himself. And each will have – indeed, must have – some influence on the people God brings into his life each day. He is expected, as a Christian, to influence them for good. […] God will hold him responsible for the good or ill he does.
Work
[…] the realization that work of itself is not a curse but a sharing in God’s own work of creation, a redemptive and redeeming act, noble of itself and worthy of the best in man – even as it was worthy of God himself. There is a tremendous truth contained in the realization that when God became man, he became a workingman. (p. 107)
God was a village carpenter and the son of carpenter. […] He worked day in and day out for some twenty years to set us an example, to show us that these routine chores, too, are not beneath man’s dignity or even God’s dignity, that simple household tasks and the repetitious work of the wage earner are not necessary evils but noble and redemptive works worthy of God himself. (p. 108)
“I have given you an example,” he said to his disciples at the Last Supper (p. 109)
Death and Salvation
[…] salvation means no more and no less than taking up daily the same cross of Christ, accepting each day what it brings as the will of God, offering back to God each morning all the joys, works, and sufferings of that day. […] What it means, in practice, is spelled out as always by the poor old body. It means getting up each morning and going to bed exhausted. It means the routine, not the spectacular. It can mean drudgery, pain, putting aside pleasures, happiness, or the love the human heart craves until another time, so that what is necessary at the moment can be done. It means working for others, touching the lives of others, through the medium of the body. (p. 101)
Death must come to all men at the end of this earthly life, but it is not therefore evil. If the good news of Christianity is anything, it is this: that death has no hidden terror, has no mystery, is not something man must fear. It is not the end of life, of the soul, of the person. Christ’s death on Calvary was not in itself the central act of salvation, but his death and resurrection; it was the resurrection that competed his victory over sin and death, the heritage of man’s original sin that made a Redeemer and redemption necessary. This was the “good news” of salvation, meant to remove mankind’s last doubts, last fears, about the nature of death. For the resurrection was a fact, a fact as certain and as sure as death itself, and it meant that held no victory over men, that life beyond death is a certainty and not just a human hope or fable. (p. 151)
Death to them was not an end, but a beginning, a passage into eternal life. They took job in the fact that they would one day be together with their loved ones again, and sometimes longed to be free of the sorrows of this life and to be at peace at last with God forever. (p. 156-157)
Salvation […] is not measured in terms of how well we make out in what we do here on earth; it depends ultimately on our belief in God and our abandonment in him. In failure or in success, in health or sickness, in sorrow or joy, man must turn to God, must trust in God, believing in him more each day, loving him more each day, in preparation for a future life with him. (p. 157)
What is there to fear in death? It means no more and no less than the end of our testing period here on earth; it is a return, a going home, to the God and Father who first created us. It is not the end of life; the fact of resurrection proves that beyond a doubt. There is sorrow in our separation from family and friends, no doubt, the human sorrow of which no one need fee ahamed. And yet, Saint Paul says, we Christians do not grieve as ones who have no hope; we believe in the resurrection, as we say in our profession of faith, the Creed, and in the life of the world to come. Death is not a tragedy in our belief, but only an ordained passage from this life to the next. (p. 157)
Sources:
“He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith.” by Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., with Daniel L. Flaherty, S.J.