He Leadeth Me

I recently read a book called “He Leadeth Me” by Walter J. Ciszek, a Jesuit priest. It is the deeply personal story of Father Ciszek’s experience during World War II when he voluntarily went to Russia to serve the Catholics there. His ministry was quickly identified as a problem by the Communists, as they attempted to build their Utopian, Atheistic society. The young priest spent the next 23 years of his life in Soviet prisons and labor camps. The first 7 years were spent in solitary confinement in Lubianka prison in Moscow as the Soviets attempted to break him and identify him as a spy for the Vatican. In one of his lowest moments he relented, and then spent the next 16 years in hard labor camps in Siberia. After his surprise release an older Ciszek continued to minister to the oppressed Catholics to the chagrin of the Communists, and was pushed from town to town to pass the problem on to the next party leader. It is an amazing journey and story, one I would highly recommend.

Father Ciszek shares his struggles, his insights and his undying faith within the pages of this book. After reading Tim Morrison’s post last week, and his call to us to find God’s Kingdom here on earth, some of those insights came back to me.

As you might imagine, Ciszek experienced great suffering, great evil, and the worst aspects of human nature that free will affords man. And within that context, he also experienced unimaginable joy, triumphs of the human spirit, and true insights into Gods will and what it means to follow it. Below are a few of his words:

“His will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at that moment, and those were the things upon which he wanted us to act, not out of any abstract principle or out of any subjective desire to “do the will of God.” No, these things, the twenty-four hours of this day, were his will; we had to learn to recognize his will in the reality of the situation and to act accordingly.”

“Our dilemma at Teplaya-Gora came from our frustration at not being able to do what we thought the will of God ought to be in this situation, at our inability to work as we thought God would surely want us to work, instead of accepting the situation itself as his will. It is a mistake easily made by every man, saint or scholar, Church leader or day laborer. Ultimately, we come to expect God to accept our understanding of what his will ought to be and to help us fulfill that, instead of learning to see and accept his will in the real situations in which he places us daily. …. To predict what God’s will is going to be, to rationalize about what his will must be, is at once a work of human folly and yet the subtlest of all temptations. The plain and simple truth is that his will is what he actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people, and problems. The trick is to learn to see that—not just in theory, or not just occasionally in a flash of insight granted by God’s grace, but every day.”

Very much akin to Tim’s ideas of the Kingdom being “out there” - something outside of our reach and knowing in this life - is the idea that God’s will is not within our reach, or that it is something grandiose and much larger than us. This thought often leads to a sense of apathy and a paralysis in our actions.   I am learning, with the help of Father Ciszek vision, to grasp the idea that God’s will is right in front of me everyday…in the friend struggling with his marriage, within the conversations I have with my children, how I choose to love my wife, my judgments of others not like me, what catches and holds my attention when I'm flipping through the channels or surfing the internet late at night, and the time I give to my relationship with the one who created me. It is my thoughts and actions in these situations, no matter what the circumstances, that place me within God’s will or outside of it.

My prayer today is that we all can open our eyes to these situations, and to God’s Grace that is present within them if we are courageous enough to follow Him…

“God never forgets each individual’s significance, his dignity and worth, and the role each has been asked to play in the workings of his providence. To him, each individual is equally important at all times. He cares. 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.”