Prayer Walter - Father Walter Ciszek S.J.from "He Leadeth Me"

“And I learned soon enough that 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.

Gradually, too, I learned to purify my prayer and remove from it the elements of self-seeking. I learned to pray for my interrogators, not so they would see things my way or come to the truth so that my ordeal would end, but because they, too, were children of God and human beings in need of his blessing and his daily grace. 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 and in Russia at that time who were enduring similar agony and even greater suffering. I tried very hard not to worry about what tomorrow would bring, what I should eat, or what I should wear, but rather to seek the kingdom of God and his justice, his will for me and for all mankind.

"Thy will be done." That was the key, but only slowly did I come to experience how perfect a prayer is the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer. "Lord, teach us how to pray", the disciples had said, and in his answer, the Lord had explained the whole theology of prayer in the most simple terms, exhaustive in its content, and yet intended for the use of all men without distinction. The human mind could not elaborate a better pattern in prayer than the one the Lord himself gave us.

He begins by placing us in the presence of God. God the almighty, who has created all things out of nothingness and keeps them in existence lest they return to nothingness, who rules all things and governs all things in the heavens and on earth according to the designs of his own providence. And yet this same all-powerful God is our Father, who cherishes us and looks after us as his sons, who provides for us in his own loving kindness, guides us in his wisdom, who watches over us daily to shelter us from harm, to provide us food, to receive us back with open arms when we, like the prodigal, have wasted our inheritance. Even as a father guards his children, he guards us from evil--because evil does exist in the world..."

From Walter J. Ciszek's book,  He Leadeth me

What Hell Must be Like, Father Walter Siszek S.J.

What Hell Must be Like

“ The world of solitary confinement is a universe of its own...the isolation...the silence...the interrogations that would go on for 24 or 48 hours with no rest no sleep no food...the psychological...the minutes of silence and solitary routine stretched out without end...

There was no such sort of human companionship to sustain you at Lubianka. When you came back from an interrogation session here, you were on your own. You could only torture yourself by going over and over the session in your own mind, wondering whether what you had said was right, or what you might have done better, agonizing again and again over every question and every answer. Here there was no relief to be sought by talking it over with somebody else, by asking advice (poor as it might prove to be), by sharing experiences, and by sympathizing with one another.

Solitary confinement, in short, must be very much like what some theologians paint as the principal torment of hell: the soul, at last, recognizing its mistakes for what they were and condemned forever to the loss of heaven, constantly tormenting itself with reproaches and tearing itself apart because it still sees and understands and wants the things it has lost forever, but knows it is condemned to lose forever because of its own choices, its own failings, its own mistakes..."

From Walter J. Ciszek's book He Leadeth me

The Purest Act of Faith - from He Leadeth Me - Walter J. Ciszek S.J

 “I had always trusted in God. I had always tried to find his will, to see his providence at work. I had always seen my life and my destiny as guided by his will. At some moments more consciously than at others, I had been aware of his promptings, his call, his promises, his grace. At times of crisis, especially, I tried to discover his will and follow it to the best of my ability. But this was a new vision, a totally new understanding, something more than just a matter of emphasis.

Up until now, I had always seen my role—man's role—in the divine economy as an active one. 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 bending every effort to do what must be done.

Now, with sudden and almost blinding clarity and simplicity, I realized I had been trying to do something with my own will and intellect that was at once too much and mostly all wrong. God's will was not hidden somewhere "out there" in the situations in which I found myself; the situations themselves were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking He of me an act of total trust, allowing for no interference or restless striving on my part, no reservations, no exceptions, no areas where I could set conditions or seem to hesitate. He was asking for a complete gift of self, nothing held back. It demanded absolute faith: faith in God's existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me. It meant losing the last hidden doubt, the ultimate fear that God will 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.

Once understood, it seemed so simple. I was amazed it had taken me so long in terms of time and suffering to learn this truth. Of course, we believe that we depend on God, that his will sustains us in every moment of our life. But we are afraid to put it to the test. There remains deep down in each of us a little nagging doubt, a little knot of fear that we refuse to face or admit even to ourselves, that says, "Suppose it isn't so." We are afraid to abandon ourselves totally into God's hands for fear he will not catch us as we fall. It is the ultimate criterion, the final test of all faith and all belief, and it is present in each of us, lurking unvoiced in a closet of our mind we are afraid to open. 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..."

From Walter J. Ciszek's book He Leadeth me

Grace unexplainable to those who will not believe - from Walter J. Ciszek's book He Leadeth me

Grace unexplainable to those who will not believe

“This simple truth, that the sole purpose of man's life on earth is to do the will of God, contains in it riches and resources enough for a lifetime. Once you have learned to live with it uppermost in mind, to see each day and each day's activities in its light, it becomes more than a source of eternal salvation; it becomes a source of joy and happiness here on earth.

The notion that the human will, when united with the divine will, can play a part in Christ's work of redeeming all mankind is overpowering. The wonder of God's grace transforming worthless human actions into efficient means for spreading the kingdom of God here on earth astounds the mind and humbles it to the utmost, yet brings a peace and joy unknown to those who have never experienced it, unexplainable to those who will not believe."

From Walter J. Ciszek's book He Leadeth me

When a society actually endorses evil, where will it end?

 From He Leadeth Me  ( pages 120-121 )

 by Father Walter Ciszek S.J.

"Abortion is legal in the Soviet Union. Anyone who wants one can have it performed. The government says it has to be legal in order to prevent private abuses. The wages of husband and wife together make it hard to support more than one or two children so everyone wants an abortion. Yet the question haunts them. The hallways of the clinics adjoining the abortion rooms were full of posters, not praising abortion, but informing patients of the possible detrimental effects on both mind and body such an operation could have. The doctors, mostly women, and the nurses and other personnel would try to dissuade patients from the operation. Women confided years later that they could not rid themselves of feelings of guilt about it. And these were not "believers" but women and girls who had received a complete atheistic education in Soviet schools. 

Even for Communism, it is a basic question of life and death, of wrong and right. If life at its very roots can be treated so lightly, people would say, who is going to stop such a mentality from spreading? Society? Hardly. Society can't even handle properly its present problems of crime and other social disorders. And when a society actually endorses evil, where will it end? Can man alone be trusted to solve mankind's problems? Look at history and the depths to which civilized countries have sunk, time after time." 

Walter J Ciszek. S.J. (1904-1984 ) a servant of God, spent twenty-three years in the Soviet Gulag and is now being considered for beatification in the Roman Catholic Church