FATHER WALTER CISZEK S.J.

BEGINNING WITH HOPE

At the end of each academic year, I would write a letter to the graduating seniors expressing my hope that the good work begun in them over the last four years might deepen and continue to develop. Some personal accomplishments may adorn their experiences of life, but the really exciting thing remains to be seen, namely, what God will make of them.    

I would like something similar for you in writing about Father Walter Ciszek. There will be much more to learn about this American Jesuit after reading this, to be sure. If, however, through his intercession, some good work does begin in you by way of this writing, then may the God whom Father Ciszek came to know and love bring it to fulfillment.

A WORD WORTH REMEMBERING The very circumstances of our lives

A word about conversion speaks through the life of Father Walter Ciszek, a word on the will of God and the experience of freedom that comes from adhering to it. His is a story of a ruffian turned priest, a liberation born of imprisonment, of a clandestine Jesuit turned American hero. 

The word that speaks through Father Ciszek is also decidedly ecclesial, as the details of his life depict a journey of Christian discernment and attentiveness to the movements of the Holy Spirit. Recounting the details of Father Ciszek's ordeal, therefore, is a way of practicing the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Father Ciszek's spiritual father and his own richest resource. 

Familiarizing ourselves with Father Ciszek's story is also a way of honoring his spiritual legacy, since he went to such pains to share it with us in detail, repeating time and again his belief that God was calling him to do just that. Putting the events of his own life into words for us was not for personal celebrity, but to give voice to the Word of God who was with him in Russia. 

In some sense, the very significance of Father Ciszek's life is contained in the teaching that a man's story is not trivial, but that God reveals himself to us through what is real and concrete. And so, in looking at Father Ciszek's story, we learn to search for, and adhere to, God's will for us in the same place it was discovered by him, namely, in "the very circumstances of our lives."   

A HOMETOWN HERO The Russians had come to me

No one expected Father Ciszek to return from the Soviet Union to his hometown of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Born one of thirteen children into a devout Polish coal mining family, he was willful, a “tough,” as he referred to himself, a bully. But his roughness wasn’t so much meanness as it was assertiveness. He was aggressive and strong minded, ambitious. And yet, even though his own father would ask the local police to discipline him, young Walter was, even then, praying in secret with a heart open to God, the priesthood, and to mission. He was indefatigable.      

And so, his enthusiasm for a newly established missionary effort wasn’t entirely surprising. He had only just entered the Jesuit seminary in the Bronx when, in 1929, Pope Pius XI called for missionaries to help the Church in Russia suffering under the Communist regime. Walter Ciszek volunteered straight away and was accepted to prepare for the mission in Rome. 

After finishing his preparatory studies at the Russicum there, Father Ciszek was ordained in June of 1937 and sent to Poland to teach Ethics while looking for some way into Russia. He was full of enthusiasm for the challenge of infiltrating the Soviet Union in order to serve the Church there, and so when the Red Army did invade Poland from the east, Father Ciszek felt a secret joy, saying later, "The Russians had come to me."

FIDELITY IN UNCERTAINTY The most chilling argument

Communism had been threatening to undermine any international benevolence. When the Russian army, therefore, did invade Nazi occupied Poland, seizing control of the college in Albertyn where Father Ciszek was then teaching, a time of great tribulation would begin for him. Few of his friends and family could be certain Father Ciszek would ever return.  

Even then, he believed with conviction that God was calling him to Russia, and indeed that the invasion had brought Russia to him. And so, he was faithful to what he perceived to be God’s will for him to go with a large number of Polish refugees into Russia where they would be hired as laborers to work the factories in the Ural Mountains. While there, he would try to find some way to serve, however secretly, as a priest. It was a bold move in pursuit of fulfilling his vocation.  

He did wrestle with some doubt, however, recalling Our Lord’s words about the good shepherd being no mere hireling. He questioned whether fearing the wolf of Communism wasn’t pressuring him to leave his sheep in Albertyn. He would ultimately follow God’s call to the Urals, but not without suffering the anguish that came from considering whether he was running away from his responsibilities, an uncertainty that he called, “the most chilling argument.”   

          
A MATTER OF IDENTITY You are Father Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit priest

In order to avoid discovery, Father Ciszek would present himself while in Russia as “Vladimir Martinovich Lypinski," a widower whose family had died in an air raid. Papers to that effect were arranged for him. The plan was that only he and the priest friend with whom he was traveling would know his true identity and mission. In March of 1940, Father Ciszek boarded boxcar 089725 with the other refugees and rejoiced to cross into Russia on the 19th of that month, then the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. 

He would be unable to avoid arrest, however, and upon Germany's invasion of Russia he was taken at night from his barracks by the secret police to the dreaded Lubianka prison in Moscow for interrogation. There, they pressed him constantly, "You are a priest, born in America. And you are a spy.” They went on like this incessantly for six months, trying to get him to sign a confession. “If you don’t sign, you’ll be dead before the sun sets!” 

Suffering the physical and psychological torture of the interrogations, Father Ciszek did ultimately collapse under the pressure, signing a false confession admitting to the fabricated accusations of the NKVD. He was a priest, to be sure, but he was no spy. Still, helpless and powerless, he submitted to the charge of his being a spy of the Vatican. He called this the darkest time of his life. 

And yet, this trial would lay the foundation of a conversion that would form the bedrock on which he would build the rest of his life. It was an experience of powerlessness that would lead Father Ciszek into a true and lasting freedom born of knowing himself to be dependent not on his own strength, but on God. In any case, the truth of his identity was known. The Russians were at least right in saying, "You are Father Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit priest."   

FREEDOM BORN OF FAILURE It was total self surrender

The punishment Father Ciszek received for the charge of “espionage” was cruel. He was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor in the prison camps of Siberia. He would spend four more years in Lubianka, however, referring to his years there in solitary confinement as a kind of spiritual preparation before being taken from Moscow to Norilsk to shovel coal with the other prisoners. 

Until his humiliation in Lubianka, Father Ciszek prided himself on his fierce determination and discipline. From his youth, he would take on extraordinary penances and would go beyond the minimal requirements of obedience during seminary formation. Nor would any of these things have been difficult for him. Even his immediate entry into the Jesuits and the subsequent mission to Russia was made with the ease of self confidence.

The shattering blow came by way of the interrogations in Lubianka. Father Ciszek was sure he would be able to resist any questioning, even torture. But after resisting for as long as he could of his own strength, he finally broke. Alone, he returned to the darkness of his cell to weep over a kind of failure that was entirely new to him. Never before had he been brought to his knees by threats or intimidation. What made it worse was the feeling of having failed Our Lord.  

  
And yet, the darkness of this hour would lead to the brightness of a new and unfading light that would guide Father Ciszek even unto death. Until then, he had thought the Lord called him to the priesthood because of his strength of will. Now, by way of this most painful failure, he had learned the truth. God was calling his priest to trust in grace alone to sustain him. Recalling this moment and the four years of solitary prayer that followed, he likened them to four years of purgatory that led to something greater than mere conformity to the will of God, saying, “It was total self surrender.”  

  
SERVICE IN IMPRISONMENT Our whole aim became the acquisition of food

He emerged from Lubianka a changed man, full of the consolation and boldness that came from understanding that the battle in the interrogation room wasn’t with the NKVD, but with God. God was testing his servant, and would win. The guards may have stripped Father Ciszek of his dignity. But God, in His mercy, stripped him of his pride. In turn, Father Ciszek would no longer depend on himself. He would still be present to God, attentive to his will and resolved to carry it out with fidelity, but he would abandon himself to God entirely, by His grace, and was in this way prepared for the prison camps, which promised harrowing pain and seemingly meaningless suffering. Even they could be endured if in them Father Ciszek would be able to find, and adhere to, the will of God in each moment. 

  
The events of this next period in the prison camps of Siberia would make up the bulk of Father Ciszek's experiences in Russia. His own personal accounts of these days are well documented in his book, With God in Russia. Suffice to say, his story is full of the images we associate with prison camps: callous guards with hardened hearts, frightened inmates tempted to despair, sickness, exhaustion, theft, suspicion, and every kind of evil. To the one who sought it, however, there was also a compassion and camaraderie - albeit in cautious fraternity. And, because of the presence of men like Father Ciszek, there was the sacrifice and love of Christ Himself.    

It began as a frightening time of living with thieves and criminals whom Father Ciszek described as different from the political prisoners - almost an altogether different breed of men, "with a law and order all their own." It was a time of coal mine labor in the frigid cold, where he and the other inmates suffered fifteen hour workdays of constant shoveling for fear of being buried alive by the coal rushing toward them on the conveyor belt. It was a time of transferring to work in an ore processing plant, which, although also grueling, brought some relief because the beds had blankets, and once every 10 days the men could shower. 

But this was also the time when Father Ciszek would minister secretly to his fellow prisoners as a priest, taking care to reveal his identity only to those whom he believed could be trusted, finding ways even to say Mass, hear confessions, and offer spiritual direction to those men who were willing to risk their lives to do so. The consolation of the Faith brought a great deal of comfort to those inmates. And Father Ciszek, fortified by the conversion he experienced in Lubianka, and the personal prayer he developed there, was a heroic instrument of this consolation. Yet even then they said about those torturous years, "our whole aim in life became the acquisition, somehow, of food." 

AN AMERICAN MERCY We thought he was dead

Father Ciszek had actually served only fourteen years and nine months of his fifteen year sentence when he was told that his work quota was up. In 1955, he walked out of the labor camps as free as a man could be in Communist Russia; he was restricted to living around Norilsk to enable the secret police to keep an eye on him. Still, he was able to find work in a chemical factory, as well as ways to serve clandestinely as a priest, before the KGB caught on to his sacramental ministry and gave him ten days to leave Norilsk. 

He did so, making his way to Abakan, south of Norilsk, where he would take a job as an auto mechanic. It was at this time that Father Ciszek was able to convince one of the KGB officers to let him send a letter to his sister in the States, who would be responsible for beginning a long, persistent campaign of the United States government to secure the release of her brother. 

A short while later, summoned at night by the police and brought to Moscow, Father Ciszek was introduced to a man from the American Consulate who informed him that he could return home. He and another American would be traded for some Russian spies who were apprehended in the States. A complicated and delicate arrangement, made possible by President Kennedy himself just one month before his assassination, it was a sign of patriotic affection for Father Ciszek. In any case, it was a generous gesture, considering it was made for a man who, shortly after arriving in America, would ask, "What does Pearl Harbor mean?"      

Masses had been celebrated in the States for the repose of the soul of Father Ciszek, since no one had heard from him between the years of 1940 and 1955. His surviving relatives and Jesuit confreres all said something similar when, all those years later, they learned of the letter he sent to his sister, namely, "We thought he was dead."

RETURNING TO THE SOURCE People risked their lives to come

Father Ciszek returned home on October 12, 1963, landing at Idlewild Airport in New York, while American Catholics were celebrating Columbus Day and the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He spent the first months living in the Jesuit Novitiate in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, because it was near his family and the place he had begun his journey some thirty years before. Shortly following this time of rest, he was assigned by his Jesuit superiors to the Center for Eastern Christian Studies of Fordham University, called then the John XXIII Center, where he would enrich the program with his knowledge and experience of the Eastern Rites of Slavic Catholicism and culture.  

He also gave talks and led retreats. He celebrated the Sacraments, offered spiritual direction, and helped in parishes, here, in his native place, a country where the practice of religion seemed to him, “almost a formality, an obligation that can be dispensed with if you have been out late the night before." He was observing the experience of American Catholicism in light of his experiences of the Faith in places like Siberia and Norilsk, where, he said, when Mass was being offered, people risked their lives to come.

CONTINUED GROWTH AND CONVERSION I have offered all to you, My God

Still, Father Ciszek knew well that he himself remained in constant need of renewal and conformity to Christ as he sought to do God's will in this new and final stage of his life. Although he is best known for his completed works, With God in Russia, and He Leadeth Me, both of which recount his spiritual growth born of the hardships of imprisonment, the Church's well preserved records of his personal correspondence, as well as his retreat talks and prayers from the years following his return to the States, show just how profoundly Father Ciszek continued to allow God to work in his soul to accomplish a deep and lasting conversion.   

He died in his reading chair while preparing for bed on December 8th, 1984, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. His body is buried in the Jesuit Seminary of Wernersville in Pennsylvania. His tombstone is adorned with a simple, "IHS" and "RIP." But Father Ciszek will certainly be remembered also by his own words. After all, his writings are the primary reason for the Church’s having opened his cause for Canonization. A fitting few of his words, by which we might remember him, were discovered by the religious Sister who sat in the chair where Father had died, just after his passing, took to herself a book in which he had been writing, and discovered the words, "With simplicity of heart, I have offered all to you, my God."

A TRINITARIAN ACT OF LOVE To be worked out on earth

This, I think, is a key to understanding the meaning of Father Ciszek’s life and the reverence shown to him by the Church: he teaches us that until Christ comes again in glory, He is still about the work of redeeming evil, which means that the will of God is not happening in a vacuum. In other words, God may confound us by permitting evil to happen, but He has also sent His Son to redeem that evil. This is why Father Ciszek was able to say that God’s will is not “out there,” nor even “hidden somewhere” in the situations befalling us, rather, that “the situations themselves are His will for us.” 

  
Father Ciszek’s life only makes sense - indeed our own as well - if God is not only Father, nor only Son, nor only Spirit. Nor is Father Ciszek’s life worthy of imitation - nor ours worth living - unless God is all three. But, of course, God’s will is always happening in the mystery of the Trinity. Father Ciszek’s mission to Russia, therefore, was not a failure, because if it is true that God’s permissive will was allowing the suffering, it is also true that Father Ciszek was, at the same time, allowing Christ to redeem his afflictions, while the Holy Spirit, at every moment, was enabling him to discern that dynamic, and to live in the tension of those two things happening together.   

Father Ciszek never asked Jesus to be excused from the suffering of the prison camps. He knew his mission to Russia was a share in Christ’s own redemptive passion. No wonder, then, Father Ciszek remembers his personal failure in Lubianka with such gratitude and affection. By leading him to the darkness of the cross, surrendering to that false confession became for him a moment of relinquishing his own initiatives and strength and of turning to the presence of the God who was with him in his trials, a presence that emboldened him to love in the face of evil, saying, “The kingdom of God has to be worked out by men, by other Christs. It has to be worked out on earth.”

ENDING WITH HOPE The Kingdom is still a mustard seed

In imitation of his own spiritual father, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, to whom God’s will came in the form of a cannonball, Father Ciszek allowed Christ to redeem those terrible years in Russia - to use them to make him a saint - that is, to put them to the good use of building up a Kingdom of redeemed souls who are no longer paralyzed by the evils of this world, but who are truly free in their abandonment to God’s will, which, although beyond us, is also as near to us as our own circumstances.

Even if you were already familiar with the story of Father Walter Ciszek, I hope that some new mustard seed has been planted, and that something good has indeed begun in you by way of this writing. The divine word spoken to us through Father Ciszek is of this very mystery, and his voice can be heard speaking of it even now: “The Kingdom of God has indeed been begun on earth with the coming of Christ, and yet twenty centuries later the Kingdom of God is still a mustard seed.”