Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Suffering:
- Fr. Walter J.
Ciszek's
- He Leadeth Me
Fr. Ciszek, an American priest, who, during W.W.II was captured by the Russian army,
convicted as a "Vatican spy," and spent 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and
labor camps. The following is from is book, He Leadeth Me:
... Real prayer occurs, as I have said, when at last we find ourselves
in the presence of God. Then every thought becomes the father to a prayer, and words quite
often are superfluous. Such prayer is all-absorbing. Once you have experienced it, you can
never forget the experience. But I am not speaking here of some great mystical grace. I am
speaking only of a conversation with God, the spontaneous outpouring of a soul that has
come to realize--however fleetingly--that it is standing at the knee of a loving and
providing Father. Thoughts of praise and of thanksgiving spontaneously arise, as well as
questions and petitions and thoughts of friends and their needs, mingled with trusting
confessions of failure and simple promises to follow in the future only what he would have
us do.
Sometimes, by God's grace, such a moment of insight and of prayer occurs almost
unexpectedly. But for the most part, prayer demands an effort on our part. We must learn,
even as Christ himself did, to draw apart from the circumstances that surround us if we
wish to be alone with the Father. In the desert, in the mountains, in the fields, he
simply retired, leaving his apostles and disciples and the crowds that followed him, in
order to pray to the Father. And for us, especially, it is easier to find ourselves alone
with the Father if we can be physically alone, if we can retire to a place of quiet where
we can collect our thoughts.
Because the restless human mind, our chief instrument in all human communications, is also
our chief stumbling block to prayer. It seems by nature bent upon distraction rather than
on recollection. It prefers to be free, to wander ceaselessly, to seize on each new idea
and explore its every direction rather than to fashion its attention upon one direction
and remain pinned down. It wants to be forever occupied, constantly at work, worrying,
remembering, planning and scheming, preventing and arguing, searching and
questioning-even, in our attempts to pray, taking to itself God's part and answering our
every petition, carrying on by itself all sides of our attempt at a divine conversation.
Or it will flare up with pride, impatience, ill feeling, bitterness, or
hate when least we want it to; it will feel injured or offended, guilty or discouraged,
just when we have almost reached our goal. Sometimes, indeed very often, the time we have
set aside for prayer passes simply in a struggle to control our restless mind, collect our
thoughts, and focus our attention upon God. And it is helpful and consoling on such
occasions to remember two things: (1) that God himself has initiated this conversation by
inspiring us to set aside the time for prayer; and (2) that he appreciates our efforts to
respond, and blesses them.
Posture, like verbal formulas, is not essential to prayer. Perseverance is. Kneeling is
not necessarily more conducive to prayer than sitting, nor is standing necessarily better
than lying down. Yet mortal man is a peculiar thing made up of body and soul; so our
efforts to control the mind can often be connected with an effort at bodily control. Relax
the body and the mind goes running off to recreation. We are creatures of habit, and we
can sometimes help ourselves achieve a sort of self-control that leads more readily to
recollection by taking up a posture we traditionally associate with prayer. Such an
effort, moreover, such perseverance is an earnest of our desire to respond to God's
promptings and to do his will. An attitude of readiness to try over and over again in our
quest to find God and his will in prayer is itself a grace and a blessing of major
consequence. What other purpose has man in life but to do God's will? And every effort, at
any moment, to follow the promptings of his will is itself both a grace and a blessing of
no small consequence.
If we could achieve union with God in prayer, we would then see his will quite clearly and
desire nothing but to conform our will to his. So there is truth in the realization that
even our most unsuccessful efforts to achieve union with God in prayer are nevertheless an
effort to respond to his inspiration and his grace to pray. They are efforts, therefore,
to conform our will to his and do his bidding. And perseverance in such efforts is, at the
very least, practice in the habit of finding the will of God at all times and in
everything.
Lubianka, in many ways, was a school of prayer for me. I was alone, but I did not
therefore find it so much easier to pray. Though I was shut away in solitary confinement
from the ordinary sights and sounds we think of and spiritual writers speak of as
"distractions," it was impossible to confine my mind and keep it recollected.
I learned to pray there quite simply as everyone must learn to pray.
Weak from hunger, weary and pained after long hours of interrogations, distracted by
doubts and growing fears for the future, overcome by anxieties and the abnormal
sensitivities induced by constant separation and loneliness, I had to learn to turn to God
as best I could and when I could. I had to learn to find him in the midst of trials as
well as nerve-racking silences, to discover him and find his will behind all these
happenings, to see his hand in all the past experiences of my life, to praise and thank
him and ask his blessing on all those faces that crowded to memory (when there was no face
to be seen each day except those of my guards), to ask his pardon for my many failures
then and now in the interrogations, to promise pardon and to seek to forgive those I
sometimes felt were persecuting me, and to ask at every moment his constant, fatherly
protection against the evils that seemed to surround me on all sides. "Lord, teach us
to pray," the disciples had asked. "He said to them, 'This is how you should
pray: Our Father . . ."
THE INTERROGATIONS
"And when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be
anxious beforehand what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it
is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit."
How often did those words run through my mind during the course of my
interrogations by the NKVD in Lubianka. Or those other words as recorded by Luke:
"Resolve in your heart not to meditate beforehand how to answer,
for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to
withstand or contradict."
How often I would have loved to have put down an interrogator with a
brilliant remark, an unanswerable argument. Yet it never seemed to work that way.
When I was first summoned for interrogation, I felt completely at ease and confident. I
knew the charge of espionage for the Vatican, under which I was being held and because of
which I had been brought all the way to Moscow and to Lubianka, was totally false and
obviously ( I thought) absurd. There was no way I could take such a farfetched charge
seriously, and I was certain the NKVD "higher-ups" would be equally unable to
take it seriously once they dug into my case and learned the facts.
On that score, I was in for a rude awakening. I still don't know whether
they seriously believed the charge; perhaps someone "higher up" found it
impossible or dangerous to admit that all this trouble had been taken over a nobody and so my interrogators were instructed to prove there had been no
mistake. Whatever the reason, they hammered away in deadly earnest to get me to admit to
the charge, fantastic as it seemed to me. They were relentless, and they were thorough,
and they were good at their trade.
Once the interrogations started at Lubianka after the initial period of solitary
confinement, they went on almost without letup. Sessions might last for days at a time.
All-night sessions, though, were the usual routine; for some reason they seemingly were
preferred to day interviews. I had a number of interrogators, who employed a variety of
methods. They could be by turns friendly or hostile, charming or vituperative, angry or
dispassionate, threatening or the voice of sweet reason itself. But their goal was always
the same.
As the interrogations progressed, a set pattern of questions taken from a printed form
lying on the desk were asked of me over and over again. The interrogator wrote down on big
sheets of paper every answer I gave. Quite often, he seemed to pay little attention to
what I actually said in reply. He wrote continuously, probably because it was expected of
him, and seemed to make little effort at all really to understand what I was trying to say
or explain. From time to time, the interrogator would sit back in his chair and read me
what he had written. He would ask me if it was substantially correct. I would try to point
out to him how he had simply twisted the meaning of any factual content to make it accord
with a preconceived and prejudged pattern; most of it was even couched in catch phrases.
My presence among the workers at TeplayaGora, for example, was written up as if I were an
outside agitator come to excite the masses to revolt against the regime and system.
I tried in the beginning to argue about such things, or to get the interrogator to change
what he had written. If he bothered to take note of my complaint at all, the interrogator
quite generally replied that he had written the facts as they appeared in the eyes of
Soviet law. The Soviet Constitution allowed the practice of religion on an individual
basis, but it forbade the preaching of religion. And the provision
was obviously a wise one, for under the pretext of teaching religion the Church was
actually teaching hatred of communism; the statements of the Popes on communism were clear
enough evidence of that. He was not there, however, to argue the point. His job was not to
discover whether I was involved in some plot against the government--my presence in the
country as a foreign priest was evidence enough to put that point beyond question--but to
discover all the details of the plot, including others who might have been involved, how
it was financed, the means to be employed, and any organizations that might be conspiring
with me. Finally, he would accuse me of holding back information from him and suggest that
we get down to business.
After I had been over the same questions and the same answers a number of times with a
number of interrogators, I simply gave up arguing. I concentrated instead on trying always
to give the same answer, for the least little variation on my part would be treated as a
slip, a weak point in my story that should be attacked and explored to catch me in a lie
or contradiction. And yet if I repeated exactly the same story time after time, gave the
same biographical details and chronological sequences, the interrogator might get furious.
He would take the very sameness of the answers as proof that they must be part of some
carefully memorized lie.
As the months of interrogations lengthened, my original naive optimism and self-confidence
gave way to resentment and repugnance. It became almost unbearable for me to face another
session. When called by the guard for another trip along the dimly lit corridors to the
interrogators' offices, the sense of revulsion would be so strong that a physical tremor
would shake my whole body. It was something beyond my control, and no effort on my part
would prevent it.
But worst of all, perhaps, I began to give up. I was tired of trying to
correct the misinterpretations put upon every action of mine; I just became indifferent to
what the interrogator said or wrote. It just seemed so useless to make the attempt any
more. I simply shrugged off any more attempts and confined myself wherever possible to yes
or no answers, or to a noncommittal "I don't know."
The law provided a month's time for the investigation of a case. My case entered its
twelfth month and the interrogations still continued. My patience and my self-confidence,
even my innate stubbornness, were gradually wearing away. I was tired of the struggle, I
was tired of fighting, but above all I was tired of second-guessing myself in the silence
of solitary confinement after the interrogation sessions, tired of the doubts, fears, and
the constant anxiety and strain. The last interrogator seemed a reasonable man,
soft-spoken and humane. He seemed to understand how anxious I was to end this constant
questioning; he suggested we could put an end to it if I would only co-operate and tell
the whole truth. He spoke of getting it over with, of getting out of Lubianka and of
solitary. That thought alone, the notion of being with people again, was enough to catch
me off balance. I really didn't care any more what would ultimately happen to me. I just
wanted to get all this rigmarole over with, the sooner the better. "Of course I'll
tell the truth," I said, "and co-operate with you." I didn't mean that I
was going to tell any Lies or agree to anything I hadn't agreed to before; but I wasn't
going to fight, either, the interpretation that might be put on the facts I admitted to.
Too late, of course, I realized the mistake I was making. I r realized as well the motives
prompting my actions, the mental fatigue and the frustration, the desire to be rid at last
of the physical and mental strain of both the interrogations and the isolation.
Accordingly, as we went over the questions together ! for the last time, I tried to change
course once again. I tried to retreat once more to the high ground I had held so painfully
and so stubbornly for so many months. But my gentle, courteous interrogator pressed home
his advantage. He seemed so hurt, perhaps annoyed, at the "distinctions" I
wanted to make, the "clarifications" I tried to offer. He ignored them, he
changed nothing, but he reminded me gently that at this rate the
process would never end. I gave up. I convinced myself that my efforts were useless and I
let the process roll on with a shrug. After all, I said to myself, what does it really
matter? What difference can it possibly make to anyone except to me -and I simply wanted
out. I convinced myself that, for my part, I had told only the truth and continued to tell
only the truth. All the rest mattered little, except that it would soon end.
Once I had taken that basic decision, it was surprising how easy everything became. If I
had any nagging doubts at all, it was about what would happen to me after Lubianka. Come
what may, however, this ordeal would soon be over. The end was in sight. The feeling of
relief, of release from tension and from struggling, permeated every other thought. I
would have to let tomorrow take care of itself.
Tomorrow came soon enough. The interrogator told me to get ready for my final session. He
explained that I would have to sign the documents he had written. I would be expected to
read and sign each page of the collected material. He warned me that this was one of the
most important steps in the whole process. I don't know why, but I had not really expected
that. Now I found myself trapped, and I passed the night in new mental anguish and agony.
I resented the seeming kindness and gentleness of the interrogator that had led me so
sweetly to this moment. I wished I could take back again that promise to co-operate and
the sessions that had followed Now what could I do? Refuse to sign the documents? And then
what? This was the critical hour, if ever, for the Holy Spirit to intervene and protect me
and protect the Church. It was now or never. Martyrdom, perhaps, or capitulation.
Still tormented by these thoughts, I was summoned next morning to the interrogator's
office. He handed me the volume of materials and asked me to read and sign each page. It
was the moment of decision, but I stalled for time. I began to read the materials with
growing resentment and incredulity. It seemed incredible that I had ever agreed to go
along with this. I continued to read, but I signed nothing. I tried to think, only to
discover that somehow my mind had stopped functioning. All I saw before me was a blank. I
tried to ask the Holy Spirit to prompt me to say something to the interrogator, to give me
the words of wisdom that would startle the interrogator and persuade him now, at this
eleventh hour, to believe me and to change the charges brought against me.
- I prayed for the Spirit to move me--and I felt nothing.
Feeling abandoned by God, I knew I must do something. I wanted to throw
that volume on the table and tell the interrogator right out that I would not sign a page
of it. Fear stopped me. I struggled with myself. I badly wanted to show him who he was
dealing with: not a weakling, or an intimidated priest afraid to stand up for his rights,
or an ignoramus who didn't know what was going on. I wanted to speak out and end the deal
right then and there. Indeed, the words I wanted so vehemently to blurt out were on the
tip of my tongue. I raised my head slowly and looked at the interrogator, who was busy
with some other papers. The words "I won't sign," however, never came. I was
afraid, and I was angry at myself for being afraid. I made a strenuous effort to overpower
the fear afflicting me, but succeeded only in being overcome by it. I was disgusted with
myself, terribly upset. I lowered my head again slowly in confusion and pretended to be
reading.
But the interrogator at last took notice of me. "What's wrong, Wladimir Martinovich?
Why are you not signing the pages as you read them?" At last I was forced to answer,
so I said, far too weakly: "I can't sign this the way it's written. It's not what I
said or did. You know I'm not the spy you describe so cleverly and completely in this
report."
At these words, my gentle and friendly interrogator changed completely. He grew pale and
furious, unable to speak at first, trembling with the intensity of his anger. Only after
several deep breaths could he force himself to say, quietly and icily: "Do you
realize, you stupid American, the seriousness of this final procedure? It's a matter of
life and death you are fooling around with -- Do you understand?
Either you sign the document as it is, without any change, or we will get rid of you the
same way we get rid of every spy. There is a bloody war going on outside. If you don't
sign those pages, I can sign one right here and you'll be dead before the sun sets. This
is the end, one way or another. Do what you're supposed to do, or die!"
I was literally stunned into submission. The sudden, vehement change in
the interrogator, the quaver in his voice that lent a note of terror and urgency to his
threats, my own interior turmoil and confusion, the shock of it all. Spontaneously,
without thinking, I picked up the pen and began to sign.
As I signed the pages, largely without reading them, I began to burn with shame and guilt.
I was totally broken, totally humiliated. It was a moment of agony I'll never forget as
long as I live. I was full of fear and yet tormented by conscience. After signing the
first hundred pages, I stopped even the pretense of reading the rest. I just wanted to
finish signing them as quickly as possible and get out of the interrogator's office. My
aversion to the whole thing was overwhelming; I condemned myself before anybody else could
do the same. I was despicable in my own eyes, no less than I must appear to others. My
will had failed; I had proved to be nowhere near the man I thought I was. I had yielded,
in that one sickening split second, to fear, to threats, to the thought of death. When the
last page was finished, I literally wanted to run from the interrogator's office.
Back in my cell, I stood shaken and defeated. At first, I could not even grasp the
dimensions of what had happened to me in the interrogator's office and why. I was
tormented by feelings of defeat, failure, and guilt. Yet above all, I was burning with
shame. Physically, I shook with spasms of nervous tension and release. When at last I
began to regain some control of my nerves, my thoughts, and my emotions, I turned at once
to prayer as best I could.
My prayer at first, though, was a matter of reproaches. I reproached myself for failing to
stand up against the interrogator and speak out, for failing to refuse to sign the
dossier. I reproached myself for caving in out of fear, for giving way to panic, and
acting sheerly out of some defense mechanism.
- And I did not spare God from these reproaches. Why had he
failed me at the critical juncture? Why had he not sustained my strength and my nerve? Why
had he not inspired me to speak out boldly? Why had he not shielded me by his grace from
the fear of death? And why had he not, as a last resort, seen to it that I suffered a
heart attack from all this tension, or a stroke, so that I would not have been able to
sign the papers?
I had trusted in him and his Spirit to give me a voice and wisdom
against all adversaries. I had confounded no one, but had myself been totally broken and
confounded. And if I was not worth his intervention personally, how could he have allowed
me to sign things that reflected so badly upon the Church? Were not his honor and his
glory and the future of his kingdom upon earth at stake in all of this?
Little by little, surely under his inspiration and his grace, I began to wonder about
myself and my prayer. Why did I feel this way? The sense of defeat and failure was easy
enough to explain after that episode in the interrogator's office, but why so strong a
sense of guilt and shame? I had acted in panic, I had yielded under the threat of death.
Why should I hold myself so fully responsible, why feel so guilty, for actions taken
without full deliberation or full consent of the will?
I had not been fully responsible at that moment, I had been nearly out
of my mind. The act of signing had been prompted by an almost animal-like urge for
survival. It had hardly been conscious and surely not deliberate enough to deserve the
name human. I had failed, true; but how much guilt had there been and why should I feel so
ashamed?
- Slowly, reluctantly, under the gentle proddings of grace,
I faced the truth that was at the root of my problem and my shame. The answer was a single
word: I.
I was ashamed because I knew in my heart that I had tried to do too much
on my own, and I had failed. I felt guilty because I realized, finally, that I had asked
for God's help but had really believed in my own ability to avoid evil and to meet every
challenge.
- I had spent much time in prayer over the years, I had
come to appreciate and thank God for his providence and care of me and of all men, but I
had never really abandoned myself to it.
In a way, I had been thanking God all the while that I was not like the
rest of men, that he had given me a good physique, steady nerves, and a strong will, and
that with these physical graces given by God I would continue to do his will at all times
and to the best of my ability. In short, I felt guilty and ashamed because in the last
analysis I had relied almost completely on myself in this most critical test--and I had
failed.
- Had I not even set the terms upon which the Holy Spirit
was to intervene in my behalf? Had I not expected him to prompt me to give an answer I had
already predetermined was the answer I would give?
When I failed to feel his promptings along the lines I expected--indeed,
that I demanded I was frustrated and disappointed. It was then I felt he had abandoned me,
and I proceeded to try to do on my own what I had already determined was the thing that
must be done. I had not really left myself open to the Spirit. I had, in fact, long ago
decided what I expected to hear from the Spirit and when I did not hear precisely that I
had felt betrayed. Whatever else the Spirit might have been telling me at that hour, I
could not hear. I was so intent on hearing only one message, the message I wanted to hear,
that I was not really listening at all.
This tendency to set acceptable conditions upon God, to seek unconsciously to make his
will for us coincide with our desires, is a very human trait. And the more important the
situation is, the more totally we are committed to it or the more completely our future
depends upon it, then the easier it becomes for us to blind ourselves into thinking that
what we want is surely what God must also want.
- We can see but one solution only, and naturally we assume
that God will help us reach it.
In any case, I am sure that this tendency was strong in me. I had been
strong-willed as a boy. When I entered religion, I saw this character trait as a talent
given me by God rather than as a flaw. I took pride in developing it further, through
ascetical practices such as fasting, severe penances, exercises of will and personal
discipline. Had I failed to see that these were not always done solely in response to
God's grace or out of some apostolic motive, but also out of pride? Yes, I prided myself
on doing these things better or more often than others, vying as it were with the legends
of the saints to prove that I (that telltale word, again) could prove their equal and
somehow be better than my contemporaries.
It is an awful thing, this dross of self that spoils even the best things we do out of the
supposedly highest motives. "Like gold in the furnace He tried them," says the
Book of Wisdom about the souls of the just. Somehow, by the trials and tribulations of
this life, our souls must be purified of this dross of self if we are to become ultimately
acceptable to God. For each of us the trials will come in different ways and at different
times -- for some, self may be easier to overcome than for others -- but we were created
to do God's will and not our own, to make our own wills conform to his and not vice versa.
We can daily pray for the grace to do this, without always meaning it;
we can promise quite easily in prayer that we will do it. What we fail to see is how much
of self still resides in that promise, how much we are trusting in our own powers when we
say that we will do it. In large tests or small, therefore, God must sometimes allow us to
act on our own so we can learn humility, so we can learn the truth of our total dependence
on him, so we can learn that all our actions are sustained by his grace and that without
him we can do nothing-not even make our own mistakes.
Learning the full truth of our dependence upon God and our relation to his will is what
the virtue of humility is all about. For humility is truth, the full truth, the truth that
encompasses our relation to God the Creator and through him to the world he has created
and to our fellowmen. And what we call humiliations are the trials by which our more
complete grasp of this truth is tested. It is self that is humiliated; there would be no
"humiliation" if we had learned to put self in its place, to see ourselves in
proper perspective before God and other men. And the stronger the ingredient of self
develops in our lives, the more severe must our humiliations be in order to purify us.
That was the terrible insight that dawned upon me in the cell at Lubianka as I prayed,
shaken and dejected, after my experience with the interrogator.
The Spirit had not abandoned me, for the whole experience had been his work. The sense of
guilt and shame I felt was rooted in my failure to put grace ahead of nature, my failure
to trust primarily in God rather than in my own powers. I had failed and I was shaken to
the roots, but it was a salutary shaking. If the interrogator's threat had been totally
sincere, then the moment had been a matter of life and death. In that moment, I had not
seen death as God sees it or as I professed to believe it. Just as I had always seen the
sessions with the interrogator from beginning to end, sometimes consciously, often
unconsciously, as a contest between his will and my own, so in this moment of total crisis
I had seen death almost solely in terms of self and not as the moment of my return to God,
as it truly is. I had reason, therefore, to feel shame and guilt. It had been a moment of
utter failure on my part to abandon myself to God's will in total Christian commitment; I
had failed miserably to be what I professed to be, or to act according to the principles I
professed to believe. And yet that moment of failure was in itself a great grace, for it
had taught me a great lesson. Severe as the test had been, God had sustained me and was
now instructing me by the light of his grace.
"He who endures to the end will be saved." That is the conclusion of all the
Gospel texts which speak of trusting the Spirit and worrying not in advance what we shall
say in times of persecution. I had taken those texts literally and expected the Spirit to
instruct me so that I might conquer my interrogator, my persecutor.
- How foolish and how selfish! It was not the Church
that was on trial in Lubianka. It was not the Soviet Government or the NKVD versus Walter
Ciszek. It was God versus Walter Ciszek.
God was testing me by this experience, gold in the furnace, to see how
much of self remained after all my prayers and professions of faith in his will. In that
one year of interrogations, these last terrible few hours, the primacy of self that had
manifested itself and been reinforcing itself even in my methods of prayer and spiritual
exercises underwent a purging, through purgatory, that left me cleansed to the bone. It
was a pretty hot furnace, to say the least, very nearly as hot as hell itself. Yet, thanks
be to God, I did still endure--and I had learned, to the depths of my shaken soul, how
totally I depended on him for everything even in my survival and how foolish had been my
reliance upon self.
Somehow, that day, I imagined I must know how Saint Peter felt when he had survived his
denials and been restored to Christ's friendship. Even though our Lord had promised that
he, being once converted, would confirm his brethren, I doubt very much that Peter ever
again boasted that he would never desert the Lord even if all others deserted him. I find
it perfectly understandable that Peter, in his letters to the early churches, should have
reminded his Christians to work out their salvation in fear and trembling. For just as
surely as man begins to trust in his own abilities, so surely has he taken the first step
on the road to ultimate failure. And the greatest grace God can give such a man is to send
him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers--and then sustain him with his grace so he
may endure to the end and be saved.
FOUR YEARS OF PURGATORY
Two weeks after I signed the false dossier admitting to things I had never done, I was
informed of the punishment for my "crimes." Fifteen years at hard labor. The
verdict was in the form of what was called an administrative sentence, not a judicial
verdict. Since I had never been brought to trial of any sort, it was not passed by a court
or a panel of judges. The verdict was simply assigned on my own admission of guilt. No
matter the niceties, fifteen years was fifteen years.
At least, I thought, the torture of interrogations is over. I even looked forward to
Siberia and hard labor: physical suffering had merely to be endured; it entailed no shame
or guilt. My prayer at this period was no longer of petition and surely not of
consolation. It was a prayer of suffering, of doubts, of fears, and of anxieties. I was so
shaken by the revelation and realization of my own weakness that I doubted my ability to
survive another onslaught on my faith. I was afraid I would, somehow, sometime, lose sight
of God and fail completely. I longed for the day when I would leave this prison and set
out for the labor camps. It would be a fresh start, a new life. Then perhaps I could
forget my mistakes and my weaknesses, and begin again a more faithful service of God.
But it was not to be. There were to be four more years of interrogations and testing in
Lubianka before the Lord was finished tempering and purifying my soul. It was not enough
for me to understand that the experience of Lubianka was designed by God to purge me of
dependence upon self and to lead me to reliance only upon him. After the terrible time of
the past year and its ultimate crisis, I had come at last to understand that truth.
- But understanding of itself does not lead to practice or
accomplishment; and it was to the practice of purgation that I was now led.
I was told by the interrogator at first that this was a period of
"clarification." There were things that had to be cleared up, things we had not
as yet gone into sufficiently. Since I had now agreed to co-operate, since I in fact had
co-operated by signing the dossier, he was sure that these next sessions would be most
productive. For my part, I felt an immediate surge of repugnance and foreboding. I was
tremendously afraid. Having failed once, I was literally terrified that I might fail
completely this time and lose the last thing I still clung to, my faith in God. And I felt
trapped. The mistake I had made in signing was now being used as a lever to force me
further. I cursed myself again for having made such a mistake, but I could find no way
back. The future seemed hopelessly marked by that one moment of failure.
I was so desolate that even prayer seemed impossible. I felt endangered and threatened
anew, but I could find no light or consolation in prayer. I found myself instead
reproaching God for not sparing me this new ordeal. I found myself wondering why he
permitted it to go on, day after day, without finding some way to end it, or helping me to
find a way to step back from the downward path I seemed to be moving along.
For "co-operation," it now appeared, involved something more than just clearing
up some things discussed in earlier sessions. Co-operation now came to mean that I should
actively work with them in any number of schemes that were suggested one after the other.
Life in the camp was painted in its blackest and bitterest details, and it was pointed out
to me how easily I could escape all that if I wanted to work for the NKVD. I was annoyed,
and then ashamed again of my own indecisiveness. Why couldn't I just stand up and say no?
Instead, I temporized. I took to playing a game of cat and mouse with the interrogator,
asking for time to think over his various proposals.
He never seemed to have any doubt that I would ultimately co-operate. He arranged to have
books provided for me, so I could spend my time in reading. They were largely books on the
history or philosophy of communism, or the writings of Marx or Lenin. When we got together
afterwards, the interrogator would quiz me to see if I understood the arguments and how I
felt about them. I began to rely again on my own native wit and intelligence, to prolong
the arguments and thereby to postpone the need for any practical decision to co-operate.
And yet I felt sick at heart, because I knew that every step I took along this path would
make it just that much more difficult and dangerous to refuse in the end to cooperate. Lie
once and innocence is lost forever. Fall once, and the vessel is broken. Perhaps it can be
mended and made serviceable again, but it can never again be as good as new. So it is with
fallen human nature or the broken human spirit. Tortured by such thoughts, I grew
increasingly depressed.
On the other hand, the interrogator grew bolder and more confident. He was so sure I was
moving to join him that he even suggested a young girl for me to marry. I managed to
convince him that my whole training up to this point as a priest ill suited me for
marriage, and that it was hardly fair to the girl. He seemed to see the logic of this, and
I won that argument. Then he suggested that, since I wanted to remain a priest, I should
become a member of the Orthodox Church. He explained how easy it would be for him to
arrange that, and also to arrange for me to have a platform from which I might denounce
the Pope. He stressed how the Orthodox Church, unlike the Catholic Church, has condemned
fascism and was helping the government in the war against totalitarianism. But the Popes
had attacked communism, especially Pius XII, who surely must secretly sympathize with
Mussolini and Hitler. That led to long arguments about the Church. Finally, I managed to
convince him that the Catholic Church was, to me, at least as meaningful as the Communist
Party was to him. I felt toward her the same sense of loyalty and allegiance that he felt
to the Communist Party. I could not help it, it was part of me. So we agreed to disagree,
and I felt I had won another round.
All this time, I was growing more and more depressed. Whatever little victories I might be
winning, I knew that I was simply postponing the inevitable. I asked in prayer for courage
and wisdom to face each new argument, yet deep down I knew that it was all a big mistake.
Every time I brought myself to the brink of calling a halt to the proceedings, though, of
taking some firm stand, I faced again that awful moment of decision and of weakness-and
finally of indecision. I could not do it. And I knew that every time I approached that
decision and failed to make it, the harder it would ultimately be to make.
Then one day the blackness closed in around me completely. Perhaps it was brought on by
exhaustion, but I reached a point of despair. I was overwhelmed by the hopelessness of my
situation. I knew that I was approaching the end of my ability to postpone a decision. I
could see no way out of it. Yes, I despaired in the most literal sense of the word: I lost
all sense of hope. I saw only my own weakness and helplessness to choose either position
open to me, co-operation or execution. There had been no mention recently of the prison
camps; the interrogator had been telling me he must make a progress report to his superior
about my co-operation; he spoke of execution as if it was possible at their whim. It
wasn't the thought of death that bothered me. In fact, I sometimes thought of death by
suicide as the only way out of this dilemma. Illogical, surely, but despondency and
despair are like that. Uppermost in my mind was the hopelessness of it all and my
powerlessness to cope with it.
I don't really know how to put that moment in words. I'm not sure, even, how long that
moment lasted. But I know that when it passed I was horrified and bewildered; I knew that
I had gone beyond all bounds, had crossed over the brink into a fit of blackness I had
never known before. It was very real and I began to tremble. I was scared and ashamed, the
victim of a new sense of guilt and humiliation. I had been afraid before, but now I was
afraid of myself. I knew I had failed before, but this was the ultimate failure. This was
despair. For that one moment of blackness, I had lost not only hope but the last shreds of
my faith in God. I had stood alone in a void and I had not even thought of or recalled the
one thing that had been my constant guide, my only source of consolation in all other
failures, my ultimate recourse: I had lost the sight of God.
Recognizing that, I turned immediately to prayer in fear and trembling. I knew I had to
seek immediately the God I had forgotten. I had to ask that that moment of despair had not
made me unworthy of his help. I had to pray that he would never again let me fail to
remember him and trust in him. I pleaded my helplessness to face the future without him. I
told him that my own abilities were now bankrupt and he was my only hope.
Suddenly, I was consoled by thoughts of our Lord and his agony in the garden.
"Father," he had said, "if it be possible, let this chalice pass from
me:" In the Garden of Olives, he too knew the feeling of fear and weakness in his
human nature as he faced suffering and death. Not once but three times did he ask to have
his ordeal removed or somehow modified. Yet each time he concluded with an act of total
abandonment and submission to the Father's will. "Not as I will, but as thou
wilt."
- It was not just conformity to the will of God; it was
total self-surrender, a stripping away of all human fears, of all doubts about his own
abilities to withstand the passion, of every last shred of self including self-doubt.
What a wonderful treasure and source of strength and consolation our
Lord's agony in the garden became for me from that moment on. I saw clearly exactly what I
must do.
- I can only call it a conversion experience, and I can
only tell you frankly that my life was changed from that moment on.
If my moment of despair had been a moment of total blackness, then this
was an experience of blinding light. I knew immediately what I must do, what I would do,
and somehow I knew that I could do it. I knew that I must abandon myself entirely to the
will of the Father and live from now on in this 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
too simply said, yet that one decision has affected every subsequent moment of my life. I
have to call it a conversion.
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 had tried to discover his will and to 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 decision, actions, and endeavors; I saw it now as my task to
"co-operate" 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.
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 as from his hands,
to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking 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 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 of 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 which 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.
For my part, I was brought to make this perfect act of faith, this act of complete
self-abandonment to his will, of total trust in his love and concern for me and his desire
to sustain and protect me, by the experience of a complete despair of my own powers and
abilities that had preceded it. I knew I could no longer trust myself, and it seemed only
sensible then to trust totally in God. It was the grace God had been offering me all my
life, but which I had never really had the courage to accept in full. I had talked of
finding and doing his will, but never in the sense of totally giving up my own will. I had
talked of trusting him, indeed I truly had trusted him, but never in the sense of
abandoning all other sources of support and relying on his grace alone. I could never find
it in me, before, to give up self completely. There were always boundaries beyond which I
would not go, little hedges marking out what I knew in the depths of my being was a point
of no return. God in his providence had been constant in his grace, always providing
opportunities for this act of perfect faith and trust in him, always urging me to let go
the reins and trust in him alone. I had trusted him, I had co-operated with his grace --
but only up to a point. Only when I had reached a point of total bankruptcy of my own
powers had I at last surrendered.
That moment, that experience, completely changed me. I can say it now in all sincerity,
without false modesty, without a sense either of exaggeration or of embarrassment. I have
to call it a conversion experience; it was at once a death and a resurrection. It was not
something I sought after or wanted or worked for or merited. Like every grace, it was a
free gift of God. That it should have been offered to me when I had reached the limits of
my own powers is simply part of the great mystery of salvation. I did not question it
then; I cannot question it now. Nor can I explain how that one experience could have such
an immediate and lasting effect upon my soul and upon my habitual actions from that moment
on, especially when so many other experiences, so many other graces, had had no such
effect. It was, however, a deliberate act of choice on my part. I know it was a choice I
never could have made, and never had made before, without the inspiration of God's grace.
But it was a deliberate choice. I chose, consciously and willingly, to abandon myself to
God's will, to let go completely of every last reservation. I knew I was crossing a
boundary I had always hesitated and feared to cross before. Yet this time I chose to cross
it-and the result was a feeling not of fear but of liberation, not of danger or of despair
but a fresh new wave of confidence and of happiness.
Across that threshold I had been afraid to cross, things suddenly seemed so very simple.
There was but a single vision, God, who was all in all; there was but one will that
directed all things, God's will. I had only to see it, to discern it in every circumstance
in which I found myself, and let myself be ruled by it. God is in all things, sustains all
things, directs all things. To discern this in every situation and circumstance, to see
his will in all things, was to accept each circumstance and situation and let oneself be
borne along in perfect confidence and trust. Nothing could separate me from him, because
he was in all things. No danger could threaten me, no fear could shake me, except the fear
of losing sight of him. The future, hidden as it was, was hidden in his will and therefore
acceptable to me no matter what it might bring. The past, with all its failures, was not
forgotten; it remained to remind me of the weakness of human nature and the folly of
putting any faith in self.
But it no longer depressed me. 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.
Filled with this new spirit and transformed interiorly, I no longer dreaded the next
interview with the interrogator. I saw no reason now to fear him or the NKVD, for I saw
all things now as coming from the hands of God. I was no longer afraid of making a
"mistake," since God's will was behind every development and every alternative.
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.
The change in me, in fact, was so striking that even the interrogator noticed it. His
newest proposal was that I might serve as chaplain in a newly formed army of Polish
communists under Wanda Wasilewski, or perhaps as chaplain in General Ander's army, an army
of Free Poles formed to fight on the proposed second front. I told him quite simply I was
willing to do either. He seemed genuinely pleased with the promptness of my reply and my
new disposition. He told me that I seemed more relaxed and easy in my mind--as indeed I
was, because the fear of making a mistake had left me now that I was conscious God was
with me. I think he was suspicious, though, of this sudden change of heart.
"Good," he said, "I'll tell the people upstairs that you are ready and
willing to act as chaplain wherever you're sent. I'll let you know their answer as soon as
I hear."
The next time I saw him, however, he had a new proposal. He told me that the people
upstairs wanted me, instead, to go to Rome and serve as an intermediary between the
Kremlin and the Vatican. Now that the Soviet Union was a member of the Allies, perhaps a
sort of concordat about communism could be arranged. I agreed, as far-fetched and absurd
as it all sounded.
The notion of returning to Rome, to the free world, might in the past
have excited me--but it was a measure of my new sense of abandonment that I was not the
least excited by this offer more than any other. Whether I went to Rome or not was for God
to decide, for him to arrange.
I stood ready to accept any and all events as coming from his hand.
Discussions of this Roman business took up many sessions with the interrogator, yet
through it all I remained totally detached and perfectly relaxed. Naturally, the
interrogator explained, I would not be alone in Rome. I would be part of a team and there
would be other information I would be asked to pass along, other details I would be
expected to provide for transmission back to Moscow. Should I fail to do so, should I
betray this trust, those with whom I worked would see to my speedy execution. Before I
left for Rome, there would be a month's training in certain techniques of espionage that I
would probably need in Rome.
Through all this, I remained at peace. Where before, the notion of such co-operation would
have upset and tormented me, I felt no such distress any longer. If these things were to
be, then they were to be--for a purpose God alone knew. If they were not to be, then they
would never happen. My confidence in his will and his providence was absolute; I knew I
had only to follow the promptings of his grace. I was sure, completely sure, that when a
moment of decision came he would lead me on the right path.
And so it happened. When at last the interrogator asked me to sign an
agreement covering the Roman business, I just refused.
I had not thought of doing so in advance; in fact, I had simply gone
along with everything up to that point. But suddenly it seemed the only thing to do, and I
did it.
He became violently angry and threatened me with immediate execution. I
felt no fear at all.
I knew then I had won. When he called for the guards to lead me
away--and I had no assurance but that they were leading me before a firing squad--I went
with them as if they were so many ministers of grace. I felt his presence in the moment
and knew it drew me toward a future of his design and purpose. I wished for nothing
more...
THE FEAR OF DEATH
Facing a firing squad is a pretty good test, I guess, of your theology of death. I didn't
exactly pass the test with flying colors. Perhaps it all just happened too quickly,
without any warning. There had been a revolt of the prisoners at Camp 5 in Norilsk, and
when troops were called in to put down the revolt they divided the prisoners up into small
groups and marched them off. I was rounded up in a group of thirty, one of the first
groups herded out of the camp and led down to a sandpit about a mile away. We had no idea
what disciplinary measures would be taken against us, but we never for a moment thought we
would see the soldiers line up five yards in front of us with rifles ready, waiting only
for the command to shoot. The command was given, the rifles raised, cocked on another
command, and leveled at our heads. For a moment, as if in a dream, none of us really
understood what was happening. Then the realization that we were actually looking into gun
barrels awaiting only the command to fire came crashing into my consciousness with a force
that stopped everything. My stomach turned once and went numb; my heart stopped; I'm sure
I forgot to breathe; I couldn't move a muscle in my body; my mind went blank.
The first thought I actually remember thinking was a question: "Is this the end,
Lord?" I know I started the act of contrition, but I remember the sensation of
realizing that another part of me could not understand the words I was mumbling. The other
part of me focused on the fact that in a fraction of a second I would stand before God,
dumbfounded and unprepared, unable in the suddenness of my confusion and total terror to
feel sorry for my sins, numbed into absolute inactivity, unable so much as to elicit a
simple act of faith in the God I had learned to trust implicitly in every action of every
day, let alone think with anticipation of meeting him face to face at last. I can still
remember vividly my awareness of the moment, and the second fear that gripped me, when I
realized I was incapable of performing any Christian act to redeem myself, paralyzed and
terrified and yet conscious of what I should be doing--indeed was trying to do by rotely
reciting the act of contrition without comprehension or meaning--in the last moment of
life left to me before the veil parted and I would stand before God.
I have no idea how long that one moment lasted. Suddenly there was a shot in the distance,
shouts, and a group of officers dashed out to stop our execution. All I know is that when
the moment passed, my heart was pounding, every nerve and muscle shaking, my knees weak
and trembling, my mind once again able to follow the sequence of events in a coherent way.
When we were finally marched off again, I tried to figure out what had happened to me.
Often enough, during the years of prison, of interrogations, of life in the camps, I had
lived with the thought of death. On more than one occasion, I had been told I would be
shot and I knew those threats were truly meant. I had seen men die around me of
starvation, or illness, or sometimes just out of a lack of wanting to live any longer. I
had faced death in my mind time and time again, had helped others in their final moments,
had lived with the talk and presence of death. I had thought about it and reflected on it,
had no fear of it, sometimes looked forward to it. What was there, then, about this moment
that so terrified me, so completely unstrung me and made me incapable of functioning, of
praying, even of thinking ...
... 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 the 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 feel ashamed. And yet, as St. 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.
Death may be feared by those who do not believe, who have no hope. It may be feared by
those whose faith in Christ and the resurrection is weak, or those who fear to meet God
face to face because of what they have done or how they have lived in this period of
testing we call life on earth. Men may legitimately worry, too, about those they leave
behind; Christians have always prayed to be delivered from "a sudden and unprovided
death." But death itself is not a thing we fear. It is a homecoming, the return of
the prodigal son, perhaps, to the welcoming arms of a loving father. We expect it, as all
men must, but we expect it in confidence and even joy, buoyed up by our faith in Christ
and his victory over death.
Christ has risen, and our faith is not in vain. The resurrection is a fact, a fact of
recorded human history and of what the theologians call "salvation history." So
death for us is not an enemy, a thing to be dreaded, a word we prefer not to think about
or play down as do the communists. We think and speak about it not as an end to everything
but as the end of our probation.
We can anticipate it daily, and even eagerly, because of our faith. We
can learn to yearn for it, prepare ourselves for it, and embrace it gladly, in joy and in
peace, when at last we are called home to our heavenly inheritance. This we believe; this
essentially is what it means to be a Christian -- one who believes in Christ, the promised
Redeemer and victor over sin and death.
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