He Leadeth Me by Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.

Fr. Ciszek was a Jesuit priest who, in 1928 as a young man, answered Pope Pius XI’s call to train for the “Russian missions.”   Fr. Ciszek was imprisoned in Siberia for twenty-three years and returned to the United States in 1963.  He was an American from Shenandoah, Pennsylvania!  I had labored under the impression that he was Polish by birth, a European long accustomed to totalitarian oppression. 

The book is intense, concentrated, even ponderous at times.  First, there is the matter of just following the sequence of events--where Father Ciszek was and when, why he was imprisoned, solitary confinement, the interrogations, hunger, doubt, his transfer to a slave labor camp, physical suffering, facing and surviving a firing squad, “freedom” in Siberia and then his return to the United States.  Plenty to digest.

Then there is the theological and spiritual side with the lesson that Fr. Ciszek drives home over and over.  I took it to be this:  Thy will, Lord, not mine.  He recounts how he came to understand and accept his imprisonment.  He instructs us to be grateful and stalwart servants of the Lord, able always to bend to God’s will, never presuming we can go it alone.  Life isn’t casual.  People are not random physical bodies created to chase sunshine and  rainbows. Every hair of one’s head is accounted for.   Your life has meaning.   Go about figuring it out.

Joseph Gilmore and William Bradbury

Lord, I would clasp Thy hand in mine,

Nor ever murmur nor repine,

Content, whatever lot I see,

Since ‘tis my God that leadeth me!

 

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,

By His own hand He leadeth me:

His faithful foll’wer I would be,                              For by His hand He leadeth me.