The post Trusting in the Providence of God first appeared on AirMaria.com.

No, I was not helpless or worthless or useless in that prison. I was not terribly humiliated because I was rejected as a priest. These men around me were suffering, they needed help. They needed someone to listen to them with sympathy, someone to comfort them, someone to give them courage to carry on. They needed someone who was not feeling sorry for himself but who could truly share in their sorrow. They needed someone who was not looking for consolation but who could console. They needed someone who was not looking for respect and admi­ration because of what he was but someone who could show them love and respect even if spurned and rejected himself.

As Christ had set the example for me, so could I be to them an example of Christian charity and concern. If nothing else, if they insisted upon shunning me, I could at least pray for them and offer up for them to the Father of us all the suffering and anguish that their rejection of me as a priest caused me. Christ had prayed for his persecutors, “Father, forgive them.” If I could do nothing else at this moment in the prison at Perm, I could do that.

God does not ask the impossible of any man. He was not asking more of me, really, than he asks of every man, every Christian, each day of his life. He was asking only that I learn to see these suffering men around me, these circumstances in the prison at Perm, as sent from his hand and ordained by his providence. He was asking me to do something, as another Christ; to forget about self and feeling sorry for myself, and to act in the situation after the exam­ple of Christ himself … That was all he was asking of me or expecting of me … I had to learn to believe that, no matter what the circumstances, and to act accordingly – with complete trust and confidence in his will, his wisdom, and his grace.

Fr. Walter Ciszek, SJ

The post “They will persecute you…” first appeared on AirMaria.com.

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 wrong. God’s will was not hidden somewhere “out there” in the situations in which I found myself; the situations themselves reveal His will for me. What He wanted was for me to accept these situations as from His hand and 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.

+Servant of God, Fr. Walter Ciszek

To learn more of Father’s time as a prisoner in Russia and how he came to trust totally in God, see http://www.ciszek.org/About_Ciszek.html

The post Abandonment to God’s Will first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Our primary responsibility, the main object of all our efforts, must be the transformation of ourselves, of our hearts and our lives. Insofar as we succeed at this, we promote the spreading of God’s kingdom, for by doing this, we are at the same time disposing ourselves to help others and contribute even further to the spreading of the kingdom.

What this means in the concrete is that each of us must faithfully fulfill the duties of our daily life. The circumstances and people that God each day presents to us through His providence offers us the opportunity to perform action after action and proof of our dedication to the kingdom.

Whether we are married and taking care of the home and family, or studying in school, or working in an office or a factory or on a farm, whether we are dedicated to the priestly or religious life, matters little: in whatever we do we must always seek first the kingdom of God. That is, all our actions of every day must be accepted as from God and referred back to Him, must be done in a way that fulfills His will, for in this way alone is the kingdom of God promoted and spread upon earth.

Servant of God Walter J. Ciszek, S. J.

The post Our Daily Duties show the Will of God for Us first appeared on AirMaria.com.

With all the many losses of freedom and the things happening in the world today, there is still nothing new under the sun or things happening that have not happened before. Here is a thought from Fr. Walter Ciszek who spent 23 years in the Soviet Union, 18 years as a prisoner and 15 years in a Communist labor camp.

He wrote:  What was I, in comparison to the millions of atheists in the Soviet union? What was I, in comparison to the might and power of the Soviet government? What were any of us, really, in the face of the system around us, with all its organs of propaganda and powers of persecution? Yet, in God’s providence, here we were. This was the place He had chosen for us, the situation and circumstances in which He had placed us.

One thing we could do and do daily: we could seek first the kingdom of God and His justice. First of all in our own lives, and then in the lives of those around us. From the time of the apostles, twelve simple men alone and afraid, who had received the commission to go forth into the whole world to preach the good news of the kingdom, there has been no other way for the spreading of the kingdom then by the acts and the lives of individual Christians striving each day to fulfill the will of God.

+ Servant of God Fr. Walter Ciszek

The post In this Time and Place first appeared on AirMaria.com.