Posted on 10/15/2017 5:04:47 PM PDT by marshmallow
The holy witness of the Servant of God American Jesuit priest who was imprisoned for 15 years in solitary confinement and labor camps in the former Soviet Union.
Servant of God Father Walter Ciszek (1904-84) was an American Jesuit priest who was imprisoned for 15 years in solitary confinement and labor camps in the former Soviet Union, and another eight years with restricted freedom, before being allowed to return to the United States.
During his imprisonment, he often struggled to survive under harsh conditions, including the constant threat of starvation. Much of his time was spent in Siberia. When the opportunity arose, he cared for the spiritual needs of the people with whom he lived, providing Mass and the sacraments. Father Ciszek wrote of his experiences in two books, With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me.
Jesuit Father Brian Van Hove serves as chaplain to the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan, and was interviewed as a part of Father Ciszek’s cause for canonization because Fathers Van Hove and Ciszek lived together for two years in the Bronx, New York.
Father Ciszek told him, “I should have died 20 different times in the Soviet Union, but God had something for me to do.”
Russia was a “mad slaughterhouse” during Father Ciszek’s years there (1940-63), Father Van Hove explained, and Father Ciszek saw bloodshed and brutality firsthand. In one incident, as Father Ciszek relates in With God in Russia, he and his fellow prisoners were crammed into the hold of a ship steaming upriver to the work camps in Siberia. Some prisoners rioted due to the poor conditions, and the guards machine-gunned many and threw their bodies in the river.
Yet despite seeing years of ugliness, Father Van Hove told the Register, “Father Ciszek didn’t go into despair.....
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
Today’s Jesuits can’t hold a candle to this guy.
I have Fr. Ciszek’s books. He was a great man.
LOL! That sounds like something my pastor would say.
Someone posted about Fr Ciszek a few weeks ago. I bought his book “He Leadeth Me”. The book is well worth reading, and rereading. Thanks for the suggestion.
I bought that first. Later, I got “With God in Russia.” Incredible endurance.
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