# He Leadeth Me ![rw-book-cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41tDNyOmjYL._SL200_.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Walter J. Ciszek Sj]] - Full Title: He Leadeth Me - Category: #books ## Highlights - It is impossible to describe the feeling that comes over you at such a time. The feeling that somehow, in an instant of time, everything is changed and nothing again will ever be quite the same. That tomorrow will never again be like yesterday. That the very trees, the grass, the air, the daylight are no longer the same, for the world has changed. ([Location 131](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=131)) - The perplexity and pain grew within me as I saw the visible Church, once strong and organized, dissolve under the attacks of these invaders and watched the people grow estranged, pressured ceaselessly into accepting this new order. ([Location 150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=150)) - How frustrating it was to hear the Church and priests and religious openly slandered in Communist propaganda, and to know that the children had to learn and repeat atheist doctrines every day in school and in their classwork. ([Location 153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=153)) - Anyone who has done much reading in the Old Testament is familiar with those questions. “How long, O Lord, how long will you allow our enemies to triumph over us?” Most especially in the days after David, in the ages of captivity, when the glories of the golden age of Solomon were but a memory by the rivers of Babylon and Israel had been broken and led away in shame, does the question recur again and again. To Israel, surely, it must have seemed the end of the world, the end of the covenant, the end of God’s special care for his chosen people. Yet, from our vantage point in history, we know it was really quite the opposite. Israel’s troubles were in truth a manifestation of Yahweh’s special providence, his special love for his chosen people. Like a fond and loving father, he was trying to wean them away from trust in kings or princes or in armies or the powers of this world. He was trying to teach them, again and again, that their faith must only be in him alone. ([Location 163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=163)) - Then it is that he must remind us again, with terrible clarity, that he meant exactly what he said in those seemingly simple words of the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not be anxious about what you shall eat, or what you shall wear, or where you shall sleep, but seek first the kingdom of God and his justice.” ([Location 198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=198)) - It is a sad commentary on our human frailty that we fail to think of God or see him behind the comfortable routines of our day-to-day existence. It is only in a crisis that we remember him and turn to him, often as querulous and questioning children. ([Location 208](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=208)) - One thing only need be of great concern to us in all this seeming upheaval and catastrophe: to be faithful to God and to look to him in everything, confident of his love and his constancy, aware that this world and this new order was not our lasting city any more than the previous one had been, and striving always to know his will and to do it each day of our lives. ([Location 222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=222)) - Everyone who has had to weigh the choice of a vocation against the call of family, or who has had to weigh the value of some future course or vision against the demanding realities of the present, knows the force of the dilemma that troubled me then. Abraham, called by God to leave behind everything he knew and cherished in order to set out for an unknown land on the strength of a vague promise, must have known the full force of such counterarguments. ([Location 298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=298)) - Yet hardly had I made that decision, in all sincerity and with firm conviction, than I was again distraught. I felt no peace, no joy, no ease of heart at having finally resolved my problem. Prayer became difficult, almost impossible. I felt my faith was weakened, that I had come to this decision by listening to the voice of reason rather than by listening to the voice of God. ([Location 312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=312)) - That God’s will can be discerned by the fruits of the spirit it brings. That peace of soul and joy of heart are two such signs, provided they follow upon total commitment and openness to God alone and are not founded on the self’s desires. ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=324)) - For a moment I thought with sorrow and regret about the possibility of never returning to Europe, to the United States, to Shenandoah. Yet the strong realization rushed over me that I was not cut off from God, that he was with me, indeed that I was dependent only on him in a new and very real way. ([Location 367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=367)) - Though freedom of religion is technically guaranteed by the Soviet Constitution, proselytization is strictly forbidden. The constitution guarantees freedom of atheist propaganda, but those who try to spread the truths of the faith or foster religion are in fact breaking the law. ([Location 382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=382)) - We had entered upon what we thought was a great missionary endeavor, full of zeal and enthusiasm, only to come smack up against reality. Things here were not at all as we had envisioned them, and we were not at all equipped to face things as we found them. So much for our hopes, our expectations, our dreams, our convictions, above all, our enthusiasm! ([Location 408](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=408)) - It is the same temptation faced by everyone who has followed a call and found that the realities of life were nothing like the expectations he had in the first flush of his vision and his enthusiasm. It is the temptation that comes to anyone, for example, who has entered religious life with a burning desire to serve God and him alone, only to find that the day-to-day life in religion is humdrum and pedestrian, equally as filled with moments of human misunderstanding, daily routines, and distractions as the secular life he left behind in the world. It is the same temptation faced by young couples in marriage, when the honeymoon is over, and they must face a seemingly endless future of living together and scratching out an existence in the same old place and the same old way. It is the temptation to say: “This life is not what I thought it would be. This is not what I bargained for. It is not at all what I wanted, either. If I had known it would be like this, I would never have made this choice, I would never have made this promise. You must forgive me, God, but I want to go back. You cannot hold me to a promise made in ignorance; you cannot expect me to keep a covenant based on faith without any previous knowledge of the true facts of life. It is not fair. I never thought it would be like this. I simply cannot stand it, and I will not stay. I will not serve.” ([Location 416](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=416)) - Saint Ignatius puts it starkly and forthrightly in his First Principle and Foundation: “Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. The other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created. Hence, man is to make use of them insofar as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them insofar as they prove a hindrance to him. Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things.” Ignatius calls that the Principle and Foundation of his Spiritual Exercises, but it is also the most fundamental truth of man’s existence and God’s providence. ([Location 445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=445)) - Our dilemma at Teplaya-Gora came from our frustration at not being able to do what we thought the will of God ought to be in this situation, at our inability to work as we thought God would surely want us to work, instead of accepting the situation itself as his will. It is a mistake easily made by every man, saint or scholar, Church leader or day laborer. Ultimately, we come to expect God to accept our understanding of what his will ought to be and to help us fulfill that, instead of learning to see and accept his will in the ([Location 465](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=465)) - The plain and simple truth is that his will is what he actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people, and problems. The trick is to learn to see that—not just in theory, or not just occasionally in a flash of insight granted by God’s grace, but every day. Each of us has no need to wonder about what God’s will must be for us; his will for us is clearly revealed in every situation of every day, if only we could learn to view all things as he sees them and sends them to us. ([Location 472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=472)) - The answer lies in understanding that it is these things—and these things alone, here and now, at this moment—that truly constitute the will of God. The challenge lies in learning to accept this truth and act upon it, every moment of every day. The trouble is that like all great truths, it seems too simple. It is there before our noses all the time, while we look elsewhere for more subtle answers. It bears the hallmark of all divine truths, simplicity, and yet it is precisely because it seems so simple that we are prone to overlook it or ignore it in our daily lives. ([Location 480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=480)) - As for the humiliation I felt because I did not get the proper respect as a priest of God, was “the servant greater than the master”? Our Lord had said to his disciples, “If they despised me, they will despise you.” I had been taught from my youth to respect a priest because he represented God among men. But as a priest I had also come to expect this respect (and even some adulation) from others. How then did I truly think I was following in the footsteps of the Master? If I had been more truly like Christ, should I not have expected rejection and humiliation? Why should I be shocked when it occurred? Should I not rather rejoice that I had been allowed to imitate him more closely? ([Location 572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=572)) - The sense of hopelessness we all experience in such circumstances really arises from our tendency to inject too much of self into the picture. ([Location 591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=591)) - 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. ([Location 610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=610)) - Solitary confinement, in short, must be very much like what some theologians paint as the principal torment of hell: the soul at last recognizing its mistakes for what they were and condemned forever to the loss of heaven, constantly tormenting itself with reproaches and tearing itself apart because it still sees and understands and wants the things it has lost forever, but knows it is condemned to lose forever because of its own choices, its own failings, its own mistakes. ([Location 678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=678)) - Very early in my stay at Lubianka, as the endless tedium of solitary confinement began to get to me, I decided to arrange some order and division into the day. I made up for myself what we used to call in the Jesuit houses at home a “daily order.” As soon as we were awakened in the morning, I would say the Morning Offering; then, after the morning trip to the toilet and wash-up, I would put in a solid hour of meditation. The five-thirty A.M. rising hour and seven o’clock breakfast in Lubianka were almost identical to the daily order in most of the Jesuit houses I had lived in, so the days began to fall into a pattern for me again. ([Location 707](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=707)) - And I learned soon enough that prayer does not take away bodily pain or mental anguish. Nevertheless, it does provide a certain moral strength to bear the burden patiently. Certainly, it was prayer that helped me through every crisis. ([Location 733](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=733)) - The Our Father is a prayer of praise and thanksgiving, a prayer of petition and of reparation. It encompasses in its short and simple phrases every relation between man and his Creator, between us and our loving, heavenly Father. It is a prayer for all times, for every occasion. It is at once the most simple of prayers and the most profound. ([Location 750](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00B0LP54Y&location=750))