He Leadeth Me

He Leadeth Me

By a Jesuit priest called Walter Ciszek, He Leadeth Me recounts the story of Ciszek’s journey to Russia during the Second World War during which he was arrested, imprisoned in solitary confinement and then forced to work in brutal conditions in Siberian labour camps. In total, he spent twenty-three years in Soviet Russia, either in prison or in a labour camp.

Two things stand out for me about this story. One is Ciszek’s devotion to his priestly calling, particularly in Siberia. The conditions he describes sound almost unbearable just on a basic physical and psychological level. He speaks of when he first arrived there and the agony of working twelve to fourteen hour days on meagre rations that gave him just enough strength to continue. The agonising pain of rising from bed at 5am in the morning in freezing conditions, every sinew of the body screaming in torment and the thought that the only thing one has to look forward to is a day of backbreaking slave labour. And yet, even in the midst of this situation, he continued to minister as well as he could as a priest, particularly in terms of saying Mass and distributing Holy Communion to Christian prisoners. It teaches me the need for more resilience in my priestly ministry and in my life in general. There is a good chapter on the human body and on how amazingly it can continue to function even in circumstances such as this. I live a pampered life by comparison, becoming grumpy on occasion because I haven’t managed to sleep as much as I would have liked to. Cizsek saw his suffering as a sacrifice offered to God and to the people God called him to serve. Can I not see my relatively small amount of suffering in a similar light?

The second thing I want to mention is the political aspect. There is a moving passage that describes the mental torment of living in these camps which ends in this way:

And yet, the prisoners would tell you, even the end of the camps would not mean the end of the party line, or freedom from the pressure to work ever harder to build a new world order, the new socialist world. There was no escaping it, nowhere where a man could go to live peacefully, to work and live normally, as he chose.

Walter Cizsek, He Leadeth Me, p.140

That passage succinctly and perfectly captures the mindset and catastrophe of collectivist political thought: the sacrifice of the individual to the utopian project that must be prioritised above all else: freedom, individuality, family, faith. And that last word - “faith” - is crucial: this type of political hell can only be caused in the absence of the Christian faith. This is because it makes the state and the state apparatus divine: it is the state that one must live and work and die for. If there is a God above the state then one’s loyalties are critically divided.

There is no peace in such a new world order. Man is stripped of the dignity to make his own choices for himself, for his family.

I have to be honest and say that I am concerned about the direction our country is heading and heartened and when I see other Western nations rejecting this hell and choosing a free tomorrow instead. I am particularly inspired by the American electorate and I hope that a similar choice will be available to us in the UK at some point soon. Freedom from government oppression and ideology is such a beautiful thing.