#MastersofSocialIsolation #14. In 1939 Walter Ciszek, an American Jesuit in Poland, was swept up in the Soviet invasion and sent to Russia. Discovered to be a priest he was charged as a spy—beginning 22 yrs in the Soviet gulag—5 yrs in solitary confinement in the Lubyanka Prison.
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To keep his wits intact he adopted a daily routine of spiritual exercises, all based on what he could remember from his Jesuit formation. So the solitary days, weeks, and years were passed. And so he could later observe, “Lubyanka, in many ways, was a school of prayer for me.”
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Ciszek said that his greatest suffering came when he mentally fought against the injustice of his fate. To the extent that he abandoned himself to Providence, convinced that in every situation he was exactly where God wanted him to be, he felt a sense of freedom and peace.
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Fr Ciszek later wrote that it is a great temptation, when things do not turn out the way we planned, to become disappointed and want to run away: “This life is not what I thought it would be. This is not what I bargained for … . You must forgive me, God, but I want to go back.”
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His consolation was to trust in the “will of God”: “Not the will of God as we might wish it, or as we might have envisioned it, or as we thought in our poor human wisdom it ought to be. But the will of God as God envisioned it and revealed it to us each day ...”
“God is in all things, sustains all things, directs all things.” In 1963 Fr Ciszek was suddenly exchanged for a Russian spy and returned home to his Jesuit family. He continued to teach the secret of happiness that is available in any circumstance—even in a prison cell.
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