Bonus Material from My Dream Interview with Walter Ciszek
In this part of the “interview”, Fr. Ciszek discusses his lowest moment during his captivity which also led to an amazing conversion experience.
Me: For me, the most powerful moment in your story occurs in Lubianka prison. After months of intense interrogation and threats of execution, you gave in and signed a document admitting that you were a spy. You had hoped that this would put an end to the interrogations and allow you to be transferred to the Siberian prison camps. However, your interrogator did not stop. He continued to threaten you with execution if you did not denounce the pope and begin to play an active role in working with the NKVD (the precursor to the KGB). Can you tell us what you went through at that time?
Fr. Ciszek: One day the blackness closed in around me completely. Perhaps it was brought on by exhaustion, but I reached a point of despair. I lost all sense of hope. I saw only my weakness and helplessness to choose either position open to me, cooperation or execution. It wasn’t the thought of death that bothered me. In fact, I sometimes thought of suicide as the only way out of this dilemma. Illogical, surely, but despondency and despair are like that. Uppermost in my mind was the hopelessness of it all and my powerlessness to cope with it.
I don’t really know how to put that moment in words. I’m not sure, even, how long that moment lasted. But I know that when it passed, I was horrified and bewildered; I knew that I had gone beyond all bounds, had crossed over the brink into a fit of blackness I had never known before. I was scared and ashamed, the victim of a new sense of guilt and humiliation. I knew I had failed before, but this was the ultimate failure. This was despair. For that one moment of blackness, I had lost not only hope but the last shreds of my faith in God. I had stood alone in a void, and I had not even thought of or recalled the one thing that had been my constant guide, my only source of consolation in all other failures, my ultimate recourse; I had lost the sight of God.
Recognizing that, I turned immediately to prayer in fear and trembling. I knew I had to seek immediately the God I had forgotten. I pleaded my helplessness to face the future without him. I told him that my own abilities were now bankrupt and he was my only hope.
Suddenly, I was consoled by thoughts of our Lord and his agony in the garden. “Father” he had said, “if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me.” He, too, knew the feeling of fear and weakness in his human nature as he faced suffering and death. Not once but three times did he ask to have this ordeal removed or somehow modified. Yet each time he concluded with an act of total abandonment and submission to the Father’s will. “Not as I wilt but as thou wilt.” It was not just conformity to the will of God; it was total self-surrender, a stripping away of all doubts about his ability to withstand the passion, of every last shred of self.
Me: How did this realization change your life?
Fr. Ciszek: I can only call it a conversion experience, and I can only tell you frankly that my life was changed from that moment on. If my moment of despair had been a moment of total blackness, then this was an experience of blinding light. I knew immediately what I must do, what I would do, and somehow, I knew that I could do it. I knew that I must abandon myself entirely to the will of the Father and live from now on in this spirit of self-abandonment to God. That one decision affected every subsequent moment of my life.
I had always trusted God. I had always tried to find his will, to see his providence at work. I had always seen my life and destiny as guided by his will. But this was a new vision, a new understanding. Up until now, I had always seen my role in the divine economy as an active one. Up to this time, I had retained in my own hands the reins of all decisions, actions, and endeavors; I saw it as my task to “cooperate” with his grace. God’s will was “out there” somewhere hidden, yet clear and unmistakable. It was my role to discover what it was and then conform my will to that. I remained in essence the master of my own destiny.
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 were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking of me an act of total trust, allowing 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. It meant losing that last hidden doubt, the ultimate fear that God would not be there to bear you up. It was something like that awful eternity 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.
Once understood, it seemed so simple. Of course we believe that we depend on God, that his will sustains us in every moment of our life. But we are afraid to put it to the test. We are afraid to abandon ourselves totally into God’s hands for fear he will not catch us as we fall. It is not really a question of trust in God at all, for we want very much to trust him; it is really a question of our ultimate belief in his existence and his providence, and it demands the purest act of faith.
Me: What happened next?
Fr. Ciszek: I was brought to make this act of complete self-abandonment to his will, of total trust in his love and concern for me, by the experience of a complete despair of my own powers and abilities that had preceded it. I knew I could no longer trust myself, and it seemed only sensible then to trust totally in God.
That moment, that experience completely changed me. I can say it now in all sincerity, without false modesty. I have to call it a conversion experience; it was at once a death and a resurrection. I knew I was crossing a boundary I had always hesitated and feared to cross before. Yet this time I chose to cross it---and the result was a feeling not of fear but of liberation, not of danger or despair but a fresh new wave of confidence and of happiness.
Filled with this new spirit and transformed interiorly, I no longer dreaded the next interview with the interrogator. I saw no reason now to fear him or the NKVD, for I saw all things now as coming from the hands of God. I was no longer afraid of making a “mistake,” since God’s will was behind every development and every alternative. Secure in his grace, I felt capable of facing every situation and meeting every challenge; whatever he chose to send me in the future, I would accept
The change in me, in fact, was so striking that even the interrogator noticed it. I felt no distress any longer. The next time I saw him, however, he had a new proposal. He told me that the people upstairs wanted me to go to Rome and serve as an intermediary between the Kremlin and the Vatican. I agreed as far-fetched and absurd as it sounded. Discussions of this Roman business took up many sessions. Naturally, I would not be alone in Rome. I would be part of a team, and there would be other information I would be asked to pass along, other details I would be expected to provide for transmission back to Moscow. Should I fail to do so, those with whom I worked would see to my speedy execution. There would be a month’s training in certain techniques of espionage.
Through all of this I remained at peace. Where before the notion of such cooperation would have upset and tormented me, I felt no distress any longer. If these things were to be, then they were to be---for a purpose God only knew. My confidence in his will and his providence was absolute; I knew I had only to follow the promptings of his grace. I was sure that when a moment of decision came, he would lead me on the right path. And so it happened. When at last the interrogator asked me to sign an agreement covering the Roman business, I just refused. I had not thought of doing so in advance. But suddenly it seemed the only thing to do, and I did it. He became violently angry and threatened me with immediate execution. I felt no fear at all. I think I smiled. I knew I had won. When he called for the guards to lead me away---and I had no assurance but that they were leading me before a firing squad---I went with them as if they were so many ministers of grace. I felt God’s presence in the moment and knew it drew me toward a future of his design and purpose. I wished for nothing more.
I left Lubianka, as it turned out, not to face a firing squad but to begin the long journey from Moscow to Siberia, and I was overjoyed.
*** Fr. Ciszek passed away in 1984 after touching the lives of many through his books and faithful priesthood. I created this “dream interview” to honor his memory and spread his message. Aside from his short biographical answer at the beginning of this “interview”, his answers are taken verbatim from his book He Leadeth Me.
References:
Ciszek, Walter.He Leadeth Me. Crown Publishing Group, 1973, pp. 79-86, 121-127, 145, 164, 176, 182.