The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [129]
Ciszek wrote that he wanted to answer the question everyone kept asking: “How did you manage to survive?” His short answer was “Divine Providence.” The full answer is his book, which shows how he found God in all things, even in a Soviet labor camp.
In one of the most arresting chapters of the book, Ciszek describes a startling epiphany about what it means to follow “God’s will.”
For a long time, as he toiled in the labor camps, he had been wondering how he would be able to endure his future. What was God’s will? How was he supposed to figure it out? One day, along with another priest friend, he had a revelation. When it comes to daily life, God’s will is not some abstract idea to be figured out or puzzled over or even discerned. Rather, God’s will is what is presented before us every day.
[God’s] will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at that moment, and those were the things upon which he wanted us to act, not out of any abstract principle or out of any subjective desire to “do the will of God.” No, these things, the twenty-four hours of this day, were his will; we had to learn to recognize his will in the reality of the situation.
This truth was so freeing that Ciszek returns to that theme again and again in his book. This recognition sustained him through many years of hardship, suffering, and pain.
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.
What is Ciszek’s response to the question of how he survived? Obedience to what life has placed before him. “The challenge lies in learning to accept this truth and act upon it,” he writes. This is something that everyone experiences: our lives change in ways we cannot control.
Now, when life changes for the better, acceptance is no problem! You meet a new friend. You get a promotion at work. You fall in love. You learn that you’ll soon become a mother or a father or grandmother or grandfather. In these cases acceptance is easy. All one needs to do is be grateful.
But what happens when life presents you with unavoidable or overwhelming suffering? This is where the example of the Jesuit approach to obedience may be helpful. What enables a Jesuit to accept difficult decisions by his superior is the same thing that can help you: the realization that this is what God is inviting you to experience at this moment. It is the understanding that somehow God is with you, at work and revealed in a new way in this experience.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying that God wills suffering or pain. Nor that any of us will ever fully understand the mystery of suffering.
Nor that you need to look at every difficulty as God’s will. Some suffering should be avoided, lessened, or combated: treatable illnesses, abusive marriages, unhealthy work situations, dysfunctional sexual relationships.
Nonetheless, Ciszek understood that God invites us to accept the inescapable realities placed in front of us. We can either turn away from that acceptance of life and continue on our own, or we can plunge into the “reality of the situation” and try to find God there in new ways. Obedience in this case means accepting reality.
SURRENDERING TO THE FUTURE
This point was driven home a few years ago by my close friend Janice, a Catholic sister. Sister Janice was one of my professors during graduate theology studies at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was a beloved figure among the students. A member of the French-founded Religious