Walter J. Ciszek - With God in America: The Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit

On October 2, [1963] a sleek airliner touched down its landing gear at Idlewild Airport. Among its passengers was one who was to re-discover America on this prophetic dayRev. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., released after 23 years in Soviet prison camps in Moscow and Siberia.

The scene was quite different from the one he remembered of his native land, which he had left so many years ago as a young priest. After disembarking from the plane he was greeted by scores of newsmen who later reported that he had been away for so long that he had forgotten how to speak his native tongue. Actually, he was so choked up with emotion that he could find no words to express himself. On the taxi ride from the airport, the emotional block was shattered, and he carried on an animated conversation, punctuated by sobs, with his two sisters, Mother M. Evangeline, O.S.F., stationed at Mount Alvernia, Reading, and Mrs. Helen Gearhart, Washington, D.C., a registered nurse.

After a few stopovers, Father Ciszek, accompanied by a Jesuit confrere, Rev. Edward W. McCawley, professor at Gonzaga High School in Washington, D.C., arrived [on October 18] in his home town, Shenandoah, where he was accorded a heros welcome. I had visited the town the day before his arrival to meet his family and was privileged to read his correspondence with them. [...]

The real story of his life in Russia is still secret, still hidden in his heart and mindto reveal it would be damaging to others still held prisoners in the U.S.S.R. Publicity to him has become an irritant. The veiling, he says, destroys the spiritual value of the suffering. Major publishing firms have set before him lucrative prospects. But for the present he contemplates no published memoirs. He says, I was born poor, I am poor by vocation, and have been happy till now. Why should I seek any other reward than the Providence of God, Who has been so good to me?

Father Ciszek was born 53 years ago in the mining community of Shenandoah, the seventh of thirteen children. His family, of Polish origin, were poor but deeply religious. Still living are three brothers and six sisters, including two who are serving as nuns in the Bernardine Order. His family best remembers him for his joviality and his sturdy physical stamina. After high school, he entered St. Marys Seminary at Orchard Lake, Mich., where after several years he joined the Society of Jesus and began his novitiate in the Maryland province. The two years at the novitiate, Father Walter says, provided the cornerstone for my entire spiritual formation. A few days after his return from Russia, he was asked by the Master of Novices at the Wernersville novitiate to address the students, and it was in this lecture that he stressed the spiritual value of this important era in a seminarians life. In the tundra when he felt he couldnt stand anymore; when the vast solitude of ice and snow assailed his soul and body, his memories of the novitiate were enough to give him the spiritual vigor, enthusiasm, and confidence to survive these ordeals.

After completing the novitiate, [Walter] answered an appeal from his superiors to dedicate his life to serving the eastern Church. He and a few other select volunteers were chosen. During his years in Rome [19341938] he became fluent in Italian, which he still speaks, Polish, German, French, and Russian. One thing that always remained with me, he says, that I could never forget were the languages. Ordained in 1937, he left the next year for Poland, where he was to become the pastor of a Polish parish near the Russian borderthe last step on a long exile from the United States.