The Church Under Persecution
“Reflecting on such thoughts almost habitually, amid the exhausting labors of endless days in the camps of Siberia, made me conscious of my obligation toward God in fulfilling to the best of my abilities the daily rounds of prayer and work and suffering, setting an example as conscientiously as I could for my fellow prisoners, helping them to see by word and by deed that even the days of this most wretched existence in a frozen wasteland could be productive in brining the kingdom of God upon earth. No man’s life, no man’s suffering, is lost from the eyes of God. For each of us has been created to praise, reverence, and serve God and by this means to save our souls and help in the salvation of others. No action, however insignificant, if accepted and performed as from God’s hand and in conformity with his will, is anything other than redemptive and a sharing in the great work of salvation begun by Christ’s passion.
Reflecting on these truths was consoling, but it was more than that. It opened up to me a whole new vision of Siberia and the pain and suffering that went on around me. It seemed to me that I could see arising out of the devastated and blighted lives around me a whole new Church to come—if only there were laborers enough for the vineyard. A Church of men and women full of sacrifice and total dedication was in the process of formation here. A Church formed out of a generation of persecution and frustration, tried as gold in the furnace. A Church of new leaders, survivors of these camps and living in a militantly atheistic country, yet aware of how totally all things depended upon God alone, unable to worship publicly perhaps and yet united to the entire mystical body of Christ called the Church. That saving remnant, perhaps, of which Isaiah spoke. A people who accepted persecution with joy might see in their own trials and sufferings the true Christian work of redeeming the world about them, of being the leaven in the mass. ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? My ways are not your ways, says the Lord; as far as the heavens are above the earth are my ways above your ways.’ Perhaps, in God’s providence, there might result from all this suffering something new and precious in the mystical body: zealous Christians, with a new ideal of dedication to offer the Church existing in the world as a human institution. In God’s providence, this Church under persecution—these suffering Christians—constantly enriched the Church upon earth, the mystical body of Christ.”
~Walter Ciszek
Reflecting on these truths was consoling, but it was more than that. It opened up to me a whole new vision of Siberia and the pain and suffering that went on around me. It seemed to me that I could see arising out of the devastated and blighted lives around me a whole new Church to come—if only there were laborers enough for the vineyard. A Church of men and women full of sacrifice and total dedication was in the process of formation here. A Church formed out of a generation of persecution and frustration, tried as gold in the furnace. A Church of new leaders, survivors of these camps and living in a militantly atheistic country, yet aware of how totally all things depended upon God alone, unable to worship publicly perhaps and yet united to the entire mystical body of Christ called the Church. That saving remnant, perhaps, of which Isaiah spoke. A people who accepted persecution with joy might see in their own trials and sufferings the true Christian work of redeeming the world about them, of being the leaven in the mass. ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? My ways are not your ways, says the Lord; as far as the heavens are above the earth are my ways above your ways.’ Perhaps, in God’s providence, there might result from all this suffering something new and precious in the mystical body: zealous Christians, with a new ideal of dedication to offer the Church existing in the world as a human institution. In God’s providence, this Church under persecution—these suffering Christians—constantly enriched the Church upon earth, the mystical body of Christ.”
~Walter Ciszek
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