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But the Mass to us was always worth the danger and the sacrifice; we treasured it, we looked forward to it, we would do almost anything in order to say or attend a Mass.
Each day, every day of our lives, God presents to us the people and opportunities upon which he expects us to act. He expects no more of us, but he will accept nothing less of us; and we fail in our promise and commitment if we do not see in the situations of every moment of every day his divine will.
the simplicity and directness of their belief in God and the tenacity of their faith and trust in him. Even the consciousness of their sins and failings expressed in confession served only, it seemed, to strengthen this faith.
No matter what a man had done, how he had failed God or his fellow man, God had not yet abandoned him and could be counted on to sustain him again tomorrow.
Each day of labor and hardship, like the grains of wheat ground up to make the host at Mass, could be consecrated to God and be transformed into something of great value in God’s sight; it was a sacrifice each man could offer back to God throughout the long, hard days.
What is there to fear in death? It means no more and no less than the end of our testing period here on earth; it is a return, a going home, to the God and Father who first created us.
Death is not a tragedy in our belief, but only an ordained passage from this life to the next.
The body can be confined, but nothing can destroy the deepest freedom in man, the freedom of the soul, and the freedom of mind and will.
Even in prison a man retains his free will, his freedom of choice. Even in prison, a man can choose to do good or evil, to fight for survival or to despair, to serve God and others or to turn inward and selfish. Free will remains, and so freedom remains, for freedom is simply defined as the state of being free, not coerced by necessity or fate or circumstances in one’s choices or actions.
No matter under what aspects you consider the notion of freedom, you will always find difficulties in this life that cannot be solved and so render to each man the full freedom he desires.
It is in choosing to serve God, to do his will, that man achieves his highest and fullest freedom.
Choosing to do his will and experiencing the spiritual freedom that followed was my greatest joy and the source of tremendous interior strength. For to know that he directed me in all my actions, that he sustained me with his grace, gave me a sense of peace and courage beyond description.
Many of them are searching for something, something even they do not fully understand and cannot clearly express. They know from parents or grandparents how things were in “the old days”; they wonder if they are missing something or can find something of the peace and security the “old folks” seem to have had in God. So they come. And so the faith, in God’s providence, remains strong and continues to grow;
They were delighted to be able to have a priest among them, and the sacrifices they would make, the distances they would travel to attend Mass and the sacraments, were a continuing source of amazement and consolation to me.
The informality of their services, the conviction of their religious beliefs, the spontaneity of their prayers, made them aware of the presence of God in one another and in the community of believers gathered together.
You can close churches, you can imprison priests and ministers, you can even set men and churches to fighting among themselves, but you cannot uproot thereby the good seed existing among the tares and cockle, that good seed that is the kingdom of God. It will remain, like the mustard seed, like the leaven in the mass. The faith of these courageous Christians in Siberia, as throughout all of Russia, was ample testimony to that.
Only in faith, only by a change of heart, can a man enter the kingdom of God. Sooner or later man must learn that this changing and unstable world cannot be the source of his security, of true peace of heart.
One thing we could do and do daily: we could seek first the kingdom of God and his justice—first of all in our own lives, and then in the lives of those around us.
For humiliations arise out of the circumstances, situations, and people that God presents to us each day—and all these are but a manifestation of his providence.
We are not saved by doing our own will, but the will of the Father; we do that not by interpreting it or reducing it to mean what we would like it to mean, but by accepting it in its fullness, as made manifest to us by the situations and circumstances and persons his providence sends us. It is so simple and yet so difficult.
Can there be anything more consoling than to look at a burden, or a humiliation, not just as it is in itself but as the will of God entrusted to you at that moment?
My first concern, instead, should be to follow wherever he led, to see his will always in the events of my life and follow it faithfully, without question or hesitation.
It was humility I needed: the grace to realize my position before God—not just in times when things were going well, as they had been in Norilsk, but more so in times of doubt and disappointment, like today, when things were not going the way I would have planned them or wished them.
That’s what humility means—learning to accept disappointments and even defeat as God-sent, learning to persevere and carry on with peace of heart and confidence in God, secure in the knowledge that something worthwhile is being accomplished precisely because God’s will is at work in our life and we are doing our best to accept and follow it.
“For the foolish things of this world God chooses to confound the wise,” says Saint Paul, “and the weak things of this world God chooses to confound the strong.”
God was a reality for these people, a reality that they clung to and placed ahead of all other personal considerations.
That is the faith we all share, of course. We did not merit it—God gave it to us as a free gift—but it is ours to preserve or to lose. It is ours to cherish or to take for granted, and if we begin to take it for granted, we will surely lose it.
The surest way to do this, I think, is by prayer. In prayer we speak to God, we ask his help, we seek his pardon or we promise amends, we thank him for favors received. But we cannot pray as if we were talking to the empty air; so in the very act of praying, we subconsciously remind ourselves of the reality and the presence of God, thereby strengthening our belief in him.
Moreover, we are not alone in our faith. We are members of the Church, the Mystical Body, the kingdom of God here on earth. We are members of this Church through baptism—the sacrament of the life of faith—and it is in and through the Church that Christ has given us the means to strengthen our faith: his sacraments. They were the means established by Christ precisely to strengthen the faith of his followers.
Whether we experience a crisis in our own lives or sometimes feel alienated by other Christians, we do wrong both to ourselves and the Mystical Body of Christ if we leave the Church. Whatever the problem, we have an obligation flowing from the faith we share to seek a solution within the Church and not outside
But prior to love, and bolstering it at the core, is faith; we must have faith before we can love, or we will surely end up loving the wrong thing—loving ourselves more than God, or loving creatures for themselves—and this is the meaning of sin. To increase our love, to love properly, we must strive always to increase our faith, and we do this by means of prayer and the sacraments.
Without faith, our lives are just so many empty and boring routines, hollow at the core, as day succeeds day with little sense of meaning or feeling of accomplishment. With faith, however, even the most boring and routine action of every day has merit and significance for us—and for the kingdom of God.
I echoed Saint Augustine’s saying that man’s heart was made for God alone and it is restless until it comes to rest in him.
My answer has always been—and can only be—that I survived on the basis of the faith others may find too simple and naïve.
God is a very patient teacher, and I was a most stubborn pupil.
To me, it says that God has a special purpose, a special love, a special providence for all those he has created. God cares for each of us individually, watches over us, provides for
No man’s life is insignificant in God’s sight, nor are his works insignificant—no matter what the world or his neighbors or family or friends may think of them. Yet what a terrible responsibility is here. For it means that no moment can be wasted, no opportunity missed, since each has a purpose in man’s life, each has a purpose in God’s plan.
us?” Nothing, not even death, can separate us from God. Nothing can touch us that does not come from his hand; nothing can trouble us because all things come from his hand.
