The season of Lent is always a reminder of the centrality of prayer and sacrifice in the Christian life. During this time, the Church pays special attention to how Jesus was completely disposed to following the Father’s will in his life, no matter the price to be paid. And as disciples of Jesus, we too need to be reminded that our purpose in life is not to satisfy our own dreams and yearnings, but to obediently follow the call of Him who has brought us into being, and who desires that we spend eternity with Him. This idea of sacrifice is one that is very much at odds with our modern culture, as our economy, our civilization is built on being able to satisfy any desire, any whim as quickly as possible. As soon as I have an idea of some object that I cannot simply live without, I can just go to my computer, and with a few keystrokes, have the item delivered to my front door the next day. Never in history has it been so easy and so convenient to acquire what we want. And yet, what is the price we pay for all this convenience? We buy more than we need, and need more places to store the stuff we buy. What happens though when after we buy and buy and buy, we feel even less satisfied than we did before? This consumption frenzy simply masks the emptiness and longing we all bear, and we distract ourselves from the larger questions about life and its ultimate meaning.
A man who learned the value and worth of suffering and sacrifice first-hand was the Jesuit priest Walter Ciszek. Fr. Ciszek was an American priest who felt a call to minister to the Russian people during World War II. With the rise of communism in Russia, religion was suppressed and devotion to the State took its place. Burning with a desire to speak about God to the Russian people, Fr. Ciszek learned their language, and then made his way first to Poland, and eventually to the Soviet Union. However, the ministry was far, far harder than he expected. He was suspected of being a Vatican spy by the Russian authorities and placed in solitary confinement for four years. After this, he was sent to a labor camp in Siberia for fifteen years. As you might imagine, the deprivations Fr. Ciszek experienced were severe, and they almost broke his body as well as his spirit. The work was grueling and relentless, the food was barely enough to keep from starving, and Mass could only be celebrated secretly, and at great risk. But through grace, Fr. Ciszek grew to understand the redemptive value of his suffering, “It is not the Father, not God who inflicts suffering upon us but rather the unredeemed world in which we must labor to do his will, the world in whose redemption we share.” Fr. Ciszek began to see the events of his life—both the sufferings and the joys—as united with the will of God, and a means by which God is reconciled with the world. Suffering, once understood as united with the will of God, and not as some form of cruel punishment, took on a new, deeper, supernatural meaning, “a true sharing in the saving acts of Christ,” as Fr. Ciszek wrote.
Mother Angeline, only a few years older than Fr. Ciszek, also possessed a deep understanding of the role of suffering in the Christian life, and of conformity of our will to God’s, “The happiest man in the world is he who has peace of heart—and peace is found in resignation to the will of God… Faithful not only when all is going well, and we are just where we want to be, doing the work we want to do; but faithful to Him in adversity and hardship, faithful when the Cross is almost unbearable; faithful when being faithful costs something. This is the fidelity that makes saints out of ordinary beings!” Both Fr. Ciszek and Mother Angeline remind us that when we prayerfully lift our attention away from our own wants and desires and look to the Cross, we will see the price of our redemption, the redemption we participate in by our own sufferings. And both of these holy people knew that this alignment of our will with God’s could only be made possible and sustained through regular prayer, particularly the Eucharist. As we continue through this Year of Eucharistic Revival, may one of its fruits be a greater conformity of our will with God’s.