Quotes from Walter J. Ciszek

This was the "good news" of salvation, meant to remove mankind's last doubts, last fears, about the nature of death. For the resurrection was a fact, a fact as certain and as sure as death itself, and it meant that death held no victory over men, that life beyond death is a certainty and not just a human hope or fable.

I had continuously to learn to accept God's will—not as I wished it to be, not as it might have been, but as it actually was at the moment.

In failure or in success, in health or sickness, in sorrow or joy, man must turn to God, must trust in God, believing in him more each day, loving him more each day, in preparation for a future life with him.

conditions were degrading only if we let ourselves become degraded.

Death to them was not an end, but a beginning, a passage into eternal life.

I had, in fact, long ago decided what I expected to hear from the Spirit, and when I did not hear precisely that, I had felt betrayed. Whatever else the Spirit might have been telling me at that hour, I could not hear. I was so intent on hearing only one message, the message I wanted to hear, that I was not really listening at all.

Only man can freely choose not to serve his Creator.

Durante esos largos de años de soledad y sufrimiento, Dios me condujo a una comprensión de la vida y de su amor que solo quienes la han experimentado son capaces de entender. Me despojó de muchos de los consuelos externos, físicos y religiosos, en los que se apoya el hombre y me dejó como única guía un núcleo esencial de verdades aparentemente simples.

It was not the Soviet government or the NKVD versus Walter Ciszek. It was God versus Walter Ciszek. God was testing me by this experience, like gold in the furnace, to see how much of self remained after all my prayers and professions of faith in his will.

if you can learn to see the role of pain and suffering in relation to God's redemptive plan for the universe and each individual soul, your attitude must change. You don't shun it when it comes upon you, but bear it in the measure grace is given you.

That grace is always given to us, but we must learn to recognize it in the people and circumstances presented to us by God's providence, in the thoughts and inspirations that tug at our minds and our hearts.

Cada día, todos los días de nuestra vida, Dios nos pone delante personas y ocasiones con las que espera que actuemos. No espera más de nosotros, pero no aceptará menos; y faltamos a nuestra promesa y a nuestro compromiso si no descubrimos su divina voluntad en cada momento de cada día. Cualquier momento de la vida de los hombres es precioso a los ojos de Dios y ninguno se debe malgastar por culpa de las dudas o el desaliento.

The success of any enterprise depends on personal effort, persistence, prudence, and basically on deep faith in God.

An attitude of readiness to try over and over again in our quest to find God and his will in prayer is itself a grace and a blessing of major consequence.

Christ had to suffer opposition and contradiction and, yes, humiliation, in doing his Father's will; yet he was constantly intent on forgetting self entirely and glorifying the Father by his actions. If we are truly to imitate Christ in our lives, we must learn to do the same.

La maravilla de la gracia de Dios que transforma las acciones humanas carentes de valor en medios eficaces para extender el reino de Cristo en la tierra causa un asombro y una humildad sin límites, y aporta una paz y una alegría desconocidas para quienes nunca lo han experimentado e inexplicable para los que no creen.

Humility is truth" is a spiritual adage that sums it up well, for humility is nothing more or less than knowing our place before God.

This tendency to set acceptable conditions upon God, to seek unconsciously to make his will for us coincide with our desires, is a very human trait.

I am speaking only of a conversation with God, the spontaneous outpouring of a soul that has come to realize—however fleetingly—that it is standing at the knee of a loving and providing Father.

Thoughts of praise and of thanksgiving spontaneously arise, as well as questions and petitions and thoughts of friends and their needs, mingled with trusting confessions of failure and simple promises to follow in the future only what he would have us do.

I realized then, and I felt it more deeply each day, that true freedom meant nothing else than letting God operate within my soul without interference, giving preference to God's will as manifested in the promptings, inspirations, and other means he chose to communicate, rather than in acting on my own initiatives.

Great gifts received from God—such as love of him, deep faith, or martyrdom—are given irrespectively of our merits, efforts, cooperation, sufferings, determination. They are free gifts (supernatural) bestowed upon those whom God chooses. The disposition will follow if God chooses.

Each day to me should be more than an obstacle to be gotten over, a span of time to be endured, a sequence of hours to be survived. For me, each day came forth from the hand of God newly created and alive with opportunities to do his will. For me, each day was a series of moments and incidents to be offered back to God, to be consecrated and returned in total dedication to his will.

That is, living one's full life for God, taking into consideration first of all the actual and then the remote possible good and evil, and then properly preparing oneself with the help of God for any occasion. This is done by prayer, vigilance, and knowledge. Knowledge leads us to God, gives us God, and [enables us to] have life in him. If somebody says he is happy without God, he lies. No creature can satisfy the soul of man which was created for God.