In the time leading up to World War II, Fr. Walter Ciszek, an American priest, was trained in the Byzantine Rite, with the intent of travelling to Russia as a missionary. The war intervened, and Fr. Ciszek was posted to Poland. In the course of things Poland was occupied by Russian forces. The Russians were recruiting laborers to work in the Urals, and Fr. Ciszek and two other priests presented themselves (in civvies, of course) as a way of moving closer to their shared goal.

Things did not go as they had planned; the other laborers were afraid to talk about matters of faith, and then Ciszek was arrested as a Vatican spy. He spent years in the Lubianka prison in Moscow, and more years as a prisoner in labor camps, before he was finally able to return to the United States. In all, he spent twenty-three years in Soviet Russia. In that time, the only thing that sustained him was his faith in God. Or, more accurately, God sustained him.

Ciszek wrote two books about his experiences. The first, With God in Russia, is a thick, detailed account of everything that happened to him and everything he did. The second, the thinner He Leadeth Me, covers the facts quickly and at a high level, and focusses on the movements of Ciszek’s own soul, and the spiritual lessons he learned while in Russia. Most of these, not surprisingly, concern trust in God and what it means to accept His will.

Of the two, He Leadeth Me is the book I usually hear about, and having just finished it I have to affirm all of the praise it has been given. I used it as spiritual reading, reading and reflecting on a chapter or part of a chapter before going to bed. It works well for that, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself returning to it periodically. But I read With God in Russia first, and I really think that that’s the way to do it. The description of Fr. Ciszek’s experiences in He Leadeth Me are certainly hair-raising, but they don’t make the same impression as the more detailed descriptions in his first book. Consequently, I suspect it’s possible, while reading He Leadeth Me, to misunderstand just what it meant for Fr. Ciszek to trust in God so radically—to allow God to lead him through it.

Anyway, both are highly recommended.