Walter J. Ciszek (1904–1984)

Fascinating and genuine autobiography of a priest who sneaks into Soviet Russia to try and be a missionary, and ends up fulfilling that hope in the gulags. Father Ciszek tells his story well, weaving in fascinating details about prison life and life in the Soviet Union as well as accounts of his extraordinary efforts as a priest in the most difficult of circumstances.

This book, one of two biographical accounts by the late (and some expect soon-to-be-canonized) Fr. Walter Ciszek, SJ, is one of the most inspiring books on suffering for one's faith. Fr. Ciszek spent decades in a Soviet gulag, where he continued to secretly practice his faith and celebrate Mass for the other prisoners. I ended up loving both the book and Fr. Ciszek.

Audience: This book is definitely for those who may feel a need for inspiration / fresh air in their faith lives. It is show more impossible to read this book and not come away with a certain inner breathlessness at the scope and depth of Fr. Ciszek's faith. show less

He Leadeth Me is the deeply moving personal story of one man's spiritual odyssey and the unflagging faith which enabled him to survive the horrendous ordeal that wrenched his body and spirit to near collapse. Captured by the Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a Vatican spy, American Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent some 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. He here recalls how it was only through an utter reliance on God's will that he show more managed to endure. show less

A story of the life of an American Catholic Priest who ends up in the USSR during and after WW2 and his life and times there as a prisoner till he leaves to come back to the USA after 23 years. Fascinating and remarkably similar to Solzhenitshen's Gulag Archipalego. This is not great literature but adds another perspective to the USSR in Stalin's time period and after it, up until about 1964.
I do wish he had included his adjustment back into American life.