In the spring of 1940 Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek, after years of preparation and impatient anticipation finally got into Russia. Feeling a strong call from God, he had volunteered years ago to train for this heroic mission, his head was filled with all the ways he was going to serve God in Russia. He was going to be a ministry machine once on the ground in Russia, drawing an entire nation to Christ through his hard working generous spirit. So when the chance to sign up to travel to the Urals as a simple logger with displaced Poles, he and a fellow priest jumped at the chance. Finally, the will of God was clear—Walter Ciszek belonged in Russia!

Enthusiasm was high in the crowded boxcars as they traveled across the Ukraine towards Fr. Ciszek’s dream. This did not last long. Once they got there and started dragging trees through the snow, slowly starving to death, he found out that no one would dare meet for the celebration of Mass. In fact, everyone was too afraid to even speak about God for fear that they would be thrown into prison or worse. Well, how was Fr. Walter Ciszek, apostle to the Russians, every going to make any headway? How was he going to minister in these circumstances? Was he wrong about the will of God?

Things just got worse for the two undercover priests in the cold mountains of Russia. They began to suffer persistent doubts about their call to be in Russia. They became depressed and near despair about the rightness of their decision to follow Christ. And then– finally they remembered the key insight of St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits.

“Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. The other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the goal for which he is created. Therefore, man is to make use of them insofar as they help him in the attainment of this end, and he must rid himself of them insofar as they are a hindrance to him. Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things.”

In remembering this, it became clear to Fr. Ciszek and his companion that doing the will of God is the only important thing in one’s life. And more precisely – doing the will of God as God envisions it, not just as we imagine it to be. This will of God that is “revealed to us each day in the created situations with which he presented us. God’s will for us was the twenty four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time.” “We had to learn to look at our daily lives, at everything that crossed our path each day, with the eyes of God; learning to see his estimate of things, places, and above all people, recognizing that he had a goal and a purpose in bringing us into contact with these things and these people…”

So this was it! The will of God was found right before their very eyes. They only had to pay attention to the people and to the situations they were already in to find God and to do God’s will. The situation did not change. The snow did not melt nor did the logs become lighter and no one asked for the Eucharist. But Fr. Ciszek and his companion priest changed. They once again returned to the key Ignatian insight of finding God in all things. Even in those places that look nothing like they had dreamed of. God was there. God is there.

This insight was very simple but very hard to put into practice. Every day the two men had to remind themselves of the truth about the presence of God in their lives and the lives of others. To look at the world with God’s eyes.

This is our work every day as well. Most of us are not undercover priests logging in atheist Russia of the 1940’s, but all of us are searching for the will of God. Are we able to recognize the will of God in our own lives? Today? Tomorrow?