But I can tell you one way that my research for the book helped me tremendously during COVID time. Like everybody else, I was depressed, anxious over not being able to go to church during the first few months of COVID, and was really down about it. And that’s perfectly understandable. But one day I thought about Silvester Krčméry. He is one of the figures in the book. He was a young Catholic physician who was part of the Tomislav Kolakovič family and became a pillar himself of the Slovak Underground Church.
In his memoir that he wrote in the 1990s, Krčméry said that when he went into prison, he knew that he could not let himself feel sorry for himself because that would be the way to ruin. Rather, he saw his captivity and the torture he was undergoing in captivity, he saw himself as God’s probe during all this. That’s the phrase he used, God’s probe.
What he meant by that was he saw that all the suffering that was being given to him was being forced on him, was something that he could experience for the greater glory of God, a chance to share in Christ’s suffering, but also for the sake of learning, learning what it’s like to be in prison to suffer for Christ. And he also used that time in prison to deepen his prayer life. He had memorized scripture before he went into prison. And that was a real lifeline for him. And he also witnessed to others. He helped others, prayed with others.
Instead of feeling sorry for himself, he tried to take this opportunity to become a more faithful Christian. And it sounds really, I don’t know, sentimental might be the wrong word. But it sounds like a platitude to say just use this time to deepen your faith. But when you’re reading the works of a man who spent years in prison, was beaten, and tortured for the gospel, and you read him saying, “You can’t ever pity yourself,” well, that really affected me and made me a little bit ashamed of my own self-pity during COVID.
- Ron Dreher
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