Augštyn Širdis
Date not established
Introduction
Augštyn Širdis (Lift Up Your Heart) is a Lithuanian-language devotional and moral exhortation volume by Rev. Juozas Prunskis, a prolific Lithuanian Catholic priest and journalist prominent in the mid-twentieth-century diaspora. Drawing on anecdote, hagiography, and theological reflection, the book guides readers toward Catholic virtue through illustrative stories ranging from missionary encounters in Korea and Japan to wartime martyrdom narratives set in Nazi-occupied Poland. Published under the Immaculata imprint, it represents the robust Lithuanian diaspora Catholic publishing ecosystem that sustained religious and national identity during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania.
Community and publication context
Community and publication setting
Context and significance
Significance
Augštyn Širdis exemplifies the rich tradition of Lithuanian diaspora Catholic publishing that flourished in North America following the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940 and the subsequent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians. Rev. Juozas Prunskis—priest, journalist, lawyer, and one of the most prolific Lithuanian-American Catholic authors of the mid-twentieth century—here offers his community a devotional guide grounded in global Catholic experience: missionary encounters in Asia, Marian devotion, hagiographic exempla, and narratives of martyrdom under Nazi and Soviet persecution. The book's sustained engagement with Pius XII's support for Lithuania's freedom, the Vatican's non-recognition of the Soviet occupation, and the Lithuanian College of St. Casimir in Rome situates it squarely within the political-religious consciousness of the diaspora, where faith and national survival were understood as inseparable.
As a document of Lithuanian diaspora intellectual and religious life, the volume also captures the transnational reach of Prunskis's pastoral imagination: stories from Korea, Japan, Mexico, and wartime Poland serve as mirrors for Lithuanian readers navigating displacement and the long Soviet occupation of their homeland. The bibliography page, listing Prunskis's output from 1931 to 1957, is itself a remarkable record of sustained diaspora publishing across genres—biography, legal scholarship, anti-communist polemics, devotional writing, and bilingual advocacy—making this copy a window into one of the most active Lithuanian-American Catholic voices of the twentieth century.
How this record carried memory
Lithuanian-language Catholic devotional publishing in diaspora; the text sustains religious practice, Lithuanian language literacy, and national-Catholic identity among émigré communities while bearing witness to Soviet occupation of Lithuania and Nazi persecution of Catholic clergy.
Record connections
People, places, and institutions linked in the catalog