Advent of the Heart
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About Father Alfred Delp
Condemned to die in a nazi prison, Father Alfred Delp discovered that Advent is the time for being deeply shaken —the time not only to remember the birth of the Christ Child, but to participate in this unfolding and ultimate revelation of God that began in the Holy night.
Alfred Delp was a German member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), who was executed for his resistance to the Nazi regime.
Delp joined the Jesuits in 1926. In the next 10 years he continued his studies and worked with German youth, made more difficult after 1933 with the interference of the Nazi regime. Delp was ordained in 1937.
Unable for political reasons to continue his studies, Delp worked on the editorial staff of the Jesuit publication Stimmen der Zeit (Voice of the Times), until it was suppressed in 1941. He then was assigned as rector of St. Georg Church in Munich. Delp secretly used his position to help Jews escape to Switzerland.
Concerned with the future of Germany, Delp joined the Kreisau Circle, a group that worked to design a new social order. He was arrested with other members of the circle after the attempted assassination of Hitler in 1944. After suffering brutal treatment and torture, Delp was brought to trial. While he knew nothing of the attempted assassination, the Gestapo decided to hang him for high treason.
Father Delp was offered his freedom if he would renounce the Jesuits. He refused and was hanged February 2, 1945.
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“The promises of God stand above us, more valid than the stars and more effective than the sun. Based on these promises, we will become healthy and free, from the center of our being. The promises have turned us around and, at once, opened life out into the infinite.”
-Father Alfred Delp , SJ
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Father Delp's approach to Advent, the season that prepares us for Christmas, is what he called an "Advent of the heart". More than just preparing us for Christmas, it is a spiritual program, a way of life.
He proclaimed that our personal, social and historical circumstances, even suffering, offer us entry into the true Advent, our personal journey toward a meeting and dialogue with God.
Indeed, his own life, and great sufferings, illustrated the true Advent he preached and wrote about.
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ADVENT
I see this year's Advent with an intensity and presentiment like never before. When I pace back and forth in my cell, three steps forward and three steps back, hands in irons, ahead of me an unknown destiny, I understand very differently than before those ancient promises of the coming Lord who will redeem us and set us free. And along with these thoughts comes the memory of the angel that a good person gave me for Advent two years ago. It held a banner "Rejoice, for the Lord is near."
The terror of this time would not be bearable—any more than the terror brought on by our world situation, if we comprehend it—except for this other knowledge that continually encourages us and sets us straight. It is the knowledge of the promises that are being spoken right in the middle of the terror and that are valid.
And it is also knowledge of the quiet angels of annunciation, who speak their message of blessing into the distress and scatter their seeds of the blessing that will begin to grow in the middle of the night. These are not yet the loud angels of public jubilation and fulfillment, these angels of Advent. Silently and unnoticed, they come into private rooms and appear before our hearts as they did long ago. Silently they bring the questions of God and proclaim to us the miracles of God, with whom nothing is impossible.
-Father Alfred Delp , SJ (1945)
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"If there was a little more light and truth in the world through one human being, his life has had meaning."
-Father Alfred Delp , SJ
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