The First Tuesday in Advent -- Alfred Delp


A Reflection on Alfred Delp’s The Shaking Reality of Advent (pp. 82-95)

 For many of us, the weeks before Christmas have become a highly romanticized and domesticated time of year, filled with decorations, parties, and holiday music. It is hard for us to imagine that most people throughout the world, now and in eras past, experience the season of Advent in much harsher and less idealized environments. Certainly, Alfred Delp did. This reflection on Advent was written from Tegel prison in late 1944, shortly after his arrest by the Nazis for his resistance activities and before his execution. The Advent Father Delp describes here would be his last.

Delp reminds us of a truth he faced squarely: that we tend to live with a false sense of security. We inhabit comfortable and well-appointed homes, we try to fill the holes in our souls by acquiring more and more things, we seek to protect our ‘rights’ to this or that freedom through the laws and policies of worldly rulers and institutions. Yet, at the end of the day, all these things pass away, and cannot on their own sustain us, let alone fill that hole in our soul. Only God can do this.

This is why, Delp insists, Advent is a time of “being genuinely shaken up” by the in-breaking of God into our broken world. God becoming human is a world-shattering experience because this world knows not the depth of God’s love, the beauty of His being, and the true justice of His reign. If we don’t feel the jolt of God’s coming during Advent, says Delp, then we’re not really experiencing the true God.

There is a reason John the Baptist is the primary herald of the Advent season. He cries in the wilderness precisely because he sees the stark contrast between the ways things are in this world and where God would have us go and how He wants us to live.  

“Here is the message of Advent: faced with him who is the Last the world will begin to shake. Only when we do not cling to false securities will our eyes be able to see the Last One and get to the bottom of things. . . . Arise! It is time to awaken from sleep. . . . It is time to put things back where God the Lord put them. It is time for each of us to go to work, with the same unshakable sureness that the Lord will come, to set our life in God’s order wherever we can.”

What part of your life needs to be shaken up this Advent? Are there things that you are clinging to for comfort, solace, or security, that in the end are only temporary and false crutches? It can be a terrifying experience to admit that we are dependent upon God alone in the end, but the good news is that if we can let go, we are assured there is someone to catch us.


A Jesuit priest, Alfred Delp (1907-1945) was a heroic member of the Resistance in Nazi Germany who helped many Jews escape to Switzerland during the War. Arrested for his opposition to the Nazis, Delp was hanged on February 2, 1945. Like his Lutheran contemporary, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Delp authored many letters and other writings while in prison that survive.

Comments

  1. graceDecember 5, 2017 at 11:17 AM

    "for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety." Psalm 4:8

    ReplyDelete

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