A TIME OF PROMISE

EDITOR’S NOTE: Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J., was a heroic German Jesuit priest who was imprisoned and martyred by the Nazis in a Nazi death camp in 1945. While in prison, Fr. Delp was able to write a few meditations including his powerful reflections from prison during the Advent season about the profound spiritual meaning and lessons of Advent. They seem to be equally relevant to Advent 2020.

A TIME OF PROMISE

Advent is the time of promise; it is not yet the time of fulfillment. We are still in the midst of everything and in the logical inexorability and relentlessness of destiny… Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernable as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today. 

-- Alfred Delp in “Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons And Prison Writings 1941-1944”

#4985