Friday, October 3, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
No longer alone
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.” A bomb destroyed the angel. A bomb killed the good person, and I often sense that she continues to do angel-services for me.
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. – Alfred Delp in Plough Magazine
Advent marks the beginning of our celebration of the birth of Jesus, and Advent is on the runway waiting to take off. This is the twenty-sixth of thirty-four weeks of Ordinary Time. The US government is shut down, news from around the world reeks of unacknowledged famine, disease and murder, hurricanes Humberto and Imelda are collapsing homes in the Outer Banks.
Justice is with the Lord, our God;
and we today are flushed with shame,
we men of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem,
that we, with our kings and rulers
and priests and prophets, and with our ancestors,
have sinned in the Lord’s sight and disobeyed him.
Nothing much has changed, has it? But the supernatural world surrounding our natural one does not change either. God is not mocked, and neither does God stop loving us. His angels are a powerful force, far more powerful than any headline-grabbing politician or general.
These are 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. – Alfred Delp
Alfred Delp was a Jesuit priest in Germany during World War II, who was executed for his resistance to the Hitler and the Nazi regime, as was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was 37. From prison he wrote as Advent approached, recognizing its potential power in our lives. He wrote about us as much as he recognized his own situation.
Advent, despite all earnestness, is a time of refuge because it has received a message. Oh, if people know nothing about the message and the promises anymore, if they only experience the four walls and the prison windows of their gray days, and no longer perceive the quiet footsteps of the announcing angels, if the angels’ murmured word does not simultaneously shake us to the depths and lift up our souls – then it is over for us. Then we are living wasted time, and we are dead, long before they do anything to us.
 During nearly countless visits to Illinois penitentiaries, now and then I’ve met soldiers for Christ like Alfred Delp. Imprisonment speeds up the surrender of self in ways unexpected and unpredictable until you’re there. I haven’t been there for more than a day at a time, but the awakened humility of those who have been there for decades shines through their everyday life. Those folks have discovered what Jesus meant when he called them the “greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”
Help us, O God our savior,
because of the glory of your name;
Deliver us and pardon our sins
for your name’s sake.
(Baruch 1, Psalm 79, 95, Luke 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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