O, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for. Isa 63:19b,64:2
I cannot think of Advent without thinking of Alfred Delp, SJ, who in 1944 spent the Advent and Christmas seasons in a Nazi prison. Delp’s writings, letters and reflections on Advent, were smuggled out from prison on scraps of paper by two friends. In one letter, he wrote that he thought it would be a beautiful Christmas. Under such circumstances you might wonder how?
Delp was handcuffed night and day and confined to a small cell, facing a death sentence. There would be no moving liturgies, no exquisite manger scenes. But with all the ornaments and romantic imagery stripped away, Delp said he could see clearly the shaking reality of what Christmas promised: God in the flesh, God taking a stand with us against the unimaginable darkness. Christmas, offered Delp, is the chance to celebrate the mystery of the great howling hunger of humankind for God — if we are willing to give over our complacency and pretensions.
In Advent’s dark and cold days I am, I confess, often drawn to meditate on the gentle mysteries of a babe wrapped and warm, puffy sheep in the fields and angels in the sky trailing glory. Wondrous stars. Enigmatic strangers from the East. Gold and rare spices. It is the proper and cherished stuff of Christmas pageants. Yet this isn’t quite what the People of God asked for through Isaiah, “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” begs Isaiah, “be what we don’t dare hope for.”
Delp wrote that to live in the knowledge that the divine and the human have collided in time requires a willingness to let our romantic notions be burned off, that we might have a clear vision of what is and could be.
Dare we join with Isaiah and cry out to the heavens this Advent, imploring God to do for us what we cannot bring ourselves to hope for? Might the hungry be fed, might the migrant find safe harbor, might God visit peace on the nations? Shine forth from your cherubim throne, O Lord. Rouse your power and rend the heavens.
— Adapted from M. Francl-Donnay, Waiting in Joyful Hope, Liturgical Press, 2020.
More reading about Delp:
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