Against the Titans. Peter Nguyen
possibility for all of us and from which only God’s miracle can spare and protect us. Within me, I have much to do before God, to ask, and to offer up myself completely.133 One thing is clear and tangible to me in a way that it rarely has been: the world is full of God. From every pore of things, God rushes out to us, as it were.134
The phrase “the hour of decision” refers to Jesus’ being handed over to Judas and the authorities. It is important to note that Jesus suffered anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane as he was forsaken by his disciples and anticipated the destructive evil looming on the horizon. In spite of the anxiety crashing down on him, Delp admitted that people, including himself, were often blind to God’s presence in the world. He wrote, “In both beautiful and evil times, men and women cannot perceive grace. In everything beautiful and every hardship, God wants to celebrate the encounter and asks from us a prayerful response of self-surrender.”135
In the letter, he recognized his prison cell and the upcoming trial as a testing ground for the abyss that lay before him. The way across did not depend on his actions as it might have previously; what was demanded of him was nothing less than a total surrender to the loving mercy of God. He could pinpoint the moment when he first let go of his misery and placed himself into God’s care; it was the day after he had received a beating from the prison guards. That evening in the cell, Delp found comfort meditating on the Gospel figure of St. Peter, who flailed about in the water whenever he relied on his strength and who walked in safety only when he gave himself to the Lord.136
Within Delp, there was a recognition that his words on trust and sacrifice were becoming more real than he could ever imagine. Delp realized that if he saw the world from a purely human perspective, his situation appeared hopeless. To see the world from God’s perspective entailed trusting in Christ:
Oh, how bounded is the human heart in matters of its own ability: in hope and faith. It needs help to come to itself and not to flutter around like some young, partially-fledged birds that have fallen out of their nest. Faith as a virtue is God’s “Yes” to himself in human freedom—I preached that at one time. That’s how it is now—exactly that.137
The love of Christ seemingly overcame the figurative walls surrounding Delp in late November. He had become detached from his strengths and past achievements, and he realized that when the human person turns away from God and trusts only in his talents, he becomes merely an individual like St. Peter sinking in the Sea of Galilee.
In that same November 1944 letter to Luise Oestreicher, Alfred Delp noted that he would like to compose something cohesive—a theological reflection of his Gethsemane-like experience of learning how to trust in God and to discern and follow his will amid the looming danger. Even so, he was afraid that his bound hands would keep him from writing anything more than just letters. Gradually, however, he learned to write sustained meditations with his fastened hands. The meditations helped him come to know himself and to build a spiritual kinship with the people with whom he was imprisoned. Delp’s first two prison meditations are on devotion to the Heart of Jesus.138 Delp’s biographer, Roman Bleisten, SJ, describes these particular meditations as a rescue (“a yanking out” would be a more accurate translation) from the kitsch that has invaded the devotion.139 The principal themes of Delp’s meditations on this devotion are the recognition of humankind’s brokenness, God’s initiative to save humanity, prayer as the dialogical event wherein one encounters the rescuing love of God in Jesus Christ, and the encounter with Christ that re-creates the human person as a disciple.140
Delp followed the theme of the Sacred Heart with a meditation on Advent. His first Advent meditation was titled the “People of Advent.” His words were quite sobering, yet they did not fall prey to bitterness or despair despite his trying circumstances. Faced with humiliation, privation, pain, and inescapable death, he encountered a deep and fulfilling divine love that prepared him for martyrdom. He wrote,
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.141
Such knowledge is not abstract but rather a lived experience of consolation that allows him to encourage people not to fall prey to desolation:
To wait in faith, for the fruitfulness of the silent earth and the abundance of the coming harvest, means to understand the world—even this world—in Advent. To wait in faith—no longer because we trust the earth or the stars or our temperament and good courage—but only because we have perceived God’s messages . . . and even have encountered one.142
With these words, Delp invited himself and others to see and hear God’s love even in the midst of the horrors of war.
Delp continued the theme of confidence in God in his meditation on the First Sunday of Advent when he wrote that the holy season brought to people’s attention the awareness of the powerlessness and futility of human life without God.143 The impotence and hopelessness of human existence were consequences of sin and acted as boundaries of creaturely existence. Nonetheless, sin did not have the final say in human life. Advent communicated God’s alliance with people, who meets men and women in their limitations. In the Incarnation, Delp stated, “God resolved to raise the boundaries of our existence and to overcome the consequences of sin.”144 God’s love enabled Delp to see who he was meant to be and liberated him from any Nazi distortions of the human person and attempts to dehumanize him. He wrote,
May God help us to wake up to ourselves and in doing so, to move from ourselves toward him. Every temptation to live according to other conditions is a deception. Our participation in this existential lie is the sin for which we today—as individuals, as a generation, and as a continent—are so horribly doing penance. The way to salvation will be found only in an existential conversion and return to the truth.145
For the second Sunday in Advent, Delp continued to develop the theme of encountering the Divine in the midst of darkness. He noted that the encounter included the divine initiative to save humankind and humankind’s decision to accept God’s offer of salvation. For Delp, the concrete place of the encounter was in Christ—“the way of salvation is the way of the Savior. . . . One must see this and say it clearly, not water it down.”146 Accordingly, the healing and liberation that God offers do not relieve Christians of responsibility and commitment to the world. God’s liberation of human persons serves the purpose of deepening Christian discipleship in the world.
The theme of the Third Sunday of Advent is the decision, the deliberate choice of salvation in Christ. One’s salvation depends much upon the “Christianization of life, through the personal bond with the figure and mission of Christ himself.”147 For Delp, this decision for Christ enabled men and women to experience a power greater than the threat of death or spiritual lostness. As such, at the end of his life, Delp returned to and deepened themes that he intellectually and spiritually wrestled with since the beginning of his Jesuit formation. The solution to the ills of modernity, particularly finding meaning and fulfillment amid sensemaking crises, was resolved in being bound to Jesus Christ from which one engaged the world.
The Recognition of Oneself as God’s Gift
In prison, Delp became conscious of a “transformation” taking place in him—a change that included his Kreisau Circle collaborators. Before their imprisonment, the Christian members of the Kreisau Circle collaborated as Catholics and Protestants. During their internment, as they awaited their trial, sentencing, and potential execution, they worshipped and prayed as brothers in Christ. The collaboration that had started during the Kreisau Circle’s clandestine meetings was now deepened into a spiritual union, made all the more intense by their furtive communication.148 Through the process of prayer, Delp came to know Christ on an intimate level. A close friendship with Christ, as with other persons, requires an openness to change or to be converted. Delp’s prison meditations and letters reveal a man matured by his friendship with Christ. The early months of imprisonment appeared to be an occasion for a profound surrender of self.
Tegel