acute awareness of shrouded mystery

Alfred Delp S.J. 

" … On the fourth Sunday in Advent 

the acute awareness of shrouded mystery 

is deepening for the final hour of darkness 

that heralds the dawn.   

There is an intense awareness of captivity, 

of crippling disability 

and despair, 

but it is already shot through 

with a premonition of the divine grace -- 

the premonition that will soon become certainty." (p. 51)

- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp

the locks of time, our sepulchre

A Close Encounter. 

This Hubble image from 2013 shows two interacting galaxies. NGC 2936 at top, once a standard spiral galaxy, and NGC 2937 below, a smaller elliptical galaxy. The pairing, known as Arp 142, bears a resemblance to a penguin guarding its egg. The gravitational chaos caused by the close interaction is twisting NGC 2936 and gradually tearing it apart. 

NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI / AURA

From NASA 2019 Advent Calendar

O night of admiration, full of choirs,
O night of deepest praise,
And darkness full of sweet delight! 
What secret and intrepid Visitor 
Has come to raise us from the dead?
He softly springs the locks of time, our sepulchre,
In the foretold encounter.

-Thomas Merton, "The Dark Encounter", Collected Poems, p. 113

a homeless God, without even a number

Alone in the Void. 

In this image, only three nearby stars can be seen (the ones with 'diffraction spikes'), every other object is a distant galaxy. The bright spiral galaxy at center, named MCG+01-02-015, because of its lonely location, is called a 'void galaxy'. 

ESA / Hubble & NASA and N. Gorin, STScI

From NASA 2019 Advent Calendar

The shadows fall.  The stars appear.  The birds begin,
     to sleep.
Night embraces the silent half of the earth.
A vagrant, a destitute wanderer with dusty feet, finds his
     way down a new road.
A homeless God, lost in the night, without papers,
     without identification,
without even a number, a frail expendable exile
lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world
and entrusts Himself to sleep.

-Thomas Merton,  "Hagia Sophia" IV Sunset, The Hour of Compline, Salve Regina, Collected Poems, p. 369

a blanket of silence

woodcut by Harlan Hubbard

Advent is a time of waiting, 

     of expectation, 

          of silence.  

Waiting for our Lord to be born. 

A pregnant woman is so happy, 

     so content. 

She lives in such a garment of silence, 

and it is as though she were listening to hear 

     the stir of life within her. 

One always hears the stirring compared to 

     the rustling of a bird in the hand. 

But the intentness with which one awaits such stirring 

     is like nothing so much 

          as a blanket of silence.  

Dorothy Day

Whoever is nowhere is nobody

A Stellar Shell. This massive bubble in space is the result of gas that is being shocked by the expanding blast wave from a supernova. Called SNR 0509-67.5, the sphere is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years from Earth.

From NASA 2019 Advent Calendar

There is no where in you a paradise that is no place
     and there
You do not enter except without a story.
To enter there is to become unnameable.

Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door     
and no identity
with which to go out and to come in. 

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist     
except as unborn:
No disguise will avail him anything

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

But he who has an address is lost.

They fall, they fall into apartments and are     
     securely established!

They find themselves in streets.  
They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, 
if all names are shouted at     
     once and
all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust
Yet identities refuse to be lost.  
There is a name and number     
     for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon holes     
     for ashes:
Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn     
     flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree.  
It must remain unseen until words     
     end and arguments are silent.

-Thomas Merton, "The Fall",  In the Dark Before Dawn, pp. 184-185  

the Godless man

Fr. Alfred Delp SJ 

"A Godless life is one delivered up to a vast army of kill-joys.   

"When man loses touch with the eternal truths he gets submerged in the weeds that sprout all over the garden of his life. They are senseless trivialities that assume an air of real importance. Though they pretend to have a purpose they are quite futile, and merely add obscurity and confusion to a life which is gradually engulfed in a sort of eternal twilight without light or direction. … 

"Hunted and driven, and bewitched he is no longer master of his own fate, no longer a free man.   

"It is hard enough to meet the ordinary hazards incidental to every existence; but the Godless man has no defenses and is delivered up, bound and disarmed. Left to cope with them in this defenseless fashion he falls back on the excuse that fate is against him and the world is all wrong.    

"He is a failure and it takes very little to keep him bogged down in depression and despair. The world becomes a cheerless place, not worth living in, although there seems to be no way out of it.   

"Or, on the other hand, he may persuade himself that a flippant attitude is the right one to adopt, and he seeks a cheap way out of his troubles by various forms of escapism.  The great illusion begins, the age of noise and mass mentality and organized animation - 'circuses' - for crowds.    

"Till at last the earth begins to quake and underground rumblings, which have been more or less effectively drowned by the surface uproar, imperatively assert themselves.   

"Thunder crashes proclaiming the day of judgement." (pp. 37-38)

- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp

each of us is the midwife of God, each of us

 "Little donkey, on the dusty road" 

A detail from a painting by Huang Zhou (1925-1997) of eight donkeys. Ink on paper.

“Advent Poem” By St. John of the Cross

If you want, the Virgin will come walking down the road 
pregnant with the Holy and say, 
“I need shelter for the night. 
Please take me inside your heart, my time is so close.” 
Then, under the roof of your soul, 
you will witness the sublime intimacy, 
the divine, the Christ, taking birth forever, 
as she grasps your hand for help, 
for each of us is the midwife of God, each of us. 
Yes, there, under the dome of your being, 
does creation come into existence eternally, 
through your womb, dear pilgrim, 
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help:
for each of us is His beloved servant never far. 
If you want, the virgin will come walking down the street, 
pregnant with Light, and sing!