In his speech today, Joe Biden quotes Jesuit Alfred Delp from his advent meditations. Didn’t mention that Delp wrote this as he awaited execution for his part in an anti-Nazi study circle.
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In a dark cell and held in chains, Delp passed his time in the Advent season of 1944 writing a series of meditations. Set not only against the darkness of war, but his own impending death, they offer a contrast to the pious sentimentality often evoked by “the holiday season.”
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For Delp the promise of Christmas, the paradoxical entry of God’s love into the dark wilderness of history, is literally a matter of life and death. “The fate of mankind, my own fate, the verdict awaiting me, the significance of the feast, can all be summed up in the sentence:
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“surrender thyself to God and thou shalt find thyself again. Others have you in their power now; they torture and frighten you, hound you from pillar to post. But the inner law of freedom sings that no death can kill us; life is eternal.” He was hanged 2/2/1945
"The inner law of freedom" - there's this moment in Terrence Malick's _A Hidden Life_. The Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter, in prison and sentenced to death, is told that if he'll just sign the loyalty oath, "you can be free." "But I am free," he answers.
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