On the previous post, First Sunday of Advent, we read a few of Fr. Delp's quotes from his writings of that day-here are a few more from his First Sunday homilies and prison writings that speak so much to our present times, on the precipice of chaos (this is why there is now such a person as the "Catholic Prepper"):
"Perhaps what we modern people need most is to be genuinely shaken, so that where life is grounded, we would feel its stability; and where life is unstable and uncertain, immoral and unprincipled, we would know that, also, and endure it. Perhaps that is the ultimate answer to the question of why God has sent us into this time...It is because we have stood here on the earth with a totally false and inauthentic sense of security...
...[Delp moves into the past tense here, as he contemplates the crumbling world around him] man stood on this earth in a false pathos and a false security, under a deep delusion in which he really believed he could single-handedly fetch stars from heaven; could enkindle eternal lights in the world and avert all danger from himself; that he could banish the night, and intercept and interrupt the internal quaking of the cosmos, and maneuver and manipulate the whole thing into the conditions standing before us now. That is the first Advent message: before the end, the world will be set quaking...
...now it is time for each individual to use every opportunity to guide life into this order now-and to do it with the same 'unshakeability' with which the Lord will come...
...the basic condition of life always has an Advent dimension: boundaries, and hunger, and thirst, and lack of fulfillment, and promise, and movement toward one another. That means, however, that we basically remain without shelter, under way, and open until the final encounter, with all the humble blessedness and painful pleasure of this openness...
Hunger and thirst, and desert journeying, and the survival teamwork of mountaineers on a rope-these are the truth of our human condition...
In the same way that lies have gone out from people's hearts, penetrating throughout the world and destroying it, so should-and so will-the truth begin its healing service within our hearts. Light the candles wherever you can, you who have them."
As much as I see the internet as part of the artificial, inauthentic life modern man has created, it IS, nevertheless, a light. We each must find the light God has given us to save souls at this very late hour.