Excerpts from "Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Preached in Munich, December 21, 1941:"
"Advent has already called man three times. It called through the shaking; it called to authenticity; and it called to confession of faith. And now Advent calls a fourth time. Without this fourth call, the other three are not possible. They are just pathos; they are talk; they are gestures and rhetoric; but they are not genuine and do not stem from the final reality within us. The fourth Advent call signifies a fundamental attitude of man. It is an old term, a forgotten word, and a forgotten value: FEAR OF GOD...
I do not mean being afraid of God. There is no greater parody and no greater caricature of the meaning of religion than wanting to build a religion upon fear...
Man must learn again-really, personally, practically, and daily-to reckon with God as the ultimate category of reality, as the decisive judgment of all that exists...
...'under the high priests Annas and Caiaphas,' and that tells us that, not only was there no hope from worldly power, the holy place was also sold out...
In such times one must be motivated, not from willfulness, or personal whim, or personal programs, but really from the very heart and center of reality after having subjected oneself to God the Lord and wrestled with His Word...
Anxiety, that unworthy, inner subversion of mankind, fades away...
In His presence, the other voices fall silent...
...the person who has seen God, is so totally different, so totally other-because our God is totally Other, with a fullness and order different from what the world sees at first glance. Further, someone who observes the otherness of the believer will be changed by it...
...he is master of the situation and of all things, because of being truly in contact with the center of reality..."
In this homily, Fr. Delp discusses a "fear" or a holy awe of God which necessitates at ultimate intimacy with Him, an intimacy which changes us. The Gradual of this traditional Mass declares:
"The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth." (Psalm 145)
This union with God is not merely our goal or end, it is to be experienced right now in the present moment. The door we must pass through is the door of contrition in the sacrament of Penance, which leads us to Holy Communion, where we become one in mind and heart with Christ. May we, this Christmas, receive Him with a deeper spirit of yielding than ever before, becoming "so totally other," that we will shine with His light for all to see!