Religion & Law

A Jesuit Martyr

By Michael Scaperlanda

"Alfred Delp, S.J., was hanged for high treason in Berlin-Plotzensee at the age of 37" writes Andreas Batlogg in the current issue of America.  He could have avoided death - which came on Feb. 2, 1945 near the end of WWII - if he had renounced his Jesuit vows.  As the execution drew near he wrote:  "The real reason for my conviction is that I am and have remained a Jesuit. ... The atmoshere is so full of hate and hostility.  The basic thesis was:  a Jesuit is a priori an enemy and opponent of the Reich."

On Christmas Eve of 1944, a little over a month before his execution, he scratched the following words on his prison cell wall:  "Let us trust life, since we do not have to live it alone, for God lives it with us."

Let us pray for all who despair, thinking that they are alone in this life.  Despite his life at the hands of the Nazi's, Delp longed to live.  Three weeks before his death, he wrote a friend:  "It has become an odd sort of life I am leading.  It is so easy to get used to existence again that one has to keep reminding oneself that death is round the corner.  Condemned to death.  The thought refuses to penetrate; it almost needs force to drive it home.  The thing that makes this kind of death so singular is that one feels so vibrantly alive with the will to live unbroken and every nerve tingling with life."

As the world mourns the death of a highly successful but seemingly lonely movie star, as our 24 hour news cycle continually covers the destructive patterns in the lives of celebrities who seemingly have it all, and as we witness the despair, loneliness, and destruction in our own lives or the lives of those around us, may we be given the peace and the grace to say:  "Let us trust life, since we do not have to live it alone, for God lives it with us."

Full post as published by Mirror of Justice on January 24, 2008 (boomark / email).