Think about that. Whom do you love most?
First we might think of our families, or our best friends.
But are they really, truly whom we love the most?
Who, out of love for you, keeps you literally in existence at every moment?
Whom do you hope to spend eternity with?
Who is Love Itself?
God.
God loves us the most and deserves our hearts, our wills, our lives.
But - do you spend precious silent time with God, in deep joy and peace because you are God's Beloved? How deep is your faith in Jesus, Son Of God? Do you live for Jesus? Would you die for Jesus?
For so many Christians, the yardstick of their faith appears to be this: "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and died for our sins. Therefore - I am saved." For them, it is an intellectual assent to the truth that counts.
But St. Paul says that the real goal for our existence should be much deeper than intellectual assent: to so deeply fall in love with Jesus that we yearn to put on the mind and heart of Jesus the Christ. We long to be united with him in life and in death. We long to love others with the mind and heart of Christ.
Fr. Michael Holman, an English Jesuit, is deeply impressed by the words of a friend, Ruth Burrows, who is a Carmelite sister, a follower of St. Teresa of Avila. She has written that "faith in Jesus is very, very rare." Holman says "I took her to mean not so much the intellectual assent to God and to Jesus as the Son of God, but the kind of faith which allows Jesus, and the Gospel of Jesus, to take hold of our lives. That is the faith that Ruth Burrows says is 'very, very rare.' For too many of us, faith, like much else in life, is compromised."
Holman himself has discovered another Jesuit who died sixty-five years ago who is a perfect example of a man with this kind of faith, a man who allowed Jesus and the Gospel to take hold of his life - and to take hold of his death. Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. was a martyr, executed by the Nazis when he was only in his mid-thirties.
In the 1930's, when his homeland Germany was in the grip of Hitler and the Nazis, Delp, Pastor of a small church in Munich, was preaching, teaching, and writing about "the importance of the human person, the uniqueness and dignity of each person and the wonder of each person as God's creation in God's own likeness." (Holman) Delp wrote these prophetic words that ring true today:
"It is undeniable that every human being is entitled to living space, daily bread, and the protection of the law as a common birthright. These are fundamentals, and should not be handed out as an act of charity."
The Nazis abolished these freedoms for everyone who did not fit their preconceived ideal of the perfect human being: healthy, white Aryans. Jews, the disabled, homosexuals, and dissenting clergy were imprisoned and executed. Thousands of dissenting clergy were killed by the Nazi regime. In Poland alone, between 1939 - 1945, 3,000 Catholic clergy who protested the imprisonment and execution of Jews were murdered; 1,992 died in concentration camps. As Delp spoke out courageously in Germany, the Nazis were already confiscating Church property and removing crucifixes from Catholic schoolrooms. People who were protesting Nazi propaganda and actions were quietly disappearing.
"In 1941, the Nazis produced a propaganda film, explaining their policy of euthanasia, the 'mercy killing' of the handicapped. From his pulpit, Delp denounced the film. He spoke of the importance of those living with disability, both as individuals and in terms of their significance in the community, and their significance in calling forth the best of human qualities - God-like qualities in the rest of us." (Holman)
The German Bishops drafted a document denouncing this film, but since many of them feared a Nazi all-out assault on the German Catholic Church, and also feared that they would be accused of being unpatriotic since many Catholics served in the Nazi military, their final document was weak.
Eventually Fr. Delp was wrongly accused of being part of a group that planned to assassinate Hitler. Charged with treason, he was imprisoned. He underwent nine hours of interrogation and torture, which left him, as he later told his friends, a "bleeding whimper." Then he endured four months of solitary confinement during which he was always handcuffed. Yet his spirit, far from being broken, underwent a deep purification and transformation. His spirit, on fire with the Holy Spirit, lit the flame of courage and resistance in others.
Friends brought him bread and wine so that he could celebrate Mass, and the Blessed Sacrament was always with him. Friends smuggled pen, ink, and paper in to him in his laundry so, on fire with love of God, hope, and courage, he could continue the writing that so encouraged his family, friends, and flock - with handcuffs constraining every movement of his hands.
He wrote in encouragement "Our hearts must be keenly alert for opportunities in our own little corners of daily life. May we stand in this world, not as people in hiding but as those who help prepare the way for the Son of God."
Then these same friends smuggled his letters and other writings out of his cell and distributed them. He wrote a diary, and a set of reflections on the church and society; he wrote of his interior struggles to remain faithful to Christ, the ever-present temptation to compromise his beliefs and principles. A short time before his death, overcome with joyful tears, he made his final profession of vows as a Jesuit to another Jesuit priest who visited him.
In his last meditation, composed on Christmas Eve, a month before he would be hanged for treason, Delp wrote
"How many types of people today could honestly appear at the manger? Most of them have absolutely no desire to do so. The small scanty door does not allow anyone riding a high horse to get through.....How much of what we are living through today cannot stand in the Presence of the Child?"
When Fr. Delp was brought before a judge, it was a judge who loathed Christianity, loathed Catholics, and especially loathed Jesuits. He told Fr. Delp that if he would renounce being a Jesuit, the judge would go easier on him.
Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. refused to compromise. He would die a Jesuit priest.
He was hanged, cremated, and his ashes scattered over human sewage.
Can we be set on fire by the example of this holy man who lived and died immersed in the life and death of Jesus, Son of God? Today, the dignity of the human person is under the same kind of great assaults. Fr. Holman writes
"But what fire does Delp's flame enkindle in us? It makes me wonder the extent to which we are blind to the signs of the times and deaf to the call of Christ. How accustomed to compromise in our own time have we become? ....It was the assault on life that made Alfred Delp's mission urgent. In our own times this same assault is considerable too - at the start of life and at the end of life. In an over-commercialized economy with an over-individualized social policy, which has too little concern for its impact on our environment, the unique significance and dignity of each and every human life is being compromised."
Here in the United States, the Muslim has been substituted for the Jew to bear the wrath of national policy. The Environmental Protection Agency has been destroyed. Policies for clean energy have been abandoned. Financial policies put in place to protect consumers and the economy from the depredations of Wall Street are being removed. Are our ears open to the call of Jesus? Are our mouths open so we can become prophets, to speak truth to power?
How did Fr. Delp find the inner resources to live and die in spiritual integrity? Through prayer. Through falling in love with God and hearing himself called "My Beloved." Through being so united with God that he received Living Water in the desert of loneliness and pain to slake his thirst, and Living Bread - the Eucharist - when he was ready to die from spiritual hunger. Shortly before he died he wrote - to all of us -
"Whoever is true to life, however barren it may be, will discover in himself fountains of very real refreshment. The world will give him more than he ever imagined possible....His burdens will turn to blessings because he recognizes them as coming from God and welcomes them as such. Let us trust in life because we do not have to live it alone. God is with us."
And - "If there was a little more light and truth in the world through one human being, his life has had meaning."
Real faith in Jesus - a life immersed in the Son of God - may be very, very rare. But if we acknowledge that no one loves us as much as God, and that no one is deserving of our love more than God, if we spend time contemplating the Face of God, the Face of Love, we will become like the One we love. We will accept all - life and death - as coming from God. Our face and words will shine with God's brightness and power. And our lives - and deaths - will have meaning and GIVE LIFE to those around us.