Fr. Delp saw that when the Incarnation, when Christ enters history and becomes its master, He makes himself available to us everywhere:
History now becomes the Son’s mode of existence; historical destiny becomes His destiny. He is to be encountered on our streets. In the darkest cellars and the loneliest prisons of life, we will meet Him. And that is already the first blessing and consecration of the burden: that He is to be met under its weight.
And he believed that mankind is hopeless without God; and Advent reminds us of our powerlessness:
By ourselves and with our own strength alone, we will not manage . . . . The theological principle that a man, by his own strength, cannot even sustain the basic ethical level of natural principles is the rationale for the misery that we are living through today.
History now becomes the Son’s mode of existence; historical destiny becomes His destiny. He is to be encountered on our streets. In the darkest cellars and the loneliest prisons of life, we will meet Him. And that is already the first blessing and consecration of the burden: that He is to be met under its weight.
And he believed that mankind is hopeless without God; and Advent reminds us of our powerlessness:
By ourselves and with our own strength alone, we will not manage . . . . The theological principle that a man, by his own strength, cannot even sustain the basic ethical level of natural principles is the rationale for the misery that we are living through today.
